30.281 Science Fiction

Prerequisite: 6 credit hours in first-year English literature (ENGL)
or permission of Instructor.

A study of the rise of science fiction from an early writer such as H.G. Wells, through its Cold-War florescence, to recent incarnations such as cyberpunk. We will examine the symbolic forms that technology takes, as well as science fiction’s re-enactments of myth and history. Writers to be studied could include H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Ursula LeGuin, William Gibson, and John Wyndham. Titles are subject to change.

3 lecture hours per week, one term