Speculative Insight
One of the things that irritates me about the world is that non-fiction is valued much less highly than fiction. I could see this when I was editing non-fiction for Clarkesworld. It was clear from the reader surveys that a lot of the readers didn’t bother with the content I was acquiring. They just read the fiction. And when I tried running Salon Futura as a paying venue for non-fiction, it quickly became obvious that most SF&F readers were not willing to pay for a non-fiction magazine. You can see the same thing in the wider book-publishing world too. Academics are generally expected to write for free, despite the fact that the books they write are sold for ridiculous amounts. And public historians are moving more and more into what is called “creative non-fiction”. Meanwhile garbage like Ancient Apocalypse gets made for Netflix while actual archaeologists can’t get a look-in.
Human beings love stories, and there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about that.
However, one brave person is once again trying to create a paying online venue for SF&F non-fiction. Thank you, Alex Pierce and Speculative Insight.
Alex is financing the site in a number of ways. While some of the content is free, other essays are behind a paywall. In addition, you can now buy a collected edition of January-June 2024 content as either an ebook or paperback. Alex also had books available at Worldcon, and they seemed to be going well.
Obviously I am a bit biased here, because an essay of mine was the first thing that Speculative Insight published, but there has been lots of other content since then. For Terry Pratchett fans, Tansy Rayner Roberts has a series of essays about the male supporting characters in the Witches books. Tansy is always good value on feminist issues. There’s also an essay on Flemish folklore, which is something very new to me.
On the science fiction side of things, there are essays about Murderbot, Diversity in Star Trek, the future of Solarpunk, and the type of spaceships that are likely to exist, assuming that inter-stellar travel was possible. And much more.
If you already have a subscription, there’s a lure for you to buy the book as well in the form of a bonus essay from Lisa L Hannett. This looks at themes of childbirth and parenting in science fiction, contrasting them with Lisa’s own experience of a rather challenging birth. I suspect that it qualifies as creative non-fiction, but it is rather good (albeit with trigger warnings for anyone contemplating pregnancy for the first time).
As far as I can see, the books are only available from the Speculative Insight website. And as Alex is based in Australia it would make sense for most of us to get the ebook. I do hope it sells well. I want to see people writing good non-fiction about SF&F, and it won’t happen unless there is some means of people getting paid for it.