English 173 - Winter, 2012

Science Fiction

Class Information

Instructor: Jerng, Mark
CRN: 32612
Time: TR 9:00-10:20
Location: 146 Olson

Description

Science fiction engages its readers in the cognitive and poetic processes of “world-making.” As Samuel Delany writes, “The reader of the SF story must create a new world that operates by new laws for each new SF story read.” This demand to “create a new world” significantly revises core notions about the physical body and the material world, the place of humanity, the environment, as well as the political and social organization of worlds. This course will take up various science fiction novels, novellas, short stories, and film from the late nineteenth century to the present in order to interrogate three main dimensions of world-making: biological worlds; imperial worlds; and technological worlds. Topics to be addressed include: the relationship between race and biological discourse of species; what constitutes the human; the social organization of human kinds; the geopolitical organization of states and subjects; how bodily differences are reconfigured in cyberspace. We will read novels by H.G. Wells, Octavia Butler, Neal Stephenson, Nalo Hopkinson, and Kazuo Ishiguro; short stories or novellas by Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, Greg Bear, William Gibson, and James Tiptree, Jr., (aka Alice Sheldon); poems by Larissa Lai; and Ridley Scott’s film, Blade Runner.

Students are expected to netflix or rent Blade Runner.

Grading

Participation and Attendance: 15%
Paper #1 20%
Criticism Review Essay 20%
Paper #2 20%
Final Exam: 25%

Texts

The Island of Dr. Moreau, H.G. Wells
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Lilith's Brood, Octavia Butler
Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
Midnight Robber, Nalo Hopkinson