I tend to consider Spec Fic as an umberella category that includes fantasy and science fiction (themselves genres which are sometimes so broad they are becoming meaningless). I was therefore going to read one fantasy, one sci fi, and if I read one I couldn't categorise, or another one that fit one of the two others, I would count that as spec fic.
Obviously I consider fantasy and sci-fi to fall under the broader "spec fic" category; but the Challenge being to read one of each, it seems logical that the one that's referred to as "spec fic" would belong to that part of the "spec fic" category that is neither fantasy nor sci-fi. To me that seems logical, anyway. 
What is Lies of Locke Lamora to you, for example? It is not sword and sorcery (although there is both swords and sorcery in it).
Fantasy. Not much room for doubt there, in my opinion... sure, it's fantasy that borrows heavily from mafia and crime novels, and is set in a Venice clone more than a traditional fantasy world, but even so.
Can you give me an example of a spec fic that cannot be called either fantasy or sci fi? This challenge just got a hell of a lot harder.
Their stories float between the "real" and the "irreal," often with horrific and/or "weird" elements within. They are possible futures, with characters often placed in unsettling places and/or situations, and the stories do not employ the tropes associated with SF or Fantasy.
Or you could just read some Jean Ray, Brian Evenson, or maybe some of the Surrealists, Symbolists, or Decadents.
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
RAFO Challenges for May and June: what are your choices?
- 01/05/2011 10:56:11 AM
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Right. I have decided.
- 03/05/2011 12:59:32 PM
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So. Finished the first of my three.
- 09/05/2011 07:49:32 PM
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Are we the only two left doing these challenges? Also: I finished my first as well
- 09/05/2011 07:53:18 PM
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Not at all. But it'll probably be for June, for me, Vanity Fair is taking a while. *NM*
- 10/05/2011 08:11:02 PM
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I don't know what that means.
- 10/05/2011 05:02:15 PM
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I'm counting Summer Tree as spec fic
- 10/05/2011 07:16:15 PM
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I figure the idea is "spec fic" covers everything that's, well, spec fic, without being fantasy / SF
- 10/05/2011 08:09:31 PM
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Huh
- 10/05/2011 10:28:58 PM
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That was what I meant, maybe I phrased that badly...
- 11/05/2011 08:53:14 PM
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Re: That was what I meant, maybe I phrased that badly...
- 11/05/2011 08:54:52 PM
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I'd have to agree with Rebekah that e.g. The Time Traveller's Wife qualifies.
- 11/05/2011 09:00:03 PM
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Thomas Ligotti. Michael Cisco. Algernon Blackwood.
- 11/05/2011 11:14:45 PM
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Speculative Fiction
- 11/05/2011 02:03:12 PM
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I entirely agree, evidently I phrased my opinion badly though... *NM*
- 11/05/2011 08:55:00 PM
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Pure pimpage: In a few weeks, I'll have a story being published in an anthology that'd meet this
- 11/05/2011 11:18:17 PM
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- 11/05/2011 11:18:17 PM
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