A. Seth Young , 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
< THE DEVICES OF SCIENCE FICTION |
§ BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES § REQUIREMENTS § TEXTS § BIBLIOGRAPHY § [filmography and bibliography] §
download: MS Word syllabus [4/23]
THE DEVICES OF SCIENCE FICTION (CL 215W, E6MB)
Rathaus 106, Mondays & Wednesdays, 6:30-7:45
instructor: Seth Young
ayoung@gc.cuny.edu / tel. 718-997-3599
office hours: Kiely 604, Mon. & Wed., 4:30-6 or by appointment
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES
More and more we are a culture saturated in electronic media and technologies. We often understand these media and technologies to be harbingers of a "new" historical era, for better or worse. Virtual reality has become shorthand for this "new" era of human relations, though it is rarely clear what virtual reality is, should, or will be. Popular science fiction has become increasingly responsible for providing us with images of our future now, but the images developed in SciFi do not necessarily clarify our understanding of virtual reality or its implications.
Through a critical and selective exploration of twentieth-century SciFi writings, we will focus on literary contributions and responses to the concept of virtual reality. Questions that will guide our close reading of these writings include but are not limited to: Can the concept of virtual reality be said to originate in literature? What is the relation between plot and/or compositional device and technological device? How does literary structure accommodate virtual reality? What kinds of metaphors develop around "soft" technologies? How and why is virtual reality frequently presented in metaphysical terms? How does virtual reality complicate characterization? Does virtual reality modify our notions of literature or what it means to be human? Is virtual reality prosthesis? What becomes of conventional mind/body dichotomies in the context of virtual reality? Is narrative time virtual time? Is "science fiction" a redundant designation? Is SciFi concerned with the future? or is the future in SciFi a figure for the present? What are the connections between virtual reality and utopic/dystopic writings? Is virtual reality at all a new idea?
REQUIREMENTS
1) Above all this course requires you to be disciplined and engaged.
2) Each week class discussion will center on one of ten REQUIRED texts. Each text will be read in its entirety, with the exceptions of Mirrorshades (Cadigan's "Rock On") and The Republic (Book V (473d-480) and Book VII (all)). Students may opt to forgo one text during the semester. Attendance and participation will constitute 50% of your final grade.
3) Specific supplementary readings are clustered around certain required texts. Students are expected to address some of these readings in their weekly papers.
4) Each week students must write a one-page paper. Handouts explaining the weekly paper assignments will be provided. PAPERS ARE DUE EVERY MONDAY. NO LATE PAPERS WILL BE ACCEPTED. Students may opt to forgo two of the ten papers. [Correction: Students may opt to forgo two of the eleven papers.] Papers will constitute 50% of your final grade.
*REQUIRED texts available in the Queens College bookstore
*H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (Tor Books, 0812505042)
Philip K. Dick: * The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (Vintage, 0679736662); * VALIS (Vintage, 0679734465); and * A Scanner Darkly (Vintage, 0679736654)
William Gibson: * Neuromancer (Ace Books, 0441569595) and * Virtual Light (Bantam Spectra, 0553566067)
*Samuel R. Delany, Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia (Wesleyan, 081956298)
*Jeff Noon, Vurt (St. Martin's, 0312141440)
*The Republic of Plato, trans. G.M.A. Grube, revised by C.D.C. Reeve (Hackett, 0872201368)
readings on reserve in the Queens College library
*Bruce Sterling, ed., Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (Arbor House, 1986) [REQUIRED (handout)]
Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon & Schuster, 1995)
Constance Penley & Andrew Ross, Technoculture (Minnesota, 1991)
Mary Dery, ed., Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (Duke, 1994)
Judith Halberstam & Ira Livingston, ed., Posthuman Bodies (Indiana, 1995)
Robert Markley, ed., Virtual Realities and Their Discontents (Johns Hopkins, 1996)
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Routledge, 1991)
additional readings
Students are encouraged to read outside the syllabus and will be given extensive bibliographies of primary and secondary sources, as well as a filmography, for this purpose.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
of secondary sources—a first glance*
Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings, trans. Jacques Mourrain, ed. Mark Poster (Standford: Stanford UP, 1988).
De Laurentis, Huyssen, Woodward, eds., The Technological Imagination: Theories and Fictions, Theories of Contemporary Culture (Madison: Coda, 1980).
Timothy Druckrey, ed., Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation (New York: Aperture, 1996); "Selected Bibliography" (431-37) is an excellent resource.
Hal Foster, ed., The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (Seattle: Bay, 1983).
Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings, 1972-1977, trans. Colin Gordon et al, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980).
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper, 1977).
David C. Jacobs, ed., The Presocratics after Heidegger, Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany: SUNY P, 1999).
George P. Landow, ed., Hyper/Text/Theory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1994).
Chris Toulouse and Timothy W. Luke, eds., The Politics of Cyberspace: A New Political Science Reader (New York: Routledge, 1998).
others
Jean Baudrillard, Fatal Strategies (crystal revenge), trans. Philip Beitchman and W.G.J. Niesluchowski, ed. Jim Fleming (New York: Semiotext(e), 1990).
Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Post-Modern Science Fiction (Durham: Duke UP, 1993); features an exellent "Filmography."
Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines
(New York: Zone, 1991).
Gary Lee Downey, The Machine in Me: An Anthropologist Sits Among Computer Engineers (New York: Routledge, 1998).
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage, 1965).
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977).
Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Post-Contemporary Interventions (Durham: Duke UP, 1991).
Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983).
Jacque Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II: The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller (New York: Norton, 1988).
Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 10 (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984).
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1972); also recommended is McLuhan's The Medium Is the Message.
Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book: Technology—Schizophrenia—Electric Speech (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1989).
Michel Serres, The Parasite (Baltimore: (Johns Hopkins UP?), 1982).
Allucquère Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (Cambridge: MIT P, 1995).
Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984).
Samuel Weber, Mass Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996).
Paula Wertman, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace (I have misplaced the bibliographic information, but I can track this down, if you're interested).
Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society, 2nd ed. Rev. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1950); probably out of print.
Yevgeny Zamyatin, "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters" (I have lost the title of the anthology in which this essay appears, but I can photocopy it, if you're interested); Zamyatin's novel We is a brilliant SciFi dystopia, predating George Orwell's 1984.
*These sources are among many with which the theoretical horizon of the course was established. Don't hesitate to contact me if you're curious about any of them or if you're interested in additional sources of any kind. —SY
[(brief) filmography*
Darren Aronofsky: Pi (1998; brilliant soundtrack)
John Badham: WarGames (1983; Matthew Broderick hacks into military supercomputer and causes Cold War missile crisis)
James Cameron: The Terminator (1984); Aliens (1986; see also Fincher, Scott); Terminator 2 (1991)
Michael Crichton: Westworld (1973; classic)
David Cronenberg: Dead Ringers (1988); Naked Lunch (1991; based on William S. Burroughs text); eXistenZ (1999); almost all of Cronenberg's films work alongside this syllabus; search for "Cronenberg" on the amazing IMDb
David Fincher: Alien 3 (1992; see also Cameron, Scott)
Richard Fliescher: Soylent Green (1973; based on Harry Harrison's Make Room! Make Room! classic)
Terry Gilliam: Brazil (1985; classic dystopia)
Byron Haskin: War of the Worlds (1953; based on H.G. Wells text)
Irvin Kershner: The Empire Strikes Back (1980; superior to the other Star Wars movies); Robocop 2 (1990; see also Verhoeven)
Stanley Kubrick: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; based on Arthur C. Clarke text)
Fritz Lang: Metropolis (1926)
Brett Leonard: The Lawnmower Man (1992; based on Stephen King text?)
Steven Lisberger: TRON (1982; get lasered into a computer and play video games "for real," on the "inside")
Robert Longo: Johnny Mnemonic (1995; based on Gibson text)
George Lucas: THX 1138 (1971)
Adrian Lyne: Jacob's Ladder (1990; works well alongside A Scanner Darkly)
Katsuhiro Otomo: Akira (1988; animated; classic cyberpunk)
Nicholas Reog: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976; classic)
Josef Rusnak: The Thirteenth Floor (1999; same year as The Matrix; lame Hollywood take on virtual reality)
Ken Russell: Altered States (1980)
Joel Schumacher: Flatliners (1990; virtual death)
Ridley Scott: Alien (1979; see also Cameron, Fincher); Blade Runner (see SCHEDULE; based on PKD text)
Andrei Tarkovsky: Solaris (1972; based on Stanislaw Lem text)
François Truffaut, Farenheit 451 (1967; based on Ray Bradbury text)
Shinya Tsukamoto: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989); Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer (1992; on the syllabus in the planning stages)
Paul Verhoeven: Robocop (1987; see also Kershner); Total Recall (1990; based on PKD text); Starship Troopers (1997; based on Robert A. Heinlein text; extraordinary satire of military propoganda, etc.)
Andy and Larry Wachowski: The Matrix (1999; see SCHEDULE; The Matrix 2 & 3 are coming out in 2002 & 2003; based on Wachowski brothers text)
Irwin Winkler: The Net (1995; more lame Hollywood: Sandra Bullock has her identity stolen)
Anyone remember the "Max Headroom: 20 minutes into the future" TV series?
(quick) bibliography*
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (works well alongside Scott's Blade Runner; often considered the first SciFi novel; on the syllabus in the planning stages)
Mark Twain: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (an old favorite; time travel novel; film version?)
Jules Verne: particularly 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (closer to "adventure stories" than SciFi; many of Verne's texts have been produced as films)
H.G. Wells: particularly War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and of course The Time Machine (many of Wells' texts have been produced as films)
Yevgeny Zamyatin: We (a dystopia superior to both Huxley and Orwell (directly below); on the syllabus in the planning stages)
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World (film version?)
George Orwell: 1984 (film version?)
Isaac Asimov: particularly I, Robot
Stanislaw Lem: particularly Solaris and Imaginary Magnitude (rich texts, especially, from what I understand, if you read them in the original Polish)
Arthur C. Clarke: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Ray Bradbury: particularly Farenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles
William S. Burroughs: particularly Naked Lunch, Soft Machine, and The Ticket That Exploded
Octavia Butler: particularly Dawn
Samuel Delany: pretty much anything Delany puts his hand to is gold
Thomas Pynchon: particularly The Crying of Lot 49 and "Entropy"
Don DeLillo: White Noise
Kathy Acker: Empire of the Senseless
Philip K. Dick: particularly Eye in the Sky, Time Out of Joint, The Divine Invasion, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Radio Free Albemuth, and of course the texts on the syllabus
Harlan Ellison: particularly The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World (on the syllabus in the planning stages; one of the first "cyberpunk" authors writing before Gibson)
William Gibson: particularly Burning Chrome (on the syllabus in the planning stages), Mona Lisa Overdrive and Count Zero (form trilogy with Neuromancer)
Bruce Sterling and William Gibson: The Difference Machine (on the syllabus in the planning stages)
Bruce Sterling: Schismatrix (on the syllabus in the planning stages) and Island in the Net
Pat Cadigan: Synners
Jeff Noon: Pixel Juice
*The (brief) filmography and (quick) bibliography are fairly idiosyncratic: I generated both off the cuff, sitting down and typing out lists of the texts I would enjoy teaching. SciFi novels and stories are published at an astonishing rate—what would a "classic" SciFi text be? Often considered a "pulp genre," SciFi raises questions about the relation between literature and cultural/economic modes of production. These lists should not be understood as definitive. If you're interested in alternative primary sources, you can contact me or, for instance, peruse the bibliographies of the secondary works, especially Bukatman's Terminal Identity. -SY
top]
A. Seth Young , |