Speculative Fiction

Samuel Delaney has stated that when the term ‘speculative fiction’ appeared in the Sixties, it was applied loosely to experimental fiction, often with imagery derived from science fiction and fantasy. Perhaps we’d label that ‘literary science fiction’ these days. But speculative fiction, as a name, varied some in its implications over the years (and pretty much disappeared for a while) before finding its current definition as the broad swath of genres stretching from science fiction to fantasy.

I do see it as such a spectrum. What all the genre and sub-genre within speculative fiction share is a self-standing alternate world, with its own internal rules and logic. That differentiates it from realistic fiction, which follows the rules of our own world, and the surrealistic, which bends those rules of the real world — with little regard for logic — to jar the reader’s perceptions.

‘Magic realism’ is, of course, a form of surrealism (by these definitions) rather than speculative fiction.

Rarely do I refer to any of my work as speculative fiction, though I legitimately could. It can sound pretentious, can’t it? My science fiction is readily identified as such. The fantasy — despite most having rather strict science fiction-like underlying rules — would be regarded as fantasy by most. Those terms are good enough for me.

By the way, horror is sometimes included as a sort of speculative fiction but I don’t consider it a genre at all. I would call it a theme, that can be applied to almost any genre. Monsters are everywhere!

Sundries

 

The picture is of the O.U. Sundry Store in Athens in the late Fifties, before Jim Fry (the protagonist of 'These Remembered Hills') attended Ohio University. In 1960, Campus Sundry Store opened at a new address. He would definitely know and probably shop there when he began classes in ’62. It is entirely likely to show up in a future novel.

Generations of Ohio University students shopped there, before it closed relatively recently. Anything they needed!

This is the last post I'm bringing over from the Hocking Hills blog. But I shall, of course, write more about the area here. 

 

Bobcats

another post brought over from my soon-to-be-defunct These Remembered Hills blog:

Ohio University, in the city of Athens, plays a somewhat central role in ‘These Remembered Hills’ and will continue to do so in any sequels. Athens is some twenty miles down the road from Logan and should be about thirty miles from the Fry Farm. That would depend on the route one chose to drive, though most come to a fairly similar figure.

Jim Fry, who already has completed a couple years of college at Ohio State plus a four year hitch in the navy, chooses to enroll at Ohio University both because it is conveniently close and because of the reputation of its art program. Art is what he has decided to study after leaving the service. Also, an old friend of Jim — or of his late sister — is an instructor there.

The university is spread on relatively low land near the Hocking River and is — or was — known to flood with some regularity. This is alluded to in the novel but we have yet to experience it. That is a definite possibility in a future story.

The art building is at a bit of a remove from the rest of the campus and I have noted this in the novel. Much of the rest of the geography of the university and Athens in general I have fudged a bit — the businesses and such, in particular. It’s fiction, after all. I haven’t been strict about any of the other locales in the novel either, but in general it is all close enough. No blatant rearranging of the scenery!

I might mention that Ohio University has also popped up in other novels in another series, written under a different name. That would be the Women in the Sun books (‘One Summer in the Sun,’ ‘One Christmas in the Sun’) which appeared under the Sienna Santerre pen name. A young athlete, a friend of the protagonists, chooses to attend the college. The university itself, however, does not actually appear as a location in the stories.

So we can expect the university to appear in any sequel to ‘These Remembered Hills’. Maybe the Bobcats football team, too. Jim will definitely be driving to classes in Athens come Fall. He might even take his bike to ride around campus.

Each Awry, a poem

Each Awry

A succession of mirrors, each a tad awry 
from the next, throw their reflections into me.
Memory mixes poorly with passion; love becomes
some stock image we painted on the past, assuring
its existence, telling ourselves its truth once danced
here, along these roads of tomorrow. Have you followed?

Ah, our roads. They find themselves in morning fogs
and fogged mirrors where we seek our faces, forgotten
overnight. I wipe the obscure image away,
hoping to find one more pleasing to the world.
Which do you remember? It will be as true
and as false as all the others, each awry.

Stephen Brooke ©2025 

Cliffs

 

I was curious about what had become of the farm in Ohio’s Hocking Hills where I had done some of my growing up, so I went to Google (knowing the street address — it was just a rural route number back then) and found the street view picture. Very little is left of what was there more than a half-century ago when last I saw the place. Only the same sandstone slabs by the road that underlie everything! The trees have grown up so much that the cliffs on the ridge behind are no longer visible from this roadside angle.

Those cliffs play a starring role in ‘These Remembered Hills.’ Fry Farm in that book is closely based on our ‘Hill Farm,’ including the cliffs and the vultures that nested on them through the summers. I could look out my bedroom window on the back of the old farmhouse (replaced now) and see the rising sun shining on them, the vultures launching when it grew warm enough for updrafts. If one were standing in the road there, the creek would be to ones back, with its own cliff walls. Cold water but a swim was welcome on a hot summer day.

There are quite a few such cliffs around the area. Easy to fall over — or to be pushed from, and so gave me a starting point for my mystery story.

Buckeye Lake

Though it is not in the Hocking Hills area, Buckeye Lake has been a popular vacation spot in central Ohio for a century or more. Originally more a swamp than a lake, dikes and dams were thrown up and it served as a ‘feeder’ for Ohio’s canal system from the early 1800s. As canal use fell off with advance of the railroads, it became a destination for tourists and weekenders around central Ohio—Columbus in particular. The lake lies nearly due east from Columbus.

In the mid-Twentieth Century, the amusement park and dance hall attracted visitors. Many of the best-known big bands of the era played there; my mother went to see some of them in the Thirties. Our whole family would visit the amusement park on occasion in the Fifties. Needless to say, this is a setting I could easily slip into a Hocking Hills story. It is a pretty straight shot up from Logan or Athens.

I remember the big hotel there, which was deteriorating badly when I was a kid. The Catholic church (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) was using it for Sunday school lessons. This was when we lived in Pickerington and drove over for mass. That would have been in the late 50s. I do remember my father (who was not a church-goer) would buy doughnuts at a local bakery. Some would be left by the time we got back to the car! These are just the sort of details from life that can be used in ones fiction, to add that needed touch of realism.

Many weekend cottages lay around Buckeye Lake. Whether those remain, I couldn’t say; I haven’t seen the place in more than half a century. I do know my father took my mother there more than once when he was courting her and when they were newly-weds. I also know they rented one of those cottages briefly when I was a baby. No memories, of course!

I’m posting a picture here of Dad rowing on the lake in 1940, just around the time my parents married, and one of the entry to the amusement park, sometime in the Fifties.

 

Christmas Past

My oldest solid memories are of Christmas 1952. I would have been still four months short of my third birthday. Before then linger a very few disjointed images. But I definitely remember that Christmas, when we had newly moved into our house in the Lake Forest subdivision of Naples. No furniture yet; the tree stood in a bare room and we came over from the motor court where we were staying to open our presents. I remember pushing my new truck around on the unobstructed floors.

Not sure where we ate Christmas dinner. That memory is not with me. Yet it was my ‘first’ Christmas, the first I can remember, the first I was old enough to know something was going on! Now, every Christmas has the increasing potential to be my last. I don’t do much on the day. A little porcelain tree is lit up on my desk. I might or might not have a pizza. Most of the Christmases past have faded — but I remember that one.