SpecFic on the Spectrum

One of the (many) misconceptions that seem to exist around neurodivergent brains is that autistic people don’t like fiction. Something about a fondness for accuracy and a desire to research things deeply seems to come across to neurotypical brains as “having no imagination”, or “being obsessed with facts”. And, to a neurotypical mind, these traits are incompatible with enjoying fiction.

Now, I can only speak for myself (obviously) but I love stories. I read them, I watch them, I listen to them, I play them — I even write them! Stories, when well-constructed, make sense. And nowhere is this more evident than is the realm of Speculative Fiction, or SpecFic. 

Stories set in the real world don’t bother to explain things that the authors see as obvious. If you read a contemporary drama, you are expected to “just know” a number of things, and the author only explains when they differ from the expected norm — which can provide a fascinating glimpse into the author’s definition of “normal”, by the way.

Speculative fiction doesn’t have that luxury. A writer of SpecFic has to do their own world-building, and the reader is not expected to “just know” any of it. Good SpecFic writers reveal their worlds through the words and actions of the characters; bad writers deliver pages of pointless info dumping. But either way, the writers explain their world.

Likewise, the character actions are meant to flow in a logical way, and the dialogue is stylised so as to strip out most of the small talk. Good quality fiction relates to the real world but with a much better signal-to-noise ratio. Also better plotlines, but I digress. 

Anyway, my point isn’t to claim that all neurodivergent people love SpecFic, or even that fiction is somehow “better” than non-fiction. My point is that I am autistic, and I enjoy SpecFic, and therefore the “fact” that all autistic people prefer non-fiction is demonstrably false. 

Lesson: It’s pretty pointless to try to predict people’s preferences predicated on only one parameter.

Addendum: Alliteration is awesome. 😁