I’ve been a fan of Neil Gaiman for some time, I really like his poetic style, his keen insight into people, and the sheer weirdness of his imagination. Plus all his kind words and encouragement for new and aspiring writers – his gives good advice, as well as general encouragement. What made me like him even more was an article I came across today on BrainPickings.org, discussing Gaiman’s recent non-fiction book The View from the Cheap Seats.

In particular, I liked his taxonomy of the three questions or phrases of speculative fiction (which includes both science fiction and fantasy, as well as other types of speculative fiction). The questions are: What if…?, If only… and If this goes on…

It’s those three that frame speculative fiction’s musings about possibilities. And that, as Gaiman points out, is what it so important about speculative fiction; it opens up thought and discussion and questions about other possibilities, and how things might be, other than how they are now.

Though I know I’m not in Gaiman’s league (at least not yet…) but this article made me think “Yes! That’s why I write speculative fiction!” and made me proud to think of myself in at least the same category as Gaiman, as a fellow speculative fiction writer. Gaiman’s book was on my list of books I was planning to read, but now I think it’s gone to the top of the list.

(If you want to read the Brain Pickings article, you can find it here)