It's been a while since I've posted! Busy with the job and graduate school.
Anyway, I have an opportunity to choose a SciFi/Fantasy book in my History and Theory of the Novel class to write my final paper on. We've been studying mostly 18th-19th century books, so the teacher is making a special arrangement with me to focus on SciFi/Fantasy in regards to the course if we can come up with a compelling topic before spring break. I'll be meeting with her in the next week, and she asked me to come with about 5 ideas on 5 different books--which I need to bring with me. She's excited about it, and so am I!
So, what book do you think I should choose? It's going to be a much shorter paper than the usual grad. student paper--only 10-12 pages. With my odd topic, though, we might agree to make mine longer. Who knows.
Initially, I'm thinking something from Card or Goodkind... not sure, though. Maybe Pastwatch... or Enchantment....
I was connecting the part of one of the shadow books where that girl puts rocks in the road to get the Indian people to unite against China. I don't remember which one it is...but it really connected to our discussion last night on the concept of how "Fictions" have helped to create the concept of the nation. Don't know if that's enough for a paper. Also, Goodkind explores some social issues in his Pillars of Creation book in the Sword of Truth series.
posted
Hrm. "Fictions" and the concept of the nation, eh? Seems like any number of scifi/fantasy dystopic novels would do. I'm nuts about Russian scifi/fantasy, so I'll give you my favorites:
Both are rich with material for discussion - I've used each for several papers on several different topics. It does help to have a copy of the text with either a good forward about the period of history they were written in, and what was happening to the authors at the time. We is fairly straightforward as scifi, while Master and Margarita is harder to classify - it's fantastic, but strange for the fantasy genre.
Posts: 54 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
You could talk about Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion books with relation to John Keats, how the work of that Romantic shaped the world creation of a science fiction setting.
You could talk about books like 1984 or Brave New World or Farenheit 451 with relation to the predictive, speculative nature of science fiction and its reflections on society, comparing it to the societal reflections of writers from the eras you've already covered.
You could discuss Stranger in a Strange Land and how it broke social and religious mores so much that it was banned, then abridged, then banned again - specifically speaking to how society and culture resists works that are challenging to their foundations.
You could even grab an early SF book like Frankenstein or 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or The Island of Dr. Moreau and talk about the early formation of speculative science fiction, and how those formative novels set the stage for later work in the genre.
Another idea would be to take Asimov's Positronic novels and discuss how real life programmers of artificial intelligence have been influenced by the work, and how they have adjusted their craft based on the fictional speculation of an author.
There are loads of ideas, but these are just some I think would be cool as starters. Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
FlyingCow, those are fantastic ideas. I could never have come up with anything so good. I thought that "The Left Hand of Darkness" might be a good one to do, though, because of how it explores gender and social issues. If you wanted something more "literary," I think Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" is the book that really brought SF to the attention of the literary establishment this side of the Atlantic (and it's still the only SF/F book studied in secondary schools in the UK with any regularity). I like the idea of doing something like Brave New World or Farenheit 451 - looking at how writers used SF to explore political issues that were too controversial to explore any other way (doesn't OSC see that as something special to SF? I remember him writing something about it somewhere).
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
I recall OSC saying that scifi-fantasy is the only place that certain topics, especially religious ones, can really be explored.
Posts: 1002 | Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
On a slight tangent, who wrote the short story "Harrison Bergeron"? It was included in a set of political philosophy essays on equality that I had to read for university and I absolutely loved it (and loved the editors for putting it in the anthology).
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
| IP: Logged |
posted
Lucky for me, I own and have read How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. I'm sure I'll be using it for this paper, too. As well as for my other creative writing class. Woo.
Pastwatch brings up some really interesting questions on what could have been... even the very nature of existence. I loved that book.
But I'm not sure I can fit it into the class. This will take a lot of brainstorming, I'm sure.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
