Speculative fiction is having a big moment in CanLit right now, and it’s no wonder. Literature of the fantastic, otherworldly and futuristic can be an escape from the national and global unrest of our times. But what exactly is meant by the term “speculative,” and why does this literature resonate so much with Canadian readers?
The speculative is often defined as literature that explores alternate or future possibilities and worlds. This includes “fantasy, science fiction, and horror, but also their derivatives, hybrids, and cognate genres like the gothic, dystopia, weird fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, ghost stories, superhero tales, alternate history, steampunk, slipstream, magic realism, fractured fairy tales, and more.” As opposed to mimetic or realist literature, speculative fiction embraces genre hybridity and fluidity as the term itself evades strict definition. First popularized by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1947 essay On the Writing of Speculative Fiction to describe science fiction narratives that portray “human actions in response to a new situation created by science or technology,” its definition has undergone a significant evolution. Canada’s own Margaret Atwood began using the term in the late 1980s to describe her iconic dystopian novels. Explaining her use of the term in her 2011 book In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination, Atwood makes a distinction between the literature of the not-possible and the not-yet-possible:
What I mean by ‘science fiction’ is those books that descend from H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, which treats of an invasion by tentacled, blood-sucking Martians shot to Earth in metal canisters-things that could not possibly happen-whereas, for me, ‘speculative fiction’ means plots that descend from Jules Verne’s books about submarines and balloon travel and such-things that really could happen but just hadn’t completely happened when the authors wrote the books. I would place my own books in this second category: no Martians.
While Atwood’s speculative fiction indeed possesses a predictive quality, many readers took issue with the apparent distancing of her works from the category of science fiction. Celebrated science fiction and speculative author Ursula K. Le Guin commented in 2009, “This arbitrarily restrictive definition seems designed to protect her novels from being relegated to a genre still shunned by hidebound readers, reviewers and prize-awarders. She doesn’t want the literary bigots to shove her into the literary ghetto.”
Here, Le Guin points to the exclusionary impulse that had previously driven “the fields of fantasy, science fiction, horror, the gothic, and other non-mimetic genres [to be] theorized as largely separate subfields of the literary field.” Through the establishment of genre-specific journals, conferences, awards and other initiatives, writers, readers and publishers aimed “to demonstrate that fantasy, science fiction, horror, and related genres deserve to be studied as literature.” The popularity of the speculative today owes a lot to these initiatives, but its strength lies in how expansive it is.
The use of “speculative” as a blanket term for these genres “redefine[s] the goal of the power struggle within the field from seeking to win the stamp of ‘literariness’ for any particular genre to exploring how non-mimetic genres may be potentially more adequate than the so-called realist literature to address contemporary global challenges and reflect the diverse perspectives, traditions, and experiences of the multicultural world.” Given Canada’s “identity as a hybrid of the American and English, Francophones and Anglophones, [Indigenous] and settlers, and the multicultural mix that is embedded in our philosophy,” it’s not surprising that speculative literature thrives here.
One of the most celebrated Canadian speculative fiction works is Cherie Dimaline’s dystopian YA novel The Marrow Thieves. Published in 2017, it accrued critical and commercial success and many awards, including the Governor General’s Award and the Kirkus Prize. In a near-future ravaged by climate change, only Indigenous people can still dream. Hunted for their bone marrow, the key to curing dreamlessness, teenage Frenchie and his friends must escape the Recruiters and survive in this hostile world. In an interview with the Toronto Star, Dimaline says:
We have a suicide epidemic in our communities. I’ve done a lot of work in the past with Indigenous youth and one of the things I realize is that they didn’t look forward, they didn’t see themselves in any kind of a viable future. And I thought, what if they read this book where they literally see themselves in the future, and not just surviving but being the heroes and being the answer, then that’s it.
Here, Dimaline highlights how the speculative elements of post-apocalypse and dystopia are well-suited to address contemporary issues affecting Indigenous communities.
The trope of apocalypse, though not necessarily a component in every speculative work, is quite a resonant one these days. From tariff tensions to controversial bills to the cost of living crisis, Canadians from all walks of life are recognizing an urgent need for societal change.
As K’ien Debicki puts it in their article Naked as Stars: Gender Expansiveness and Poly Indigenous Futures, “we are currently experiencing overlapping apocalypses and the severity of these cataclysms are mounting to such a level that soon even the most privileged will no longer be able to pretend that everything is fine.” Speculative literature, in its pretense of unreality, is able to address these issues without tipping its hand to the powers that pretend everything is fine. Moreover, it can sow the seeds of possible solutions; in their class “Indigenous Futurisms & Wonderworks” at McMaster University, Debicki and their students “vacillate between literary analysis of Indigenous speculative fiction, sf, and fantasy and making tangible plans for [their] survival after the fall of capitalism/settler colonialism.” Speculative literature, in imagining alternate worlds, makes those worlds possible.
As Canadian society becomes increasingly polarized, the speculative emerges as a way to bridge the gap. In these times of uncertainty, fear rules – but curiosity is its antidote. Speculative literature has the potential to shape Canadian literature into one of fundamental curiosity. On the international stage, Canada’s image has the potential to transform from politeness to passion. Instead of saying “sorry,” we can ask, “why?” Instead of passive acceptance fueled by comparison to our southern neighbours, we can look inward and challenge our own status quo. This is what contemporary Canadian speculative literature does best, and if it continues on its present course, our literary future looks very bright indeed.
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