Assignments & Announcements
• Reading:Reading:– Bennett: Chapters 6, 7, 9, 10; Ch. 4 pages 102-104
• Homework: Homework: – Planet Temperature Solver:
• Homework #2 (7 pts): Last Day Accepted
• Homework #3 (8pts): Due Today; Last Day Accepted will be Wed., Nov. 17
• Announcements:Announcements:– Movie Report Rewrite due: Mon., Nov. 15– Review Session #3: Mon., Nov. 16, SW119, 7:30-9:00pm– Exam #3: Wed., Nov. 17.– Rooftop Observing (5 pts): Mon., Nov. 15 & Thurs., Nov. 18.
Meet outside SW319 at 8:00pm sharp.
Guest LectureProfessor Katrina G. Boyd
Communication and Culture
• Science Fiction as a Genre
• The Alien as “The Other”
Science Fiction
• Emerges as a literary genre in the late 19th century, a period marked by – Scientific and technological discovery
• novelty and innovation
– Major social shifts (urbanization) and rapid industrialization
– Concept of Social and Technological “Progress”
– Encounters with other cultures• Empires, anthropology, etc.
Science Fiction and “The New”
The Novum (plural “Nova”)
The point of difference from the world
we know
The element that does not exist in our reality
Defining Science Fiction
Negative Example:
Why is this NOT science fiction?
• Person travels to another world in manmade object
• Arrives in a strange new land
• “First contact” situation with different types of “humanoids”
Why Isn’t This Science Fiction?
Group Work:Question AWhat elements are “wrong”
for science fiction?Question BWhat could be changed to
fit the requirements of the science fiction genre?
Question C (for all)What is your working
definition of science fiction?
Science Fiction Nova and “Stock Elements”
Genres (such as the western, the musical) necessarily repeat key elements.
Science fiction has a range of stock “nova” and plot situations:
--android/robot
--alien (first contact stories)
--technological innovations
Defining Science Fiction
Darko Suvin defines science fiction as a genre of “cognitive estrangement”
• Cognition = the mental process of knowing, particularly based on reasoning and judgment
Science Fiction relies on scientific/psuedoscientific language/reasoning
• Estrangement = a process in literature/art of “making the familiar strange”
Science Fiction and the Present
• In Suvin’s definition, science fiction is not so much about the “future” as about estranging our perception of our own “present.”
• Rids us of “automatic perception”
• Allows us to gain “critical distance” on our own perceptions
Imagining the “Other”: Alien Encounter Science Fiction
• Self vs. the “Other” Ex: categories of “race”
– “Other” as monstrous, irredeemable and horrific• As a projection of what we deny in ourselves rather than a
true understanding
– “Other” as essentially the same• Reducing “otherness” to “sameness”
– “Other” as beyond our understanding• As truly “other”
• In science fiction the self vs. other conflict is estranged into the human vs. non-Human
“Other” as Monstrous
H.G. WellsWar of the Worlds (1898)
• Monstrous alien• Alien body (large
head, tentacles) encased in a towering machine
• Technologically and intellectually superior
• Power of aliens analogous to that of the British Empire
50s Sci-Fi and the Monstrous Other
Them! (1954) The Thing from Another World (1951)
Alien (1979)
• H.R. Giger’s design concept for alien:Biomechanics
• Alien as both organic and technological
• Crossing Boundaries
“Otherness” as “sameness”
• Star Trek, especially the original series and Star Trek: The Next Generation
• Cognitive Estrangement: Aliens and allegories of race relations
“Let This Be Your Last Battlefield”
Watt’s Riots (1965)
(1969)
Star Trek and Liberal Humanism
• Star Trek’s “Prime Directive”
• Progress and “natural” development
• Essential “sameness”
Who Watches the Watchers
The Transformation of The BorgCyborg=fusion of technological and organic components
The “Other” as Truly Other
