Week 7: Science fiction / Speculative fiction

I don’t read or watch science fiction so I am not familiar at all with what it is but I have looked it up on the internet and this is what I found.

The difference between science and speculative fiction is that science fiction deals with imaginary but more or less plausible content, for example: future settings, futuristic technology and science, parallel universes, paranormal abilities, aliens… where as speculative fiction has a “what if?” condition that can be realistic or not but the rest of the story has to revolve about it in a strict scientific rigour, for example: a story set in the 1700’s in which white people would be the slaves and black people are the “upper race”. We start the story by “What if the roles were reversed?” and then the rest of the story would be very normal following that particular “what if?” condition.

I think “The Man in the High Castle” is a speculative fiction, according to the definition I have of it, it fits the characteristics of a speculative fiction with a “what if?” condition which is the victory of the Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in a WWII that went from 1939 to 1947. Then the rest of the story follows a quite scientific rigour.