Speculative Insight journal

Purple background, white text, which says If the foundational question of Indian feminist SF was about power - who has it, who wields it - the question that has obsessed the genre since the 1990s is about bodies. Whose body is it? Who controls what happens to it? "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

This two-part essay from Amritesh Mukherjee is a powerful examination of the themes and preoccupations of Indian feminist science fiction: power, caste, bodies...

The first part is out now - free to read - and the second will be out in June.
www.speculativeinsight.com

Which is why, @nytimes.com, learning that a piece of writing is AI changes how people feel about it, in the same way that most people are repulsed by learning a once-favoured artist is a rapist: because context is inherent to interpreting art, and the sole context of genAI is profound contempt.

We call AI output slop not because it's incapable of regurgitating something beautiful, but because vomiting up chunks of mixed restaurant meals is not the same as being a chef. That some of the upchuck can still be parsed as it was on the plate is not thanks to digestion or emesis, but to cooking.

Purple background, white text, which says If the foundational question of Indian feminist SF was about power - who has it, who wields it - the question that has obsessed the genre since the 1990s is about bodies. Whose body is it? Who controls what happens to it? "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

This two-part essay from Amritesh Mukherjee is a powerful examination of the themes and preoccupations of Indian feminist science fiction: power, caste, bodies...

The first part is out now - free to read - and the second will be out in June.
www.speculativeinsight.com

Interzone is always great, & I particularly enjoyed County Colours, which takes an unexpected idea & runs with it to fascinating places. Well worth a read.

😂

I cannot hear someone say Frankenstein without hearing “FronkenSHTEEN!” and I haven’t seen that film in like 25 years.

Purple background, white text, which says This essay and its sequel trace 120 years... of how women have wielded science fiction to dismantle patriarchy, caste hierarchy, colonial legacies, and capitalist exploitation, often simultaneously, and how they've asked the questions that needed to be asked. "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

Amritesh Mukherjee's two-part history of Indian science fiction makes sharp observations about the themes covered in that fiction, and what impact it can have. Warning: you're likely to come away with a significant reading list...

Read it now for free! www.speculativeinsight.com

Not at the moment, I’m afraid. I expect to open to pitches in the middle of the year. Follow here or subscribe to the newsletter to know exactly when.

Hope you find some essays you enjoy!

Purple background, white text, which says This essay and its sequel trace 120 years... of how women have wielded science fiction to dismantle patriarchy, caste hierarchy, colonial legacies, and capitalist exploitation, often simultaneously, and how they've asked the questions that needed to be asked. "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

Amritesh Mukherjee's two-part history of Indian science fiction makes sharp observations about the themes covered in that fiction, and what impact it can have. Warning: you're likely to come away with a significant reading list...

Read it now for free! www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text, which says You see, imagining alternatives to oppression isn't escapism. Power structures, after all, are human constructions. When humans can build, they can also rebuild. "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

Amritesh Mukherjee makes a powerful argument about what Indian feminist science fiction is doing, and how it - sometimes , anyway - imagines a better future...

Read now! Free! www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text, which says You see, imagining alternatives to oppression isn't escapism. Power structures, after all, are human constructions. When humans can build, they can also rebuild. "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

Amritesh Mukherjee makes a powerful argument about what Indian feminist science fiction is doing, and how it - sometimes , anyway - imagines a better future...

Read now! Free! www.speculativeinsight.com

This delightful trailer from Amritesh Mukherjee gives a great overview of his two-part essay discussion of Indian feminist science fiction. The first part is free to read right now! (The sequel comes out in June.)

www.speculativeinsight.com

The Year’s Best Science Fiction on Earth 3 edited by Allan Kaster: Review by Alexandra Pierce The Year’s Best Science Fiction on Earth 3, Allan Kaster, ed. (Infinivox, 978-1-88461-288-6, 262pp, $19.99 pb). November 2025. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri. Allan Kaster’s third volume of science fic…

Alexandra Pierce reviews THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION ON EARTH 3 edited by Allan Kaster: “Allan Kaster’s third volume of science fiction set on Earth might be the best best-of I’ve read in years”

I am smugly proud of the last line of this review ... :D

This delightful trailer from Amritesh Mukherjee gives a great overview of his two-part essay discussion of Indian feminist science fiction. The first part is free to read right now! (The sequel comes out in June.)

www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text, which says Indian feminist science fiction grapples with female foeticide, caste erasure, honour killings, sex-ratio crises - concerns that emerge from refusing to separate gender from caste, class, environment, geography. "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

In this first of two essays, Amritesh Mukherjee gives an overview of Indian feminist SF - starting in 1905, with _Sultana's Dream_, then jumping to the 1980s, and following several themes over the next three decades...

Read now! It's free ! www.speculativeinsight.com

Purple background, white text, which says Indian feminist science fiction grapples with female foeticide, caste erasure, honour killings, sex-ratio crises - concerns that emerge from refusing to separate gender from caste, class, environment, geography. "Indian Feminist Science Fiction: A History (Part 1)" -- Amritesh Mukherjee

In this first of two essays, Amritesh Mukherjee gives an overview of Indian feminist SF - starting in 1905, with _Sultana's Dream_, then jumping to the 1980s, and following several themes over the next three decades...

Read now! It's free ! www.speculativeinsight.com

ICYMI! (There's a new trailer up, too - for the essay coming on Friday!)

ICYMI

Speculative Insight A journal for exploring the ideas and themes that stand behind, inform, and develop out of, speculative fiction.

It's March! The last two years have brought new (free!) @tansyrr.bsky.social essays!

2025: "Celibacy and the Single Wizzard" (why are Pratchett's wizards meant to be celibate?)
2024: Lancre witches and the men who respect them (mostly), Part One.

Find both here! www.speculativeinsight.com/essays

Speculative Insight A journal for exploring the ideas and themes that stand behind, inform, and develop out of, speculative fiction.

It's March! The last two years have brought new (free!) @tansyrr.bsky.social essays!

2025: "Celibacy and the Single Wizzard" (why are Pratchett's wizards meant to be celibate?)
2024: Lancre witches and the men who respect them (mostly), Part One.

Find both here! www.speculativeinsight.com/essays

Useful info, thanks!

Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity: Finding the Self in Other Black speculative poetry works this way too. It’s text that is flexible and immediate. It’s a safe space to explore Afrocentric text rooted in story, song, dance, rhythm that natural flows from my …

Grateful to see my smol essay on the self and identity, the politics of belonging, is a BSFA Awards finalist. 🥹
Congratulations to all finalists! @strangehorizons.bsky.social , @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social
strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

Prime number! Whoo! 🎂🎉🎉

Purple background, white text, which says In Maskerade and Carpe Jugulum, it is unsettling how many instances we see of men showing open disrespect to witches, or using the tools of diplomacy to pretend they are respectful, while putting the boot in. "Men Who (Dis)respect Witches" -- Tansy Rayner Roberts

... SCREAMING back into the Pratchett's Men series by @tansyrr with the last witches books, in which a series of men disrespect the witches with entirely satisfying repercussions.

Available for subscribers - AUD30/yr! ~GBp15 and USD21!

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There is no such thing as Science Fiction/ Modernism/ English Literature (*delete as appropriate) I was lecturing on Tom Godwin’s ‘The Cold Equations’ this week as part of my Genre Fictions module. During the first 6 weeks of the module, we read a couple of short stories a week ranging from the…

As we're talking about genre and litfic, it seems like a timely moment to repost this piece from four years ago.

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Hey #Hugo voters, just to let you know that Speculative Insight is eligible (AFAICT) for both Related Work - because we put out a whole-year compilation - AND in Semiprozine, because we pay our authors!

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