In literary theory and aesthetics , authorial intent refers to an author 's intent as it is encoded in their work . Authorial intentionalism is the hermeneutical view that an author's intentions should constrain the ways in which a text is properly interpreted. Opponents, who dispute its hermeneutical importance, have labelled this position the intentional fallacy and count it among the informal fallacies .
70-723: Speculative fiction is an umbrella genre of fiction that encompasses all the subgenres that depart from realism , or strictly imitating everyday reality, instead presenting fantastical, supernatural , futuristic , or other imaginative realms. This catch-all genre includes, but is not limited to, science fiction , fantasy , horror , slipstream , magical realism , superhero fiction , alternate history , utopia and dystopia , fairy tales , steampunk , cyberpunk , weird fiction , and some apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction . The term has been used for works of literature , film , television , drama , video games , radio , and their hybrids. The umbrella genre of speculative fiction
140-534: A "no Martians " type of science fiction, "about things that really could happen." Speculative fiction is also used as a genre term that combines different ones into a single narrative or fictional world such as "science fiction, horror, fantasy...[and]...mystery". The Internet Speculative Fiction Database contains a broad list of different subtypes. According to publisher statistics, men outnumber women about two to one among English-language speculative fiction writers aiming for professional publication. However,
210-476: A betrothed couple say "I do" they are not merely reporting their internal states of mind, they are performing an action — namely, to get married. The intended force of "I do" in such a circumstance can only be comprehended by an observer when he understands the meaning and complexity of the social activity of marriage. Thus, according to the Cambridge School, to understand a text, a reader must understand
280-420: A broad category of actions. For example, verbs such as stare , gaze , view and peer can also be considered hyponyms of the verb look , which is their hypernym. The meaning relation between hyponyms and hypernyms applies to lexical items of the same word class (that is, part of speech) , and holds between senses rather than words. For instance, the word screwdriver used in the previous example refers to
350-446: A completely imaginary way or been followed by major new events that are completely imaginary (the genre of alternative history ). Or, it depicts impossible technology or technology that defies current scientific understandings or capabilities (the genre of science fiction ). Contrarily, realistic fiction involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is, in fact, real and whose events could believably happen in
420-523: A dog, it's a bitch" ("That hypernym Z isn't a hyponym Z, it's a hyponym Y"). The term "autohyponym" was coined by linguist Laurence R. Horn in a 1984 paper, Ambiguity, negation, and the London School of Parsimony. Linguist Ruth Kempson had already observed that if there are hyponyms for one part of a set but not another, the hypernym can complement the existing hyponym by being used for the remaining part. For example, fingers describe all digits on
490-405: A final signified, to close the writing." For Barthes, and other post-structuralists like Jacques Derrida , the author's intentions were unknowable and irrelevant to the constantly shifting interpretations produced by readers. New Criticism , as espoused by Cleanth Brooks , W. K. Wimsatt, T. S. Eliot , and others, argued that authorial intent is irrelevant to understanding a work of literature;
560-510: A genre term has often been attributed to Robert A. Heinlein , who first used the term in an editorial in The Saturday Evening Post , 8 February 1947. In the article, Heinlein used "Speculative Fiction" as a synonym for "science fiction"; in a later piece, he explicitly stated that his use of the term did not include fantasy. However, though Heinlein may have come up with the term on his own, there are earlier citations:
630-412: A hand, but the existence of the word thumb for the first finger means that fingers can also be used for "non-thumb digits on a hand". Autohyponymy is also called "vertical polysemy ". Horn called this "licensed polysemy ", but found that autohyponyms also formed even when there is no other hyponym. Yankee is autohyponymous because it is a hyponym (native of New England) and its hypernym (native of
700-421: A hypothetical reading is warranted and reasonable, it is valid regardless of the actual truth of the author's intent. Terry Barrett espouses a somewhat similar concept when he says that, "the meaning of a work of art is not limited to the meaning the artist had in mind when making the work; it can mean more or less or something different than the artist intended the work to mean." Barrett states that to rely on
770-514: A limitation of science fiction: the need for the story to hold to scientific principles. They argue that "speculative fiction" better defines an expanded, open, imaginative type of fiction than does "genre fiction", and the categories of "fantasy", "mystery", "horror" and "science fiction". Harlan Ellison used the term to avoid being pigeonholed as a science fiction writer. Ellison, a fervent proponent of writers embracing more literary and modernist directions, broke out of genre conventions to push
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#1732780933003840-498: A more general word than its hyponym, the relation is used in semantic compression by generalization to reduce a level of specialization . The notion of hyponymy is particularly relevant to language translation , as hyponyms are very common across languages. For example, in Japanese the word for older brother is ani ( 兄 ) , and the word for younger brother is otōto ( 弟 ) . An English-to-Japanese translator presented with
910-458: A phrase containing the English word brother would have to choose which Japanese word equivalent to use. This would be difficult, because abstract information (such as the speakers' relative ages) is often not available during machine translation . Authorial intent There are in fact two types of Intentionalism: Actual Intentionalism and Hypothetical Intentionalism. Actual Intentionalism
980-603: A piece in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine in 1889 used the term in reference to Edward Bellamy 's Looking Backward : 2000–1887 and other works; and one in the May 1900 issue of The Bookman said that John Uri Lloyd 's Etidorhpa , The End of the Earth had "created a great deal of discussion among people interested in speculative fiction". A variation on this term is "speculative literature". The use of "speculative fiction" in
1050-406: A text was intended and received. While not dismissing the role of authorial intent, the Cambridge School heavily emphasizes examining how the text interacted with — and responded to — its particular contextual situation. The Cambridge School believes that meaning emerges from scrutinizing the complex interplay between the words on the page and the contextual factors surrounding its creation. One of
1120-478: A text was interacting with at the time of its creation; from there, the author's intent may be inferred and understood. Mark Bevir, while praising some aspects of the Cambridge School, criticizes it for taking the importance of context too far. He acknowledges context as highly useful and a good heuristic maxim, but not as strictly necessary for understanding a text. Intentionalism is opposed by various schools of literary theory that may generally be grouped under
1190-562: A text, the author must have intended the reader to imagine that content. The reader recognizes this authorial intention and uses it as a constraint on what is properly imagined from the text. Weak intentionalism (also called moderate intentionalism ) takes a more moderate stance and incorporates some insights from reader-response; it acknowledges the importance of authorial intent while also allowing for meanings derived from readers' interpretations. As articulated by Mark Bevir in The Logic of
1260-401: A work's meaning — to comprehend a work, a reader must understand what it is that the author is trying to communicate to his audience. This position does however acknowledge that such can only apply when what the author intends to convey can actually be conveyed by the language that he uses. If an author uses words that cannot, by any reasonable interpretation, possibly mean what he intends, then
1330-615: Is "An X is a kind/type of Y". The second relation is said to be more discriminating and can be classified more specifically under the concept of taxonomy. If the hypernym Z consists of hyponyms X and Y, then X and Y are identified as co-hyponyms (cohyponyms), also known as coordinate terms. Co-hyponyms are labelled as such when separate hyponyms share the same hypernym but are not hyponyms of one another, unless they happen to be synonymous. For example, screwdriver , scissors , knife , and hammer are all co-hyponyms of one another and hyponyms of tool , but not hyponyms of one another: *"A hammer
1400-441: Is "type of", whereas "instance of" is differentiable. For example, for the noun city , a hyponym (naming a type of city) is capital city or capital , whereas Paris and London are instances of a city, not types of city. In linguistics , semantics , general semantics , and ontologies , hyponymy (from Ancient Greek ὑπό ( hupó ) 'under' and ὄνυμα ( ónuma ) 'name') shows
1470-400: Is a hyponym of color . A word can be both a hypernym and a hyponym: for example purple is a hyponym of color but itself is a hypernym of the broad spectrum of shades of purple between the range of crimson and violet . The hierarchical structure of semantic fields can be seen in hyponymy. They could be observed from top to bottom, where the higher level is more general and the lower level
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#17327809330031540-431: Is a type of knife " is false. Co-hyponyms are often but not always related to one another by the relation of incompatibility. For example, apple , peach and plum are co-hyponyms of fruit . However, an apple is not a peach , which is also not a plum . Thus, they are incompatible. Nevertheless, co-hyponyms are not necessarily incompatible in all senses . A queen and mother are both hyponyms of woman but there
1610-516: Is autohyponymous because "smell" can also mean "to emit a bad smell", even though there is no "to emit a smell that isn't bad" hyponym. Hyperonym and hypernym mean the same thing, with both in use by linguists. The form hypernym interprets the -o- of hyponym as a part of hypo , such as in hypertension and hypotension . However, etymologically the -o- is part of the Greek stem ónoma . In other combinations with this stem, e.g. synonym , it
1680-474: Is characterized by a lesser degree of adherence to realistic or plausible individuals, events, or places, while the umbrella genres of realistic fiction or literary realism are characterized by a greater degree of adherence. For instance, speculative fiction may depict an entirely imaginary universe or one in which the laws of nature do not strictly apply (often, the sub-genre of fantasy ). Or, it depicts true historical moments, except that they have concluded in
1750-420: Is determined by textual and also cultural constraints. Reader-response critics view authorial intent in various ways. In general, they have argued that the author's intent itself is immaterial and cannot be fully recovered. However, the author's intent will shape the text and limit the possible interpretations of a work. The reader's impression of the author's intent is a working force in interpretation, but
1820-453: Is given up. In post-structuralism , there are a variety of approaches to authorial intent. For some of the theorists deriving from Jacques Lacan , and in particular theories variously called écriture féminine , gender and sex predetermine the ways that texts will emerge, and the language of textuality itself will present an argument that is potentially counter to the author's conscious intent. Hypothetical intentionalism, in contrast to
1890-400: Is more specific. For example, living things will be the highest level followed by plants and animals , and the lowest level may comprise dog , cat and wolf . Under the relations of hyponymy and incompatibility, taxonomic hierarchical structures too can be formed. It consists of two relations; the first one being exemplified in "An X is a Y" (simple hyponymy) while the second relation
1960-412: Is never elided. Therefore, hyperonym is etymologically more faithful than hypernym . Hyperonymy is used, for instance, by John Lyons, who does not mention hypernymy and prefers superordination . The nominalization hyperonymy is rarely used, because the neutral term to refer to the relationship is hyponymy . Computer science often terms this relationship an " is-a " relationship. For example,
2030-416: Is nothing preventing the queen from being a mother . This shows that compatibility may be relevant. A word is an autohyponym if it is used for both a hypernym and its hyponym: it has a stricter sense that is entirely a subset of a broader sense. For example, the word dog describes both the species Canis familiaris and male individuals of Canis familiaris , so it is possible to say "That dog isn't
2100-528: Is sometimes abbreviated "spec-fic", "spec fic", "specfic", "S-F", "SF", or "sf". The last three abbreviations, however, are ambiguous as they have long been used to refer to science fiction (which lies within this general range of literature). It is sometimes also known as "the fantastic" or as fantastika , the latter term attributed to John Clute who coined it in 2007 after the term for the genre in some Slavic languages . The term has been used by some critics and writers dissatisfied with what they consider to be
2170-535: Is suspected to have displeased his contemporary audiences, as his portrayal of Phaedra was seen as too lusty . In historiography , what is now called "speculative fiction" has previously been termed "historical invention", "historical fiction", and other similar names. These terms have been extensively noted in literary criticism of the works of William Shakespeare , such as when he co-locates Athenian Duke Theseus , Amazonian Queen Hippolyta , English fairy Puck , and Roman god Cupid across time and space in
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2240-400: Is the standard intentionalist view that the meaning of a work is dependent on authorial intent. Hypothetical Intentionalism is a more recent view; it views the meaning of a work as being what an ideal reader would hypothesize the writer's intent to have been — for hypothetical intentionalism, it is ultimately the hypothesis of the reader, not the truth, that matters. Extreme intentionalism,
2310-462: The Fairyland of the fictional Merovingian Germanic sovereign Oberon , in A Midsummer Night's Dream . In mythography the concept of speculative fiction has been termed "mythopoesis", or mythopoeia . This practice involves the creative design and generation of lore and mythology for works of fiction. The term's definition comes from its use by J. R. R. Tolkien , whose novel, The Lord of
2380-431: The documents for traces of authorial intention. On one hand, it can be argued that the author always intends whatever the author writes and that at different points in time the same author might have very different intentions. On the other hand, an author may in some cases write something he or she did not intend. For example, an intentionalist would consider for emendation the following cases: In cases such as these where
2450-408: The screwdriver tool , and not to the screwdriver drink . Hypernymy and hyponymy are converse relations . If X is a kind of Y, then X is a hyponym of Y and Y is a hypernym of X. Hyponymy is a transitive relation : if X is a hyponym of Y, and Y is a hyponym of Z, then X is a hyponym of Z. For example, violet is a hyponym of purple and purple is a hyponym of color ; therefore violet
2520-478: The semantic relations between a generic term (hypernym) and a more specific term (hyponym). The hypernym is also called a supertype, umbrella term, or blanket term. The hyponym names a subtype of the hypernym. The semantic field of the hyponym is included within that of the hypernym. For example, pigeon , crow , and hen are all hyponyms of bird and animal ; bird and animal are both hypernyms of pigeon, crow, and hen . A core concept of hyponymy
2590-503: The social contexts of the stories they portray, are now known. For example, the ancient Greek dramatist, Euripides , ( c. 480 – c. 406 BCE ) whose play Medea seems to have offended Athenian audiences when he speculated that the titular shamaness Medea killed her own children, as opposed to their being killed by other Corinthians after her departure. Additionally, Euripides' play, Hippolytus , narratively introduced by Aphrodite , Goddess of Love in person,
2660-587: The Bowers-Tanselle school of thought. Their editions have as one of their most important goals the recovery of the author's intentions (generally final intentions). When preparing a work for the press, an editor working along the principles outlined by Fredson Bowers and G. Thomas Tanselle will attempt to construct a text that is close to the author's final intentions. For transcription and typesetting, authorial intentionality can be considered paramount. An intentionalist editor would constantly investigate
2730-428: The Cambridge School's distinguishing ideas is the concept of " speech acts ". Drawing on the philosophy of language, particularly the work of J.L. Austin and John Searle , the Cambridge School argues that language not only communicates information but also performs actions. For instance: when a politician declares war, he is not merely stating a fact, he is also performing an action through his speech. Similarly, when
2800-487: The History of Ideas (1999), weak intentionalists see meanings as necessarily intentional, but the relevant intentions can come from either authors or readers. Bevir argues that texts do not contain intrinsic meanings separable from the minds interpreting them. Meaning arises from the intentions of the person engaging with the text — whether that is the author producing it or a reader consuming it. However, Bevir privileges
2870-590: The Rings , demonstrates a clear application of this process. Themes common in mythopoeia, such as the supernatural , alternate history and sexuality , continue to be explored in works produced within the modern speculative fiction genre. The creation of speculative fiction in its general sense of hypothetical history, explanation, or ahistorical storytelling , has also been attributed to authors in ostensibly non-fiction modes since as early as Herodotus of Halicarnassus (fl. 5th century BCE), for his Histories , and
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2940-463: The United States), even though there is no other hyponym of Yankee (as native of the United States) that means "not a native of New England". Similarly, the verb to drink (a beverage) is a hypernym for to drink (an alcoholic beverage). In some cases, autohyponyms duplicate existing, distinct hyponyms. The hypernym "smell" (to emit any smell) has a hyponym "stink" (to emit a bad smell), but
3010-437: The above anti-intentionalist approaches, attempts to account for the criticisms of actual intentionalism and then draw a moderated middle path between actual intentionalism and anti-intentionalism. It is an interpretive strategy that navigates between assuming a writer's actual intent and disregarding intent altogether, focusing instead on the best hypothesis of intent as understood by a qualified audience. This approach prioritizes
3080-482: The artist's intent for an interpretation of an artwork is to put oneself in a passive role as a viewer. Reliance on the artists’ intent unwisely removes the responsibility of interpretation from the viewer; it also robs the viewer of the joy of interpretive thinking and the rewards of the new insights it yields into the art and the world. Authorial intention is of great practical concern to some textual critics . These are known as intentionalists and are identified with
3150-399: The author's actual intent is not. Some critics in this school believe that reader-response is a transaction and that there is some form of negotiation going on between authorial intent and reader's response. According to Michael Smith and Peter Rabinowitz, this approach is not simply about the question “What does this mean to me?” because if that were the case, the power of the text to transform
3220-427: The author's desires or life are secondary. Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that even details about the work's composition or the author's intended meaning and purpose that might be found in other documents such as journals or letters are "private or idiosyncratic; not a part of the work as a linguistic fact" and are thus secondary to the trained reader's rigorous engagement with the text itself. Wimsatt and Beardsley divide
3290-583: The author's intentions as the starting point for interpretation, which then opens up a space for negotiating meanings with readers' perspectives. Other proponents of weak intentionalism include P.D. Juhl in Interpretation: An Essay in the Philosophy of Literary Criticism (1980). Juhl contends that while authorial intentions provide the central guiding principle, interpretations can legitimately go beyond those original intentions based on
3360-631: The author's meaning — but what the author intended is still the meaning of the text he wrote. Hirsch further addresses the related claim that authors may have unconscious meanings come out in their creative processes by using various arguments to assert that such subconscious processes are still part of the author, and so part of the author's intent and meaning, for "How can an author mean something he did not mean?" Kathleen Stock's book Only Imagine: Fiction, Interpretation, and Imagination (2017) takes an extreme intentionalist stance specific to fictional works. She argues that for fictional content to exist in
3430-410: The author's other writings, biographical information, and the historical/cultural context to discern the author's intentions. Hirsch notes a fundamental distinction between the meaning of a text, which does not change over time, and the significance of the text, which does change over time. Extreme intentionalism holds that authorial intention is the only way to determine the true meaning even in
3500-400: The authorial intent "leads away from the poem." According to Wimsatt and Beardsley, a poem does not belong to its author but rather "is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it. The poem belongs to the public." Reader-response rejects New Criticism's attempt to find an objective meaning via the text itself; instead, it denies
3570-511: The boundaries of speculative fiction. The term suppositional fiction is sometimes used as a sub-category designating fiction in which characters and stories are constrained by an internally consistent world, but not necessarily one defined by any particular genre. Speculative fiction as a category ranges from ancient works to paradigm-changing and neotraditional works of the 21st century. Characteristics of speculative fiction have been recognized in older works whose authors' intentions , or in
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#17327809330033640-499: The classic and most substantial form of intentionalism, holds that the meaning of a text is determined solely by the author's intent when he creates that work. As C.S. Lewis wrote in his book An Experiment in Criticism , "The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way." Lewis directed readers to sit at the feet of the author and submit to his authority to understand
3710-451: The context of the real world. One realistic fiction sub-genre is historical fiction , centered around true major events and time periods in the past. The attempt to make stories feel faithful to reality or to more objectively describe details, and the 19th-century artistic movement that began to vigorously promote this approach, is called "literary realism", which incorporates some works of both fiction and non-fiction. "Speculative fiction"
3780-464: The evidence used in making interpretations of poetry (although their analysis can be applied equally well to any type of art) into three categories: Thus, a text's internal evidence — the words themselves and their meanings — is open for literary analysis. External evidence — anything not contained within the text itself, such as statements made by the poet about the poem that is being interpreted — does not belong to literary criticism. Preoccupation with
3850-410: The face of claims that "the author often does not know what he means". Hirsch answers said objection by distinguishing authorial intent from subject matter . Hirsch argues that when a reader claims to understand an author's meaning better than the author himself, what is really happening is that a reader understands the subject matter better than the author; so the reader might more articulately explain
3920-489: The heading of anti-intentionalism. Anti-intentionalism maintains that a work's meaning is entirely determined by linguistic and literary conventions and rejects the relevance of authorial intent. Anti-intentionalism began with the work of William K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley when they coauthored the seminal paper The Intentional Fallacy in 1946. In it, they argued that once a work was published, it had an objective status; its meanings belonged to, and were governed by,
3990-408: The linguistic and social conventions that would have been operative at the time the text was produced. Since speech-acts are always legible — because they are done by the speech/text itself — the Cambridge School presupposes no knowledge about the author's mental state. For Cambridge School conventionalists, the task is: to, with as much contextual information as possible, establish which conventions
4060-414: The objective meaning is to be found in the pure text itself. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley argue in their essay The Intentional Fallacy that "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art". The author, they argue, cannot be reconstructed from a writing — the text is the primary source of meaning , and any details of
4130-407: The percentages vary considerably by genre, with women outnumbering men in the fields of urban fantasy , paranormal romance and young adult fiction . Academic journals which publish essays on speculative fiction include Extrapolation and Foundation . Speculative fiction may include elements from one or more of the following genres: Umbrella term Hypernymy and hyponymy are
4200-432: The perspective of an intended or ideal audience, which employs public knowledge and context to infer the author's intentions. Hypothetical intentionalism holds that, because the reader's reasonable hypothesis of the authorial intent is paramount, even if new evidence were to come out that revealed a reader's (previously reasonable) hypothesis was factually incorrect, the reader's hypothesis would still be considered correct; if
4270-400: The phrase "Red is-a color" can be used to describe the hyponymic relationship between red and color . Hyponymy is the most frequently encoded relation among synsets used in lexical databases such as WordNet . These semantic relations can also be used to compare semantic similarity by judging the distance between two synsets and to analyse anaphora . As a hypernym can be understood as
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#17327809330034340-401: The reading public. The work existed as a stand-alone object not dependent upon authorial intent. The problem with authorial intent was that it required private knowledge about the author; to know what the author intended, a reader would have to learn contextual knowledge that existed outside of the work. Such outside knowledge might be interesting for historians, but it is irrelevant when judging
4410-652: The relationship between a generic term (hypernym) and a specific instance of it (hyponym). A hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is more specific than its hypernym. The semantic field of a hypernym, also known as a superordinate, is broader than that of a hyponym. An approach to the relationship between hyponyms and hypernyms is to view a hypernym as consisting of hyponyms. This, however, becomes more difficult with abstract words such as imagine , understand and knowledge . While hyponyms are typically used to refer to nouns, it can also be used on other parts of speech. Like nouns, hypernyms in verbs are words that refer to
4480-607: The sense of expressing dissatisfaction with traditional or establishment science fiction was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s by Judith Merril , as well as other writers and editors in connection with the New Wave movement. However, this use of the term fell into disuse around the mid-1970s. In the 2000s, the term came into wider use as a convenient collective term for a set of genres. However, some writers, such as Margaret Atwood , who wrote The Handmaid's Tale , continue to distinguish "speculative fiction" specifically as
4550-447: The stability and accessibility of meaning completely. It rejects ideological approaches to literary texts that attempt to impose a lens through which a text is to be understood. Reader-response argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his own, possibly unique, text-related performance. The approach avoids subjectivity or essentialism in descriptions produced through its recognition that reading
4620-538: The text's public meaning and critics' insights. The Cambridge School of conventionalist hermeneutics, a position most elaborated by Quentin Skinner , might be aligned as somewhat similar to weak intentionalism. Central to Cambridge School conventionalism is the idea that to understand what a text means, one must understand the context in which a text was written; this includes political, social, linguistic, historical, and even economic contexts that would influence how
4690-478: The work for itself. One of the most famous critiques of intentionalism was the 1967 essay The Death of the Author by Roland Barthes . In it, he argued that once a work was published, it became disconnected from the author's intentions and open to perpetual re-interpretation by successive readers across different contexts. He stated: "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with
4760-566: The work is simply random noise and meaningless nonsense. A prominent proponent of this view is E.D. Hirsch , who in his influential book Validity in Interpretation (1967) argues for "the sensible belief that a text means what its author meant". Hirsch contends that the meaning of a text is an ideal entity that exists in the author's mind, and the task of interpretation is to reconstruct and represent that intended meaning as accurately as possible. Hirsch proposes utilizing sources like
4830-406: The world, and responds to it by creating imaginative , inventive , and artistic expressions. Such expressions can contribute to practical societal progress through interpersonal influences, social and cultural movements , scientific research and advances, and the philosophy of science . In its English-language usage in arts and literature since the mid 20th century, "speculative fiction" as
4900-443: Was already both practiced and edited out by early encyclopedic writers like Sima Qian ( c. 145 or 135 BCE–86 BCE), author of Shiji . These examples highlight the caveat that many works, now regarded as intentional or unintentional speculative fiction, long predated the coining of the genre term; its concept, in its broadest sense, captures both a conscious and unconscious aspect of human psychology in making sense of
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