Questions to Help You Blog

You can choose one or more of the following questions to address in your weekly blog:

1. Science fiction often explores alternative belief systems (religious, philosophical, political, etc.) or the impact on current ideologies of various futuristic changes or alien ideologies. Discuss this point with reference to any two of the above texts. How are our opinions and beliefs linked to social and/or technological systems? What happens when alien or opposed ideologies come into confrontation or conflict? How do sf texts reflect “conservative” tendencies (salvaging or recuperating settled norms of belief) and how do they suggest “radical” or “revolutionary” possibilities (the subversion or supersession of pregiven norms)?

2. Much science fiction is about technology and its impact on/in the world. Discuss this point with reference to any two of the above texts. How does the evolution of technology affect the possibilities for self-understanding and social connection? Do technologies promote specific social values and norms of behavior, or do values and behavior define and constrain technologies? What are the implications of the fusing of humans and machines in the form of cyborgs? Does technology in these stories appear to be principally a utopian or a dystopian force?

3. Science fiction imagines situations that are estranged from our world and that are also reflections of the world in which they were written. What concerns of the time and place in which it was written are reflected in a work? What present concerns do you see reflected in the work? What significant differences from the real world does the work portray and what is their metaphorical or thematic importance?

4. Science fiction is in conversation with itself. That is, each work answers back to the works written before in some way. How is each work different from previous works in the course? How is it similar to them?

5. Science fiction is as much about the formal ways in which future or alien worlds are depicted as it is with the represented content of those worlds. Discuss this point. How does the very mode of representation (word-choice, literary style, forms of textual ordering) limit or enable the sorts of worlds represented? How do sf texts incorporate information about their futures into the very fabric of their textual worlds? Does the representation of future worlds seem to demand some sort of “futuristic” method of representation?