What is the difference in emphasis between the terms science fiction and speculative fiction? Which is The Man in the High Castle?

Science fiction definition: Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.

Speculative fiction definition: The term speculative fiction refers to any fiction story that includes elements, settings and characters whose features are created out of human imagination and speculation rather than based on attested reality and everyday life.

As Annie Neugebauer has said – So what is speculative fiction? The quick and easy answer is fantasy, science fiction and horror. 

If we look to the root of the word speculative the key is speculate.  According to Neugebauer (2014) she believes Speculative fiction is fiction in which the author speculates upon the results of changing what’s real or possible, not how a character would react to a certain event.  Speculative fiction is mostly considered as a different kind of science fiction that has more philosophical lines and difficult themes in the setting of its world.

Phillip K. Dick along with other science fiction writers felt unfairly ghettoised by the science fiction label. Science fiction has a more complex and ambiguous relationship to mainstream literature.

“Dick suggests that the world presented in The Man in The High Castle is but an illusion, that other, better worlds might exist.” (Brown, E.)  Although science fiction could be real, it is often build on exploration – carrying present trends to their logical conclusions. Another reviewer Ted Gioia has also said “Reality blurs within the story and the distinction between the story and outside reality – as manifested in Dick’s personal life – also grows fuzzy.” Therefore proving that Dick had a high ability of exploration but yet somewhere along the line he has engrossed himself within The Man In The High Castle and confused it with his real life. 

“The book betrays it genre at every turn.” (Gioia, T.) The writing is covered in pulp fiction material, and the language in Dick’s writing is far from resembling his other writings. Eric Brown states that in the examination of The Main In The High Castle has conflicting ideas of totalitarianism and eastern philosophy. He believes that The Main in the High Castle is perhaps Dick’s finest book, and one of the very best science fiction novels ever published.

I believe that Man In the high castle can be both speculative and science fiction. Although it slightly leans further towards the speculative fiction genre, because of the way Dick has speculated more on the plot of the story than his characters as he created a world around alternate history that is severely different to the world we live in today. “The defining line between fiction and speculative fiction is not so much scale as it is ‘what’s possible’ in reality. “ (Neugebauer, A.) 

References:

Annieneugebauer.com,. (2014). What Is Speculative Fiction? | Annie Neugebauer. Retrieved 2 October 2015, from http://annieneugebauer.com/2014/03/24/what-is-speculative-fiction/

Eric, B. (2001). Introduction. In Dick, P.K., The Man in the High Castle (p. x, xii). London: Penguin.

Gioia, T. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. Conceptualfiction.com. Retrieved 2 October 2015, from http://conceptualfiction.com/the_man_in_the_high_castle.html