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Who We Are & What We Dream: Comparative Science Fiction (10th-12th grade)

"Who We Are & What We Dream: Comparative Science Fiction" is an honors-level high school literature class taught online. Over the course of a semester, students read a wide variety of science fiction novels, novellas, and short stories spanning nearly 200 years and reflect on how those works channel readers' dreams -- and nightmares -- about science, scientists, and the future.

To give students a sense of the class, here are short excerpts from some of our reading.

"And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own -- the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for a change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!" (E.M. Forster)

"The Surveyors, wandering like picnickers over sunny plains of violet filicaliformes, spoke softly to each other. They knew their voices broke a silence of a thousand million years, the silence of wind and leaves, leaves and wind, blowing and ceasing and blowing again. They talked softly; but being human, they talked." (Ursula LeGuin)

"Of course, any Ganymedean products got special attention these days; the Moons had, during the last year, gotten beyond their usual state of economic greed and had begun -- according to intelligence circles -- mulling overt military action against competitive interest, of which the Inner Three planets could be called the foremost element. But so far nothing had shown up. Exports remained of adequate quality, with no special jokers, no toxic paint to be licked off, no capsules of bacteria.
And yet....
Any group of people as inventive as the Ganymedeans could be expected to show creativity in whatever field they entered. Subversion would be tackled like any other venture -- with imagination and a flair for wit." (Philip K. Dick)

"The most interesting thing that's happened so far is that I've seen a cat. I am fascinated, but trying not to appear so since they seem commonplace here." (Connie Willis)

"I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army." (John Scalzi)

"Wealth was an inferior object; but what glory would attend the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!" (Mary Shelley)

"'The water is pure; the air clean," Bashir continued. 'Never have I camped in a more beautiful place.'
Hassan continued to scan the lowlands. 'I have seen men killed by beautiful things.'
'But the biochemistry here must be so different, none of the beasts would find us tasty.'
Hassan lowered his binoculars and looked at his cousin. 'Before or after they have taken a bite?'" (Michael F. Flynn)

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The late science fiction author Roger Zelazny wrote, "Science fiction's special quality, the means by which it achieves its best effects, is of course the imagination, pitched here several octaves above the notes it sounds elsewhere in literature." Do you have a favorite science fiction book or short story, something you found particularly imaginative?

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You can find out more about "Who We Are & What We Dream: Comparative Science Fiction" here.

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