A poetic meditation on the challenges and pleasures of contemporary speculative fiction

Winner of the Elizabeth Agree Prize in American Literary Studies

Dear Incomprehension: On American Speculative Fiction is a thought-provoking exploration of the fascinating field of contemporary speculative fiction, a genre that transcends boundaries and encompasses science fiction, fabulist tales, modern fairy tales, and experimental narratives that challenge the very essence of storytelling and reading.

Written as a philosophical essay that mirrors the unorthodox nature of the texts it analyzes, Dear Incomprehension examines American works that defy traditional narrative devices such as plot, character, logic, and even legibility. Drawing on a number of philosophical theories, among them object-oriented ontology and speculative realism, Vanderhaeghe argues that these unconventional works resist the standard tools of criticism, demanding instead a novel perspective and approach.

An in-depth resource for scholars and students of contemporary literature, philosophy, and digital literary studies, Dear Incomprehension offers a fresh framework for analyzing experimental fiction and alternative modes of meaning-making. It is a must-read for those seeking to grasp the complexities and nuances of American experimental and speculative fiction.

“Dear Incomprehension is well written, engaging, and provides a compelling (anti)framework for reading contemporary experimental fiction. It unfolds a delightfully performative provocation of the reading and speculative practices it proposes we attend more closely to, opening up timely inquiries into the objects of literary studies today.”
—Laura Shackelford, author of Tactics of the Human: Experimental Technics in American Fiction