Course Times: Tues and Thurs, 6:30 - 8:00 pm, in 216 EPB

Office Hours: Tues and Thurs, 4:00-5:00 pm, and by appointment, in 455 EPB

E-mail/Phone: rob-latham@uiowa.edu; 335-0465

Required Texts (all at Prairie Lights Bookstore):

• H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
• H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
• Karel Capek, War with the Newts
• Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories
• H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
• Olaf Stapledon, Odd John (and Sirius)
• Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
• Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man
• Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End
• Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
• Stanislaw Lem, Solaris
• Frank Herbert, Dune
• Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
• Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
• William Gibson, Neuromancer
• Octavia Butler, Lilith's Brood
• Greg Egan, Diaspora

Recommended Text (also at Prairie Lights):

• John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds., The Science Fiction Encyclopedia

Description: This course offers an introduction to the history and theory of science fiction literature. The class is organized as a historical survey, linking major works of sf from H.G. Wells to the present with important examinations of the genre from various critical perspectives (e.g., structuralist, Marxist, feminist, etc.). The primary texts we will cover center upon two key themes in the genre: the alien and the artificial person--themes we will track through a series of literary, cultural , and techno-scientificcontexts. Other issues we will explore include the relationship of sf to "mainstream" literature, and crossovers between sf and other popular genres (e.g., fantasy and horror).

Requirements and Assignments: The first requirement is preparation and attendance; you must be here for every class meeting with the day's reading completed. Missing more than three class sessions for unexcused absences will have a negative impact on your final grade. A substantial proportion of your grade (see "Grading"section below) will be based on your participation in class discussion, so please don't be shy. Also, as part of the participation grade, each student will be expected to kick off two class sessions with 4-5 minute presentations. The purpose of the presentations is to initiate and orient discussion of the primary texts we have read in common by focusing on the arguments and perspectives developed in the secondary materials.

The required writing consists of weekly response papers, a book review, and a final paper. The response papers should briefly (approximately one single-spaced, printed page is fine) record observations, ideas, questions, and/or criticisms inspired by the assigned texts; the papers are due in my mailbox in EPB 310 by 5 PM on Thursdays. No late journals will be accepted, and if you miss handing in more than two of them, your journal grade will be an F. These journals will not be graded individually, but a grade will be assigned to them in total at semester's end.

The book review is designed to provide the class with information on important critical and historical studies of science fiction literature. The review should be conceived and drafted as if for professional publication; briefly, a review should: contextualize the work under discussion theoretically and/or historically, summarize its basic organization and main line of argument, critically analyze selected topics in some depth, and evaluate the volume's overall merits and defects--all within roughly 2000-2500 words (about 4-5 single-spaced pages). Your book review will provide the basis for one of your two in-class presentations, which should distill the book's argument in such a way that it illuminates the assigned primary text(s). Also, since the reviews will be circulated to the entire class, I will need to have them by 4 PM of the day they are due. I will then make multiple copies and put them outside my office door so that everyone can read the review before class.

Your final paper is a conference-length (12-page) paper developing some argument about or analysis of science fiction based on the assigned texts. Ideally, your paper should develop some fruitful relation between at least one primary and one secondary text--e.g., a rigorous close reading of a single story or novel, or a comparative analysis of two or more stories/novels, in light of some critical perspective we have covered. You are welcome to bring in other materials not on the syllabus, though this is not required.

Grading: The distribution of your grade will be as follows: 20% class participation (including presentations); 20% response papers; 20% book review; and 40% final paper.

WEEK 1. SCIENCE FICTION: FORM AND FUNCTION

Tuesday (1/16):

Introduction: Definitions of Science Fiction

Thursday (1/18):

Required:

• Darko Suvin, "On the Poetics of the SF Genre" (1972)
• Kathleen L. Spencer, "'The Red Sun Is High, The Blue Low': Towards a Stylistic Description of SF" (1983)
• Brian Stableford, "The Expectations of the Science Fiction Reader" (1987)

Recommended: "Conceptual Breakthrough," "Definitions of SF," "History of SF," "Imaginary Science," "Proto Science Fiction," "Sense of Wonder," "Technology," (in Encyclopedia of SF)

WEEK 2. SCIENCE FICTION: POLITICS AND PROTOTYPES

Tuesday (1/23):

Required:

• Gregory Renault, "Science Fiction as Cognitive Estrangement: Darko Suvin and the Marxist Critique of Mass Culture" (1980)
• Tom Moylan, "Absent Paradigms" (2000)

Recommended: "Optimism and Pessimism," "Politics," "Utopias" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Thursday (1/25):

Required:

• H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896)
• _____, The War of the Worlds (1898)

Recommended: "Aliens," "Biology," "Colonization of Other Worlds," "Evolution," "Invasion," "Medicine," "Scientists" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

WEEK 3. MODERNIST VARIANTS

Tuesday (1/30):

Required:

• Karel Capek, War with the Newts (1936)

Recommended: "Satire," "Under the Sea" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report : Mark Rose, Alien Encounters: Anatomy of SF (1981)

Thursday (2/1):

Required:

• Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphosis" (1915)
• Stanislaw Lem, "On the Structural Analysis of Science Fiction" (1973)

Recommended: "Absurdist SF," "Fabulation," "Mainstream Writers of SF," (in Encyclopedia of SF)

WEEK 4. ALIENS IN THE PULPS

Tuesday (2/6):

Required:

• H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness (1936)
• John W. Campbell, Jr., "Who Goes There?" (1938)
• John Rieder, "Embracing the Alien: Science Fiction in Mass Culture"(1982)

Recommended: "Gothic SF," "Horror in SF," "Monsters," "Paranoia," "Pulp SF" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Thursday (2/8):

Required:

• A.E. Van Vogt, "Black Destroyer" (1939)
• Clifford D. Simak, "Desertion" (1944)
• Murray Leinster, "First Contact" (1945)

Recommended: "Genre SF," "Golden Age of SF," "Heroes," "Life on Other Worlds" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: John Huntington, Rationalizing Genius: Ideological Strategies in the Classic American Science Fiction Short Story (1989)

WEEK 5. SUPERMEN: MAINSTREAM AND PULP VERSIONS

Tuesday (2/13):

Required:

• Olaf Stapledon, Odd John (1935)

Recommended: "Superman," "Scientific Romance" (in Encyclopedia SF)

Review/Report: Casey Fredericks, The Future of Eternity: Mythologies of Science Fiction and Fantasy (1982)

Thursday (2/15):

Required:

• Stanley G. Weinbaum, "The Adaptive Ultimate" (1936)
• Henry Kuttner, "The Piper's Son" (1945)
• Theodore Sturgeon, "Baby is Three" (1952)
• Brian Attebery, "Super Men" (1998)

Recommended: "Intelligence," "Mutants" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

WEEK 6. ROBOTS IN THE PULPS

Tuesday (2/20):

Required:

• Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (1950)

Recommended: "Robots," "Women as Portrayed in Science Fiction" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: Gary K. Wolfe, The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (1979)

Thursday (2/22):

Required:

• Lester del Rey, "Helen O'Loy" (1938)
• Jack Williamson, "With Folded Hands" (1947)
• C.L. Moore, "No Woman Born" (1949)
• Stanislaw Lem, "Robots in Science Fiction" (1969)

WEEK 7. TELEPATHY AND TRANSCENDENCE

Tuesday (2/27):

Required:

• Alfred Bester, The Demolished Man (1953)
• David G. Mead, "Signs of Crime: Aspects of Structure in Science Fiction Detective Stories" (1987)

Recommended: "Crime and Punishment, "Psi Powers" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Thursday (3/1):

Required:

• Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End (1953)

Recommended: "Eschatology," "Gods and Demons," "Hive-Minds" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: Frederick A. Kreuziger, The Religion of Science Fiction (1986)

WEEK 8. CONFRONTING THE ALIEN

Tuesday (3/6):

Required:

• Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1959)

Recommended: "Libertarian SF," "Social Darwinism," "War" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: H. Bruce Franklin, Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction (1980)

Thursday (3/8):

Required:

• Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961)
• Carl D. Malmgren, "Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounters" (1993)

Recommended: "Communications," "Perception," "Psychology" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

WEEK 9. SPRING BREAK

WEEK 10. READING WEEK

WEEK 11. WORLD-CREATION

Tuesday (3/27):

Required:

• Frank Herbert, Dune (1963)
• Carol McGuirk, "NoWhere Man: Towards a Poetics of Post-Utopian Characterization" (1994)

Recommended: "Drugs," "Ecology," "Messiahs," "Planetary Romance," "Religion," "Space Flight," "Space Opera" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Thursday (3/29):

Required:

• Herbert, cont'd

Review/Report: Sharona Ben-Tov, The Artificial Paradise: Science Fiction and American Reality (1995)

WEEK 12. GENDER: ERASURE AND SEPARATISM

Tuesday (4/3):

Required:

• Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)
• Fredric Jameson , "World-Reduction in Le Guin:The Emergence of Utopian Narrative" (1975)

Recommended: "Anthropology," "Sex" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Thursday (4/5):

Required:

• Samuel R. Delany, "Aye, and Gomorrah..." (1967)
• Joanna Russ, "When It Changed" (1972)
• James Tiptree, Jr., "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" (1977)

Recommended: "Feminism" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: Sarah Lefanu, In the Chinks of the World-Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction (1988)

WEEK 13. ANDROIDS AND CLONES

Tuesday (4/10):

Required:

• Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1969)
• Carl Freedman, "Towards a Theory of Paranoia: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick" (1984)

Recommended: "Androids," "Automation" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Thursday (4/12):

Required:

• Ursula K. Le Guin, "Nine Lives" (1969)
• Gene Wolfe, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" (1972)
• Kate Wilhelm, "Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" (1974)

Recommended: "Clones," "Cybernetics" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics(1999)

WEEK 14. CYBORGS AND CYBERPUNK

Tuesday (4/17):

Required:

• William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
• Amanda Fernbach, "The Fetishization of Masculinity in Science Fiction: The Cyborg and the Console Cowboy" (2000)

Recommended: "Computers," Cyberpunk," "Cyborgs," "Near Future," "Postmodernism and SF," "Virtual Reality" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Thursday (4/19):

Required:

• Greg Bear, "Blood Music" (1983)
• Bruce Sterling, "Cicada Queen" (1983)
• Pat Cadigan, "Pretty Boy Crossover" (1986)

Recommended: "Economics," "Media Landscape," "Nanotechnology" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction (1993)

WEEK 15. GENETIC ENGINEERING

Tuesday (4/24):

Required:

• Octavia Butler, Lilith's Brood (1987-89)

Recommended: "Genetic Engineering," "Mythology," "Parasitism and Symbiosis" (in Encyclopedia of SF)

Review/Report: Jenny Wolmark, Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism (1994)

Thursday (4/26):

Required:

• Butler, cont'd
• Cathy Peppers, "Dialogic Origins and Alien Identities in Butler's XENOGENESIS" (1995)

WEEK 16. POSTHUMANITY

Tuesday (5/1):

Required:

• Greg Egan, Diaspora (1998)

Thursday (5/3):

Required:

• Joanna Russ, "Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction" (1975)
• Ursula Le Guin, "Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown" (1976)
• Patrick Parrinder, "The Alien Encounter: Or, Ms Brown and Mrs Le Guin" (1979)