A, B, C

3

“Critical Methods/Speculative Fiction”: initially I had written it in the Autumn of ’69 and delivered it to a group of enthusiastic science-fiction fans who met in a house in the beautiful Berkeley Hills. That meeting was hosted by a member of the family who made Tanqueray Gin — surely a resonance with what I will shortly write. At that year’s MLA, I read a version cut by half. The complete text was published in Quark/1 (Paperback Library, NYC, 1970), edited by Marilyn Hacker and myself. Today you can find it in The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, a revised edition of which is available from Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, 2010). For the record, that ’69 talk is among the last times I used the term “speculative fiction” before returning to the phrase, adequate for any critical use I have found myself in need of since: “science fiction.” As far as I can see, the basic meaning of “speculative fiction” is: “whatever science fiction I, the speaker, happen to approve of at ten o’clock Wednesday morning or at whatever moment I use the term,” which makes it a very slippery shifter and too vague to sustain a useful critical life in any analytical discussion. I have not used it, except more or less ironically, and then rarely, for forty-five years, though even today I run across people claiming it’s my “preferred term.” It’s not.