It has been around since humans began to speak. The earliest forms of speculative fiction were likely mythological tales told around the campfire. Speculative fiction deals with the "What if?" scenarios imagined by dreamers and thinkers worldwide. Journeys to other worlds through the vast reaches of distant space; magical quests to free worlds enslaved by terrible beings; malevolent supernatural powers seeking to increase their spheres of influence across multiple dimensions and times; all of these fall into the realm of speculative fiction.
Speculative fiction as a category ranges from ancient works to cutting edge, paradigm-changing, and neotraditional works of the 21st century. It can be recognized in works whose authors' intentions or the social contexts of the versions of stories they portrayed is now known. For example, Ancient Greekdramatists such as Euripides, whose play Medea (play) seemed to have offended Athenian audiences when he fictionally speculated that shamaness Medea killed her own children instead of their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure. The play Hippolytus, narratively introduced by Aphrodite, is suspected to have displeased contemporary audiences of the day because it portrayed Phaedra as too lusty.
Having gained experience creating television commercials, industrial films, and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood segments through their production company The Latent Image, Romero, Russo, and Streiner decided to make a horror film to capitalize on interest in the genre. Their script primarily drew inspiration from Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend. Principal photography took place between July 1967 and January 1968, mainly on location in Evans City, Pennsylvania, with Romero using guerrilla filmmaking techniques he had honed in his commercial and industrial work to complete the film on a budget of approximately US$100,000. Unable to procure a proper set, the crew rented a condemned farmhouse to destroy during the course of filming. (Full article...)
Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.
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—Brian Aldiss (b.1925), Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction (1973).
An illustration from a ca. 1916 edition of The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, a children's novel written by the Reverend Charles Kingsley and originally serialised in 1862–63. The book, a didactic moral fable, tells the story of Tom (lower left), a young boy who drowns and is reincarnated as a "water-baby". He undergoes a series of adventures and eventually regains his human form. It was extremely popular during its day and through the 1920s, but has since fallen out of favour, perhaps due to Kingsley's expression of many of the common prejudices of that time period, such as against Americans, Jews, blacks, and Catholics, particularly the Irish. (POTD)
Severus Snape is a fictional character in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. He is an exceptionally skilled wizard whose extremely cold and resentful exterior conceals deep emotions and anguish. A Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Snape is hostile to Harry due to his resemblance to his father James Potter, who bullied Snape during their time together at Hogwarts.
As the series progresses, Snape's character becomes more layered and enigmatic. A central mystery is unravelled concerning his loyalties. Snape dies at the hands of Lord Voldemort in the seventh book, at which time his back story is revealed. Despite his attraction to the Dark Arts and Voldemort's ideology of wizard supremacy, Snape's love for Muggle-born Lily Evans, Harry's mother, eventually compelled him to defect from the Death Eaters. He then became a double agent for Albus Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. The fact that Lily chose James Potter, Harry's father, only fuels Snape's hostility towards Harry. (Full article...)
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