In this week we will be introducing ourselves, going over the course guidelines, arranging deadlines, choosing topics, and allocating presentations. However, I want you to study the pre-course activities, and come with some ideas of what you consider science fiction. What are your favourite and least favourite books, series and films? Why is this? Are there some aspects of science fiction that you consider more �pure� than others? What was the last science fiction film you saw or book you read? Did you like it? If so, why?

Suggested Reading

The main reading for this course is Science Fiction Cinema, From Outer Space to Cyberspace; King, G & Krzywinska, T, (Wallflower pub. 2000). This is an excellent book which covers the basics of how to approach science fiction critically, and recommended for anyone wanting to write an essay later in the term on films.

Quotes.

�SF is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the authors, our world transformed into that which it is not, or is not yet�There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one - this is the essence of science fiction�a convulsive shock in the reader�s mind, the shock of disrecognition�

Philip K. Dick

Science fiction is about thought experiments, the worlds of �if�. If the world were changed in some way, then what would happen would be....No true SF fan believes the world necessarily will be changed in that way�- such illusions are for �mundanes�, SF fandom�s dismissive tag for the rest of humanity. That is why fans have no time for people who believe in UFOs or astrology. SF is not about belief, but suspension of disbelief�

Ian Stewart, New Scientist, 20 Jan 1996.

�When you ask the Common Reader what science fiction is, the answer is likely to include ideas or images from a list of items or elements (often derived from film rather than fiction) such as:

the future

"futuristic" science, technology, weaponry, cities, etc.

spaceships, space voyages

time machines, time travel

other worlds

alien beings

monsters

robots

mutants

parapsychology

mad scientists

The Common Reader who has actually read science fiction might add complex non-formulaic patterns such as :

alternative history, alternate or parallel worlds

thought experiments in physiology

psychology, physics, etc.

experimental models of society�

Ursula LeGuin, in The Norton Book of Science Fiction

�This genre asks big philosophical questions about what it is to be a human being in the late 20th century. It asks what is real, what is human, where we are going. It asks questions which most fiction writers can�t ask. It can be deeply intellectual�

Andy Butler, Hull University

�Sturgeon�s Law:

Ninety percent of everything is crud

Corollary 1:

The existence of immense quantities of trash in science fiction is admitted and regretted; but it is no more unnatural than the existence of trash anywhere.

Corollary 2:

The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.�

Theodore Sturgeon, 1958

�Science fiction, like all genres, is a �leaky� and relatively unstable category that borrows from and informs other genres. Like Frankenstein�s creature, it is a hybrid, the body of which is composed of parts of other discourses and texts. A number of recent Hollywood blockbusters might be defined as science fiction, for example, but also as a somewhat fuzzy mixture of science fiction and action-adventure, often with doses of disaster, romance and comedy thrown in for good measure. We might talk about some kind of �gravitational pull� around certain core themes and styles, but these are always open to negotiation and change.�

(King & Krzywinska, 2000:11).

�Science fiction is the one branch of literature that accepts the fact of change, the inevitability of change. Without the initial assumption that there will be change, there is o such thing as science fiction, for nothing is science fiction unless it includes events played out against a social or physical background significantly different from our own.

(Gold, Asimov, 1980: 286/7)