ENG 290: SF: A Critical Overview
Course Schedule, Fall 07

Week One
R 8.23: Introduction, First Day

Week Two
Introduction: The Imagination of Science Fiction
T 8.28: Roberts "Defining Science Fiction" (1-36)
R 8.30: Roberts "The History of SF" (37-70)

Secondary Readings: Telotte, "The World of the Science Fiction Film", filmsite.org's History of SF Film

Week Three
Part One: Time & Space
T 9.4: HG Wells' The Time Machine (Chapters I-IV), "Time Travel" from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
R 9.6: Alfred Bester, "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed", David Lewis "The Paradoxes of Time Travel"
Response Due

Week Four
T 9.11: Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle, Kim Stanley Robinson, "Remaking History"
R 9.13: Finish The Man in the High Castle, Carruth Primer (2004)

Week Five
T 9.18: Samuel R. Delaney "Driftglass," Arthur C. Clarke "The Sentinel"
R 9.20: Tarkovsky Solaris (1972), Tarkovsky "Imprinted Time"
F 9.21: Essay One

Secondary Readings: Sontag, "The Imagination of Disaster", Suvin, "Estrangement and Cognition"

Week Six
Part Two: Humans, PostHumans, and Others
T 9.25: Haraway "The Cyborg Manifesto", Letson "Portraits of Machine Consciousness"
R 9.27: Scott, Blade Runner (1982) , Clark "Cyborgs Unplugged"
Response Due

Week Seven
T 10.2: Ellison "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream", Joy "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us"
R 10.4: Oshii Ghost in the Shell (1995), Baudrillard "The Precession of Simulacra", Thacker "Data Made Flesh"
Response Due

Secondary Readings: Roberts "SF and Gender", Roberts "SF and Race", Telotte "Introduction: Human Artifice"

Week Eight
T 10.9: No Class, Fall Break
R 10.11: Midterm

Week Nine
Part Three: Ideology, Technology and Power
T 10.16: LeGuin The Dispossessed, Theall "The Art of Social-Science Fiction"
R 10.18: The Dispossessed, Bierman "Ambiguity in Utopia"
Response Due

Week Ten
T 10.23: Gilliam Brazil (1985), Foucault "Panopticism"
R 10.25: Brazil, Max Weber "The Monocratic Type of Bureaucratic Administration", Marcuse "The New Forms of Control"
Response Due

Week Eleven
T 10.30: Atwood The Handmaid's Tale, Hammer "The World as it Will Be"
R 11.1: Finish The Handmaid's Tale, Sullivan "What If? Writing The Handmaid's Tale"
F 11.2: Essay Two

Secondary Readings: Roberts "SF and Technology"

Week Twelve
Conclusion: Where are we Going? Where Have We Been?
T 11.6: Disch "The Future of an Illusion", Colatrella "Science Fiction in the Information Age"
R 11.8: Vandermeer "Secret Life"
Response Due

Week Thirteen
T 11.13: Stross Accelerando
R 11.15: Stross Accelerando
Response Due

Week Fourteen
T 11.20: Doctorow, "The Progressive Apocalypse and Other Futurismic Delights"
R 11.22: No Class, Thanksgiving

Week Fifteen
T 11.27: Doctorow, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
R 11.29: Judge, Idiocracy, Roberts "Conclusion"
Response Due

Week Sixteen
T 12.5: Last Class.
Final Essay Due (with Journals and Drafts)