Texts
Figuring out which texts to use for 370 has been a challenge. The field of SF is so vast, encompassing so many landmark texts and authors, so many tropes and story formulas, and so many periods that it's naturally impossible to cover in a single class! (But then that's true of most any subject worthy of a university course: if it warrants a course, by nature it will too big to cover adequately in one.)
I've chosen the texts below for various reasons, including their literary quality, popular influence, and historic significance to SF; the plots and subgenres that they represent; diversity of background and outlook; and simple affordability and availability. Note that, besides the texts you see listed here, there will other short texts, provided in class or via our class Moodle site (either as printouts or PDFs, or via hyperlinks).
Need to cut costs? Note that a few of the books listed below are recommended only, not required (look for the phrase RECOMMENDED ONLY just beneath the description of the book, and read the description carefully to see my reasons). Also, It may help to remember that some of the books below, in fact most of them, are available in multiple editions. Many can be found for free at public libraries. At least one of them, Wells' The Time Machine, is in the public domain, and in fact can be found for free online at Project Gutenberg (though I recommend the print edition I've chosen here, which is excellent). I believe most of the books can be found in Kindle or Nook editions, which are sometimes cheaper; note, though, that Le Guin, Silverberg, and Bukatman are not available that way (The Cambridge Companion is available on Kindle but not Nook).
Finally, note that I've also listed the films you will need to watch for class at the bottom of this page. Oh, and remember that one of your assignments for the course will be write two reviews of SF texts of your own choosing from outside our required list, one of them a written text first published since 2000, the other a text in another medium (such as film, TV, videogaming, comics, etc.) from any time period. It's not too early to start thinking about texts you may want to choose for that assignment! Consider that as well when you budget your possible expenses for the course.
The Books (in likely order of use; click images to see books on Amazon)
Click pic to see the
book on Amazon!
The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (published in 2003). A rare thing: an academic textbook that won one of the coveted Hugo Awards, the highest honor given by SF fans (Hugos are awarded each year by Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention). Twenty essays, written by some of the most respected names in SF studies, cover essential topics in the field: the history, theory, and criticism of SF. The backbone of our syllabus, really. List price, new: $30.99.
The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells (originally published in 1895; Broadview Literary Texts edition, 2001). The hugely influential "scientific romance" that jump-started Wells's literary career and became the template for all time travel stories to follow (as well as countless other SF stories that envision human evolution). Watch as Wells projects Darwinian theory into the far future and turns different social classes into different species! One of THE taproot texts for SF.
RECOMMENDED ONLY. Many editions of The Time Machine are available, some good, some not. For our purposes, you may use any complete, unabridged edition of the text, such as the one that can be found online for free at Project Gutenberg. However, I strongly recommend the Broadview edition pictured here, assembled and edited by SF scholar Nicholas Ruddick, because it has an excellent introduction, a helpful timeline of Wells's life, and many illuminating extras that put the book in historical context. $13.95.
RECOMMENDED ONLY. Many editions of The Time Machine are available, some good, some not. For our purposes, you may use any complete, unabridged edition of the text, such as the one that can be found online for free at Project Gutenberg. However, I strongly recommend the Broadview edition pictured here, assembled and edited by SF scholar Nicholas Ruddick, because it has an excellent introduction, a helpful timeline of Wells's life, and many illuminating extras that put the book in historical context. $13.95.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, 1929-1964, edited by Robert Silverberg (1970). The Science Fiction Writers of America, founded in 1965, is a professional association for writers of fantastic fiction; in 1966 it established the Nebula Awards for outstanding SF. Circa 1967-68, the SFWA decided to hold a vote in order to choose the best SF stories from the late 1920s (when SF was established as a market genre) to 1964, just prior to the SFWA's founding. The then roughly 300 members of the SFWA, consisting of the great majority of writers working in the SF field, eventually assembled a ballot of well over a hundred stories by seventy-six different writers. From this, they voted up a list of the greatest and most influential short works in the genre, and from these editor and former SFWA president Robert Silverberg (author of SF classics such as Dying Inside) assembled the book you see here: in his words, " a basic one-volume library of the short science fiction story" to 1964.
RECOMMENDED ONLY, but I strongly suggest that you get it; the book is a landmark. I can tell you that we will be reading seven or eight stories from it. $19.99.
RECOMMENDED ONLY, but I strongly suggest that you get it; the book is a landmark. I can tell you that we will be reading seven or eight stories from it. $19.99.
Dune, by Frank Herbert (1965). The classic ecological SF epic, said to be the best-selling SF novel ever. Lawrence of Arabia and thoughts of JFK collide with prescient environmentalism in this watershed, very 1960s book!
Start reading this one in advance--it's a long, long book!
$9.99
Start reading this one in advance--it's a long, long book!
$9.99
The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969). Another watershed book: Le Guin's anthropologically-minded exploration of gender on an alien world. Left Hand is frequently touted as a feminist landmark—a transformative work by one of the genre's most respected innovators. It certainly changed the way I think about SF.
$9.99
$9.99
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968). This classic novel about artificial life—a typically bleak, paranoid, funny, weirdly poignant book by the strange and inimitable Dick—inspired the 1982 film Blade Runner, which we will be studying too (see below). On its own, it provokes and disturbs in ways quite different, I think, from the film.
$14.00
$14.00
BFI Film Classics: Blade Runner, by Scott Bukatman (originally 2008; 2nd edition, 2012). This excellent book, part of the British Film Institute series devoted to classic movies, recounts the making of Blade Runner, its reception when it first came out in 1982, and its many revisions and changing reception since then. It also offers an illuminating interpretation of the film, both as an adaptation of Philip K. Dick (see above) and a visual text in its own right.
RECOMMENDED ONLY. I will drawing on this book, and sharing my understanding of Bukatman's interpretation, when we discuss Blade Runner in class. We won't have time to cover the film as thoroughly as I would like, unfortunately, but I can guarantee that this book will expand and enrich your view of the movie. $17.95.
RECOMMENDED ONLY. I will drawing on this book, and sharing my understanding of Bukatman's interpretation, when we discuss Blade Runner in class. We won't have time to cover the film as thoroughly as I would like, unfortunately, but I can guarantee that this book will expand and enrich your view of the movie. $17.95.
Neuromancer, by William Gibson (1984). The seminal "cyberpunk" novel that helped usher SF into the information age and is generally credited with popularizing the word cyberspace as a term for online computer networking, i.e. for the Net ("Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.")
$7.99
$7.99
Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson (1998). The debut novel from the Jamaican-born Hopkinson (who teaches writing at UC Riverside), Brown Girl is a postcolonial SF novel that mixes Afro-Caribbean culture with a dystopian near-future Toronto that has been all but abandoned by the wealthy and powerful (who seek to harvest the bodies of the poor and disenfranchised).
$14.99
$14.99
The Films (click images to read about the films on IMDb)
Click pic to read about
this film on IMDb!
Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, scripted by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
We will be discussing this film both in relation to Dick's novel (see above) and as a work of SF in its own right. Be sure you know the film well. Like all of the films listed here, it will be on reserve at the Music & Media desk in the Oviatt Library.
Note that there are multiple, substantially different versions of Blade Runner available, from the original theatrical cut released in the US in 1982, to the so-called director's cut of 1992, to the "final" cut of 2007 controlled by director Ridley Scott that includes a lot of digital fixes and revisions. In addition, there have been multiple packagings of the film for home video, most recently the 30th anniversary releases. Confusing! In class we will screen the openings and endings of a couple of versions for the sake of comparison. My advice: screen either the director's cut (1992) or the final cut (2007) for the sake of class.
We will be discussing this film both in relation to Dick's novel (see above) and as a work of SF in its own right. Be sure you know the film well. Like all of the films listed here, it will be on reserve at the Music & Media desk in the Oviatt Library.
Note that there are multiple, substantially different versions of Blade Runner available, from the original theatrical cut released in the US in 1982, to the so-called director's cut of 1992, to the "final" cut of 2007 controlled by director Ridley Scott that includes a lot of digital fixes and revisions. In addition, there have been multiple packagings of the film for home video, most recently the 30th anniversary releases. Confusing! In class we will screen the openings and endings of a couple of versions for the sake of comparison. My advice: screen either the director's cut (1992) or the final cut (2007) for the sake of class.
District 9 (2009), directed by Neill Blomkamp, scripted by Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell, adapted from Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joburg (2006), a six-minute short that you can watch online.
We will discuss this film late in the term alongside Hopkinson's novel (see above), to compare the two texts' depictions of difference and disenfranchisement in a postcolonial context. A good SF film to know, in any case. (Perhaps we can relate it to Blomkamp's current film, Elysium?)
We will discuss this film late in the term alongside Hopkinson's novel (see above), to compare the two texts' depictions of difference and disenfranchisement in a postcolonial context. A good SF film to know, in any case. (Perhaps we can relate it to Blomkamp's current film, Elysium?)