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.
He created Sanderson's Laws of Magic and popularized the idea of "hard magic" and "soft magic" systems. In 2008, Sanderson started a podcast with author Dan Wells and cartoonist Howard Tayler called Writing Excuses, involving topics about creating genre writing and webcomics. In 2016, the American media company DMG Entertainment licensed the movie rights to Sanderson's entire Cosmere universe, but the rights have since reverted back to Sanderson. Sanderson's March 2022 Kickstarter campaign became the most successful in history, finishing with 185,341 backers pledging $41,754,153. (Full article...)
The Turn of the Screw (also known as Ghost Story: The Turn of the Screw) is a British television film based on Henry James's 1898 ghost story of the same name. Commissioned and produced by the BBC, it was first broadcast on 30 December 2009, on BBC One. The novella was adapted for the screen by Sandy Welch, and the film was directed by Tim Fywell. Although generally true to the tone and story of James's work, the film is set in the 1920s—in contrast to the original 1840s setting—and accentuates sexual elements that some theorists have identified in the novella. The film's story is told in flashbacks during consultations between the institutionalised Ann (Michelle Dockery) and Dr Fisher (Dan Stevens). Ann tells how she was hired by an aristocrat (Mark Umbers) to care for the orphans Miles (Josef Lindsay) and Flora (Eva Sayer). She is met at the children's home, Bly, by Mrs Grose (Sue Johnston), the housekeeper. Ann soon begins to see unknown figures around the manor, and seeks an explanation.
Critics were divided in their reviews of The Turn of the Screw. The acting and tone of the production were generally praised, but the plot's divergences from the original story were less well received. A particular disagreement concerned the film's horrific elements; some critics considered it to be genuinely scary, while others suggested that the horror was not fully effective. The original story has been much analysed owing to its ambiguity, and critics disagreed about the extent to which the film succeeded in portraying this trait. Academic analyses found the film considerably less ambiguous than the novella. The Turn of the Screw was released on DVD on 1 March 2010 in the UK and on 28 April 2015 in North America. (Full article...)
Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, a painting by Ilya Repin depicting Sadko, a Russian folk hero of a bylina of the same name, though this painting depicts only one specific version of that tale. In this version, the Sea King wants Sadko to marry one of the many underwater beauties (daughters). However, if he chooses one of them he will remain under the sea forever. Instead he is supposed to pick an unremarkable servant girl -- pictured in the upper left hand side -- who will magically help him return to Novgorod and his human wife there. The story inspired both an opera and musical tableau. (POTD)
Doc Savage was an American pulp magazine that was published from 1933 to 1949 by Street & Smith. It was launched as a follow-up to the success of The Shadow, a magazine Street & Smith had started in 1931, based around a single character. Doc Savage's lead character, Clark Savage, was a scientist and adventurer, rather than purely a detective. Lester Dent was hired to write the lead novels, almost all of which were published under the house name "Kenneth Robeson". A few dozen novels were ghost-written by other writers, hired either by Dent or by Street & Smith. The magazine was successful, but was shut down in 1949 as part of Street & Smith's decision to abandon the pulp magazine field completely.
Dent's work was full of inventive ideas, and ranged across multiple genres. Science fictional gadgets were common, but there were also detective novels, westerns, fantasies, and straightforward adventures. Dent worked with Henry Ralston and (until 1943) John Nanovic, two editors at Street & Smith, to plot the novels, though in a few cases ghost-writers were given leeway to create their own plots without Dent's involvement. Early covers were painted by Walter Baumhofer; when Baumhofer left Street & Smith in 1936 he was replaced by R. G. Harris and then by Emery Clarke. (Full article...)
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