Book chapter
Extrapolation and Speculation
The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, pp.23-34
Oxford Handbooks of Literature, Oxford University Press
11/01/2014
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199838844.013.0002
Abstract
Most discussions of the nature of science fiction explore the relationship between “extrapolation” and “speculation,” terms with no fixed meanings, constructed differently by different writers at different times, but both always having something to do with notions of scientific or social plausibility. Most histories and theories of SF valorize one term over the other. This chapter tracks various understandings of these terms as they have evolved—and the relationship between them has changed—over time, as famously defined by Robert A. Heinlein, John W. Campbell Jr., Isaac Asimov, and Judith Merril, and developed by recent critics John Clute, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Roger Luckhurst, and Mark Bould and Sheryl Vint. While some have seen extrapolation and speculation as opposites, others have seen them as sequential stages in an imaginative process, and still others have used the terms interchangeably, the distinctions between them blurred by differing conceptions of plausibility and of science.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Extrapolation and Speculation
- Creators
- Brooks Landon - University of Iowa
- Contributors
- Rob Latham (Editor) - University of California, Riverside
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, pp.23-34
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Series
- Oxford Handbooks of Literature
- DOI
- 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199838844.013.0002
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 11/01/2014
- Academic Unit
- English
- Record Identifier
- 9984398818502771
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