Dazzlingly illustrated by Dave McKean, Phoenix is neither dystopian nor speculative science fiction; it is, rather, an epic space quest.
What is the humanitarian and moral price of raising the cost of energy for developing nations based on speculative science?
In my mind, speculative science marks a path to the future, while insights from the path define our humanity.
"I am extremely pleased that cancer immunology is changing from a speculative science into a conventional therapy," he says.
Joao Ribas, curator of MIT's List Visual Arts Center, discusses a recent exhibition that explores art as a speculative science.
But I think this idea that goes by the name of the multiverse, it's speculative science but it is science, not metaphysics.
Set roughly a hundred and twenty-five years in the future, "Avatar" is, like most speculative science fiction, a cautionary tale.
Other times, the appropriate path may be in steps, such as in cases of speculative science or unclear linkages between public concern and environmental impact.
For all his speculative science, his edgy thinking, his novel ends up dramatising, with newsworthy urgency, an age-old problem: why would anyone believe in happy endings?
As with many of the show's mysteries – smoke monsters, large galleons in the middle of the jungle – the answer is a knotty combination of speculative science and spiritualist nonsense.
As Dave Hone says, "speculative science gets a bad rap, but it can be a fun and educational way to break the shackles of science writing and engage with the ideas and possibilities beyond Earth".
