English 334: Science Fiction (Marks)				

First Essay, due Friday, 10/17

Length:  6-8 pages, double-spaced, with MLA style citations and documentation.

Late policy:  I accept late papers without a penalty up until the class time of the next course meeting after the due date.  After that grace period, late papers are downgraded.  I urge you not to skip class just because your paper isn’t ready.

Topics:

This essay should be a comparative analysis of an issue associated with the novels and films we’ve read, viewed, and discussed so far.  Your essay should deal with at least three of the six major texts from these units (Frankenstein, Blade Runner, Sirius, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (novel and film), Out of the Silent Planet).  For some topics it might be useful or appropriate to bring in one of the four short stories which we’ve read and discussed, or Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, but you aren’t required to use any of the short stories or optional readings.

Here are some sample topics.  You are welcome to choose any of them, adapt them, or develop one of your own; if you have any doubt about whether your idea for the paper is workable, ask me or email me.

1.  Defining a Self.  Many of the Frankenstein stories explicitly or implicitly raise the question of how we define a person.  Consider this issue from the viewpoint of the alien figure:  how do Frankenstein’s Creature, the “Man-Dog” Sirius, and Roy or one of the other replicants understand themselves?  Do they all understand themselves as persons in the same way?   Having considered these three fictional selves, how would you now define a person?

2.  Meeting Your Maker.  Another common thread in the Frankenstein stories is a confrontation, or a series of confrontations, between the artificial beings and the scientists who made them.  Discuss these confrontations in Frankenstein, Sirius, and Blade Runner and what use the novelist or director is making of them.  To what extent does each work pursue the problems of “playing God” and of scientific responsibility?

3.  Alienating Residences: London, and Los Angeles are themselves alien environments as they are presented in Sirius and Blade Runner.  Explore how Stapledon and Riddley Scott use urban settings, and the extent to which these cities reinforce the estrangement of the artificial beings.  As a counter-example, consider the alien environment of the Nautilus as a “pocket” community, or anti-city, and the confinement/freedom of the prisoners/guests who live and journey in their self-reliant town. The reader’s estrangement also figures here, because these alien environments are equally strange to you.

4.  Science Fiction and Tragedy.  Many people think of the genre of science fiction as a cheery celebration of technology or as a form of the literature of adventure or as an escape from the serious issues of life.  But all the novels except Out of the Silent Planet might also be taken as instances of how science fiction can offer a tragic vision.  Write about any three of the texts as tragedies that speak to the human experience of loss.

5.  Frankenstein Stories.  As the editor of a collection of contemporary Frankenstein stories, you need to write an introduction that places the stories in the context of the Frankenstein story tradition.  Using our readings as examples, explain what a Frankenstein story is, and how and why this story form has proven such a rich resource for writers of science fiction in the last 200 years, as they conform to,  violate, and transform the formula.

6.  Science and the spirit.  In Out of the Silent Planet, Ransom consistently perceives and responds to the sublime beauty of a universe and an alien world that his fellow travelers seem incapable of appreciating.  That Ransom’s appreciation has a spiritual aspect should not be a surprise, since all of Lewis’s fiction has a religious subtext.  This novel, in which science is a spiritual metaphor, can serve as a useful lens with which to examine the spiritual/religious component in other works, particularly Frankenstein, Sirius, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  

7.  Mad, or perhaps just misguided, scientists.  Every novel and film we’ve studied so far has featured a scientist/inventor whose knowledge and resources have been harnessed to a questionable end, out of hubris, curiosity, greed, or even the purest of motives.  Examine any three of these “mad” scientists, to determine the possibilities and meanings of this (inescapable?) character type in science fiction.