Desirina Boskovich

So what exactly is 'Speculative Fiction'?
   A lot of readers find this term confusing, and I can see why. The word 'speculate' suggests conjecture, supposition - trying to understand something from incomplete information. It also hints at predicting the future and in terms of fiction (to me anyway) 'speculative' calls to mind straight-down-the-middle sci-fi, the Arthur C. Clarke kind built around ideas which, though invented, are realistic enough that they could easily come true. In other words, it sounds just like one sub-division of science fiction. The way it's actually used, though, is pretty much the opposite: as an umbrella term for all fantastic literature, within which the whole of sci-fi is itself just one sub-division. Confused? Me too, but we seem to be stuck with it and if you want a better idea of the sort of thing it includes you could do a lot worse than to read It Came From The North.
   I picked this book up as part of a book-bundle promotion - and was left wondering what it was doing among the others, which ranged from boring to dreadful (3-, 2- and even 1-star ratings). ICFTN stood out a mile though; unusually for an anthology, I liked every story and several of them just left me spellbound. The best recommendation I can give it is that, never having read any Finnish authors before, I still thoroughly enjoyed it despite probably missing references to Finnish culture and mythology left, right and centre!
   Here are just a few of them to give you some idea:

- "Hairball": bizarro (yuk! I defy you not to laugh and retch at the same time!)
- "The Horseshoe Nail": a gentle fantasy in which two worlds come face to face.
- "Not Before Sundown": ever wondered what trolls (the Scandinavian kind, not the Goodreads variety) are really like? Well here you get a full zoological description.
- "White Threads": pure sci-fi (or psy-fi); what if your mind could manipulate reality at the quantum level?
- "Chronicles Of A State": disaster at a fusion plant threatens to engulf a totalitarian dystopia.
- "Watcher": the most surreal of the fifteen - and my favourite.
- "The Garden": genuinely creepy horticultural horror.
- "Those Were The Days": the human aftermath of an accident at the Time Research Institute.… (más)

Some interesting morsels are set in the matrix. This retrospective is divided by medium - books, movies, architecture, art and design, music, fashion, fandom/pop culture. Books and movies contain much more of lost works than the other areas, where, with the exception of games, it seems assumed that SFF aspects of the culture are created lost. I grew a bit tired of the main author's voice and her citing of her co-author. Also, the blatantly heterosexual fiction by women writers of the late-mid 20th century who have faded away don't rate any mention.… (más)