Most of my stories probably belong to the genre of speculative fiction (spec-fic). I say “probably” because spec-fic is many things to many people. In fact, there are famous spec-fic authors like Samuel Delaney who deny there is any such thing. It is also a semantically-challenged label. For example, isn't speculation the element that makes fiction different from fact? So what's the “spec” in spec-fic?

Here is how I understand it. In regular fiction, the context is this world, the actual world. Thus in regular fiction, Maxwell's laws apply, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and blue is not green. The fiction does not extend to the context. If somebody dies in a story, there is no need for the author to mention that they stay dead. The way death works in the story and the way death works in real life is tacitly the same.

It's different in spec-fic. Here, the fiction creeps into the context as well. The context is an imagined world, often quite similar to our own, but not necessarily so. In a spec-fic story, light may be a fraction of its familiar value, Caesar may not have crossed the Rubicon, and there may be colors that are neither blue nor green, but grue. In spec-fic, it is possible for an author to begin, as Greg Egan did in his novel Distress:

"All right. He's dead. Go ahead and talk to him."

In short, the context may be fictional as well; it cannot be taken for granted. But don't take my word for it. I'm speculating. Why not sample some of the stories and decide for yourself?