SCIENCE FICTION CLASS DISPELS MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT GENRE
Source: thelantern.com
The term science fiction usually conjures up images of speeding spaceships, fuzzy aliens and laser guns. But a new class devoted to the literature of science fiction is exploring the genre and discovering that there might be more to it than some think.
“It’s something that if you get two science fiction fans in a room together, you’re liable to have quite a heated argument about definitions,” said Maura Heaphy, a senior lecturer in English and the instructor of English 372: Science Fiction and/or Fantasy.
In her view, the best science fiction is not only about science and technology, although that often plays a large role. It is literature that “asks the questions that speculate on our relationship to the world and each other,” she said.
Students spent the first day of class coming up with their own definitions of science fiction, Heaphy said.
For Chloe Goodhart, a second-year in English and a student in the class, science fiction allows authors to “comment on current social issues by looking at it through the means of a futuristic, or even past, reality that is very different from our own.”
Some students have more specific guidelines and believe that sci-fi should have a plausible technological system, Heaphy added.
But no matter the definition, the class probably offers something for everyone. It explores everything from the space opera of Star Trek to the what-if scenarios of alternate history.
For example, the premise that Nazi Germany defeated the Allies in World War II is the plot of one of the novels the class has read.
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This is pretty cool. It’s nice ot see science fiction /fantasy becoming a little more ‘main stream’ – and not something completely bizarre or automatically discarded as bad. What do youthink of this?
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