Speculative Fiction is an umbrella genre that can cover horror, fantasy, science fiction, alternative history, dystopia, apocalypse, and post apocalypse, among others. The purpose is to reframe how we think of something, the human experience or the world we live in.

But I diverge from how many tend to see it. Spec-fic isn't merely any unreal story, but an actual examination of something through story. If the purpose is only escapism, nothing wrong with that, then I submit that is instead a different umbrella of Escapist Fiction. Spec-fic alternatively works the same as philosophy allegories. The trolley problems or the myth of Sisyphus, for example, look at a possible scenario, though highly implausible, to examine how human morality and ethics intersect with human emotions. This is story aiming at some idea or analysis of the human experience, toying out previously unseen elements.

What if we had a power to make objects explode with our mind, how would that change the economy, environment, or religious atmosphere we inhabit? What would mind reading do to the mind reader?

Good examples go all the way back to Plato's dialogue with Glaucon on The Ring of Gyges, about the power to invisibility altering behavior because people can get away with it. More recently, Phillip K Dick's Bladerunner/When I Dream of Electric Sheep examines the thin and porous boundary between human and machine. Jordan Peele's horror films about being black in America. Harry Potter about racial purity. Handmaid's Tale about mistreating women. Dr. Seuss, Octavia Butler, Mary Shelley, Orson Scott Card, etc etc all do this. Some of these can have poorly crafted moral insights, of course, as Lovecraft's use of alien species to symbolize his xenophobia. But fortunately we have modern interpretations to weed out those elements and focus on the bigger and more impressive theme of a finite species in an incomprehensible universe.

In a sense any imaginative story can do this. Watching Luke, Han, and Leia navigate the Star Wars universe exposes one to all these different intelligent species. You come appreciate that people are different, the variety is its own beauty. Arrival (Story of Your Life by Chiang) handles it even better, imho, adding more realistic language, physical, and cultural barriers. In all cases, we put aside our own socio-political and cultural religions and enter a similar scenario emotionally fresh and ready for a new take. I hope we continue to read and write these empowering, thought provoking stories that in turn write us new perspectives.