High-school

Literature & Language

What does speculative mean?

• Hypothetical

• Predictive

• Plausible…to a point

HARD science (natural)

SOFT science (social)

MYTHOLOGICAL

PHILOSOPHICAL

POLITICAL

EXPLORATIONAL

• Narrative

• Characters and character relationships are an important part of the narrative

• Archetypes (hero, villain, maiden, exile/return)

• Natural and supernatural elements

• Symbols and supernatural elements represent abstract ideas

• Science and technology are integrated on the side, as tools

• Note: Myth in literary terms does not mean not real or not possible; myth is a device used by storytellers to explain something that is hard to explain with the constraints of language and symbols.

• Hebrew: Various

• Egyptian: The Tale of Sinhue

• Greek: Homer, Aesop

• Roman: Virgil

• Celtic: Various

• Norse: Snorri

• Native American: Various

• Mesopotamia: The Epic of Gilgamesh

• Indian: The Ramayana of Valmiki

• Chinese: Songs of the South

• Japanese: The Tale of Ise

• Filipino: The Children of Limokon

• United States: Marvel, Star Wars

SO WHAT DO YOU NOTICE ABOUT MYTHOLOGY

IN SCIENCE FICTION?

• Discuss features

• Would mythological science fiction be based on soft or

hard science?

• Argues a point according to a particular worldview

• Sometimes technology/science is the topic to be argued;

the writer is sometimes either for or against tech/sci

• RHETORIC: Pathos important to conveying argument; fear

often invoked through imagery/sounds/words

• Logos might or might not exist

• Ethos might or might not exist

• Usually tries to warn the audience!

CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME EXAMPLES OF

POLITICAL LITERATURE?

EXPLAIN WHY THE PIECE YOU HAVE SELECTED

IS POLITICAL.

• Questions an idea; usually the question is universal

• Existence? Ethics? Consequences? Knowing? Connections?

• LOGIC: Reason and reasoning through characters/imagery/dialogue

• Integrates science and technology as a tool, OR

• Integrates science and technology to question human understanding of science and technology

• Note: Science fiction that is philosophical often does not fully answer the question it proposes. Conclusions are usually left open. Philosophical sf aims to explore a question.

• Solomon’s Proverbs

• Confucius’ Analects

• Plato’s Republic

• Aristotle

• Cicero’s De Finibus Bonorum et

Malorum

• John’s Gospel

• Augustine’s City of God

• Isidore of Seville

• Alhazen

• Avicenna

• Averroes

• Thomas More’s Utopia

• Shelley’s Frankenstein

WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA ABOUT PHILOSOPHICAL?

• ?

• Is it based on hard or soft science?

• Begins with an accepted scientific theory or fact

• Hypothesizes or develops a new theory based on what is already known

• Extrapolates or creates a story that might work with the “new” theory

• Explores the possibilities, usually in a positive way

• Often takes place in the future

• Traveling is a part of the plot

• Science and technology are extremely important to the story

• Old Testament

• Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor

• Pliny the Elder

• The Voyage of Brendan

• Tales of the Elders of Ireland

• Marco Polo

• Ibn Battuta

• Zheng He

• William of Rubruck

• Boccaccio’s Decameron

• Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

• Dante’s The Divine Comedy

• Prince Henry the Navigator

• Columbus

• Vasco de Gama

• Hans Mayr

• Matsuo Basho

• Jonathan Swift (?)

• Voltaire

• Cervantes

• Narrative of Frederick Douglass

• Jules Verne

WHAT TYPE OF LANGUAGE WOULD YOU EXPECT

TO READ IN EXPLORATIONAL SF?

• Vocabulary

• Text patterns

• Does every piece of science fiction literature fit

neatly into one of the four types? Explain.

• How does science fiction literature connect to

other literatures outside of science fiction?

• Mythological (narrative)

• Political (argument)

• Philosophical (dialogue)

• Explorational (informational)

REFERENCES NOTES:

Harmon and Holman use the quote, “something at once familiar and strange” under the heading of myth and describe myth as “narrative embodiments of a people’s perception of the deepest truths” (p. 338).

Propaganda Novel: A novel dealing with a special social, political, economic, or moral issue or problem and possibly advocati ng a doctrinaire solution. If the propagandistic purpose dominates the work so as to dwarf or eclipse all other elements, such as plot and character, then the novel belongs in the re alm of the didactic… (p. 417)

Harmon and Holman also suggest that the “problem novel” or the novel that has “a story with a purpose rather than for a purpose” is also a propaganda novel since the writer is trying to cause an action, give evidence to support a theory, based on the “thesis” of his or her story’s argument (p. 414).

REFERENCES:

Ankiewicz, P., de Swardt, E., & de Vries, M. (2006). Some Implications of the Philosophy of Technology for Science, Technology and Society (STS) Studies. International Journal Of Technology & Design Education, 16(2), 117-141. doi:10.1007/s10798-005-3595-x

Ashliman, DL (2003). Creation myths from the Philippines. Retrieved from http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/creation-phil.html

Bradbury, Ray (1953). “The Day After Tomorrow: Why Science Fiction?” The Nation, pp. 364 -67.

Darko, S. (1983). Victorian science fiction, 1871-85: The rise of the alternative history subgenre. Science Fiction Studies, 10(2), 3 0. pp. 148-169.

Facer, K. (2012). Personal, relational and beautiful: education, technologies, and John MacMurray’s philosophy. Oxford Review of Education, 38(6), 709-725.

Gill, R.B. “The uses of genre and the classification of speculative fiction.” Mosaic [Winnipeg] 46.2 (2013): 71.Expanded Acad emic ASAP. Web. 10 July 2014.

Hall, H.W. (1999). The Bibliographic Control of Science Fiction: A Quarter-Century of Change. Extrapolation, 40(4), pp. 304-313.

Harmon, W. and Holman, H. (2006). A handbook to literature, tenth edition. Pearson, Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, New Je rsey.

Hung, D., Lee, S., Y.T. Lim, K. (2012). Authentic learning for the twenty -first century: Bridging the formal and the informal. Educational technology, research and development, 60(6). Retrieved via Academic Search Premier.

Masri, H. (2009). Science fiction stories and contexts. Bedford/St. Martin’s: New York, p. 478.

Partsch, C (2002). Paul Scheerbart and the art of science fiction. Science Fiction Studies, 29(2), 87. pp. 202 -220.

Prosser, J (2014). Science fiction literature in the secondary classroom. CLA Portfolio. Retrieved from http://claportfolio.org/2014/07/23/science-fiction-literature-in-the-secondary-classroom/

Scanlon, E. E., Anastopoulou, S. S., Kerawalla, L. L., & Mulholland, P. P. (2011). How technology resources can be used to represent personal inquiry and support students’ understanding of it across contexts. Journal Of Computer Assisted Learning, 27(6), 516-529. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2729.2011.00414.x

ANTHOLOGIES

Harper Collins World Reader. Caws & Prendergast, eds. (1994). The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. A.., 3 rd Ed. (2012).