How Great Science Fiction Works by Professor Gary K. Wolfe starts with what he considers the first science fiction novel, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, written during The Year Without a Summer in 1816. He traces the history of science fiction from the pulp magazines in the first half of the 20th century to the paperbacks which often took the short stores in the pulp magazines and stitched them together for connected stories or novels.
Science fiction attempts to take the best speculation of the current science of today and apply it to future scenarios. Science fiction also uses other worlds to highlight current social questions we have on our own planet. The has become more prevalent as science fiction has spread from being centered in England and America to a collection of authors from around the world. Science fiction has the ability to play out scenarios in the future that reflect the unintended consequences of decisions in the present.
I appreciated the wide breadth of authors and topics covered in this course. I may be able to read a quarter of the books mentioned if I live to be 100. I have enjoyed reading Bradbury, Asimov, and the sci-fi parodies of Adams. I now have a group of new authors to read and enjoy. The lecture series provided good ideas for the truthiness series of near science fiction I have been writing.
How Great Science Fiction Works - 2 min.
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