“I notice that capable
men are still at a premium in our society; we still need the man who is
intelligent enough to think of the proper questions to ask. Perhaps if we could
find enough of such, these dislocations you worry about…wouldn’t occur” (“The
Evitable Conflict,” 265).
INTRO: We already live in
an age of science fiction: an age where we can watch a live video feed from
Mars, as well as track asteroids as they sail past Earth. We also live in a
world of global warming, virtual reality, artificial technology, and
self-driving cars. What’s next? Or perhaps the better question to ask is: how is the future being shaped in the news
today? What happened in yesterday’s news feed which will affect how you raise
your kids tomorrow?
REPONSE: I want you to
find an article on-line, or from a journal, or in a magazine (Best American Magazine Writing 2015, for
those who took Comp 1 with me, perhaps) which discusses some important contemporary
issue. It can be about anything, as long as it’s current and of national
importance. Print this article out and include it with your paper (and be sure
to read it carefully!). Then I want you to write a short science fiction story
(maybe 3-4 pages double spaced) that takes this article into the “future.” Take
the same issues, problems, and concerns and place them in a new setting—a future
Earth, or another planet, or among aliens, or robots, or on a starship. If
science fiction is a metaphor for our own world, help us see the problems and
debates of this issue in a different time and place. Remember, it’s often hard
to see why we should care about something in our own time: but if you can fool
us into seeing it in a different context, we might finally understand why our
21st century problems matter.
FOR EXAMPLE: The Star Trek episode we watched in class, “Let
That Be Your Last Battlefield” (1969), was released during the Civil Rights
Movement, at a time when you couldn’t really discuss race or equal rights on a
television show...but you could talk about aliens with the same issues. At
the end of this episode, with their planet in flames and their hatred intact,
Lt. Uhuru asks, “do you suppose that’s all they ever had, sir?” And Captain
Kirk responds, “No...but that’s all they have left.” A fitting epilogue for a
country that was tearing itself apart over age-old prejudices when they might
have united in brotherhood.
DUE: Thursday, May 4th
by 5pm in my box or office
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