| COM LIT 102W | SCIENCE FICTION | AL-KASSIM, D. | Space Race
A course in the popular genre that focuses on the genre's abiding interest in inequality and social decay. Fantasy, time travel, human-animal relations and slavery are topics we will consider in novels and film adaptations of scifi classics. We will begin with 19th c uses of theories of evolution to produce social criticism and end with a time-traveling campaign to save Elvis' life; in between we consider the unexpected effects of global telepathic wireless, a society where women give birth to weapons and an alien mutiny.
Films, short novels, essays.
The Mount Carol by Carol Emshwiller
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (with darko suvin's essay on wells)
The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells (penguin classics with intro by
China Meiville)
The Unconquered Country by G. Ryman
Air by Geoff Ryman
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Elvissey by Jack Womack
We, the Underpeople by Cordwainer Smith
Possible alternates: Les Guerilleres by Monique Wittig, The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood, Egalia's Daughters by Gerd Brantenberg
|