It is currently 2023 as I write this. The great meme wars continue unabated. Anyone reading here may have noticed the category links on the bottom of all the book reviews and writeups. In order to help keep organized and facilitate my own and others travels through the boundless universes of speculative fiction I have prepared this short guide. This is intended to help readers move between authors they like, while exploring the themes they love and hey whaddya know maybe even find some new ideas or new favorite authors.
AnomalyC’s big concepts of Speculative Fiction.
Social Criticism – These are works aimed at highlighting social or political probabilities with today’s real world of even the imagined social structure of the created work.
Sense of Wonder – Works meant to evoke a sense of the new and fantastic. Aladdin.
Sword and Shield – These are works chiefly read for adventure. Think Fritz Leiber or Robert E. Howard. Al
Eco Literature – These are works concerned with the care denigration preservation and destruction of the natural world and environment.
Poetic/Aesthetic – Tales aimed for their charm and love of setting and language. I’m thinking of you Vance’s Tales of the dying Earth.
Political Criticism – Works aimed at the Current status Quo and its dull western dominated way of running the world.
African Focused – These works aim to highlight the plight or experiences of the people of the diaspora.
Cybernetics – Works aimed at exploring our digital lives and the possibilities of the free flow of information. Cyberpunk and all it’s spin offs ala Neuromancer, Blade Runner etc..
Future Possibilities – In these works the author’s chief intention can be seen as highlighting the possibilities of the future world or directions the world is going in.
Post Modernism – Well because there is no greater exploration than exploration of man in all his complexities.
Space Opera – Classic sci-fi tales. Big politics, big nations the fate of humanity hangs in the balance young Hero.
Alternate History – Re-imagining’s of our world to explore possibilities. For fun and thought.
Hyperion: By Dan Simmons 
Tales of the Dying Earth: By Jack Vance 
Ready Player One : By Ernest Kline