Research Guides: Octavia’s Brood Research Guide: Visionary Fiction + Speculative Fiction

“All organizing is science fiction. Organizers and activists dedicate their lives to creating and envisioning another world, or many other worlds–so what better venue for organizers to explore their work than science fiction stories?” - Walidah Imarisha, Octavia’s Brood, Introduction

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Definitions
Learn More - Visionary Fiction
Learn More - Speculative Fiction
Other Examples in the Flaxman Library + I-Share

Definitions

Visionary fiction writing is a practice we can use to imagine and prepare for the future together to generate the ideas that we want to see more of in the world. [Butler] gives us the practice, and then she gives us case study after case study after case study of our imaginary futures and how we’ll behave.
- adrienne maree brown, Octavia Butler: Visionary Fiction

I really wanted a new term that I felt encapsulated the deep connection between this fantastical art and creation—and the space of organizing in revolution and change....to allow us to imagine different futures and then build them into existence. So, for me, as a Black woman, I think of visionary fiction as absolutely rooted in Blackness. And in the experience of oppressed peoples creating decolonized dreams of the future.
- Walidah Imarisha, “Writing New Worlds” Allied Media Conference 2020 Plenary

Speculative fiction is a literary “super genre,” which encompasses a number of different genres of fiction, each with speculative elements that are based on conjecture and do not exist in the real world. Sometimes called “what-if” books, speculative literature changes the laws of what’s real or possible as we know them in our current society, and then speculates on the outcome.
- What Is Speculative Fiction? Defining and Understanding the Different Genres of Speculative Fiction, Master Class

Learn More

Visionary Fiction

The Goal Of Visionary Fiction Is To Change The World
Walidah Imarisha and Bruno Oliveira | SUR: International Journal on Human Rights vol. 19 (32) | p.165-175 | 2022

Writing New Worlds Allied Media Conference 2020 Plenary
Alexis De Veaux, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Walidah Imarisha | American Studies vol. 60 (3) | p. 83-94 | 2021

What If We Can Change Everything?
James Mumm | Reviews for Radicals [Blog] | April 1, 2024

Speculative Fiction

What is Speculative Fiction?
Mars Girolimon | Southern New Hampshire University | September 21, 2022

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
A community effort to catalog works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

Speculative fiction by writers of color [Wikipedia entry]
This extensive Wikipedia entry provides author names and additional links to myriad resources related to subgenres and specific uses of Speculative Fiction by writers of color beyond what we can include in this guide.

Indigenous Science (Fiction) For The Anthropocene: Ancestral Dystopias And Fantasies Of Climate Change Crises
Kyle P. Whyte | Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, vol. 1 (1-2) | p. 224-242 | 2018

Afrofuturism & Black Speculative Fiction
Research Guide from Emory Libraries with definitions and suggested resources.

The Speculative Literature Foundation - Deep Dives
Video interviews, discussion questions, writing exercises, and other resources for Creative Writers and educators.
Speculative Everything by Anthony Dunne; Fiona Raby How to use design as a tool to create not only things but ideas, to speculate about possible futures. Today designers often focus on making technology easy to use, sexy, and consumable. In Speculative Everything, Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby propose a kind of design that is used as a tool to create not only things but ideas. For them, design is a means of speculating about how things could be--to imagine possible futures. This is not the usual sort of predicting or forecasting, spotting trends and extrapolating; these kinds of predictions have been proven wrong, again and again. Instead, Dunne and Raby pose "what if" questions that are intended to open debate and discussion about the kind of future people want (and do not want). Speculative Everything offers a tour through an emerging cultural landscape of design ideas, ideals, and approaches. Dunne and Raby cite examples from their own design and teaching and from other projects from fine art, design, architecture, cinema, and photography. They also draw on futurology, political theory, the philosophy of technology, and literary fiction. They show us, for example, ideas for a solar kitchen restaurant; a flypaper robotic clock; a menstruation machine; a cloud-seeding truck; a phantom-limb sensation recorder; and devices for food foraging that use the tools of synthetic biology. Dunne and Raby contend that if we speculate more--about everything--reality will become more malleable. The ideas freed by speculative design increase the odds of achieving desirable futures.
Call Number: NK1505 .D865 2013
ISBN: 0262019841
Publication Date: 2013-12-06