2013 practice exam text

PART I. Pick ten terms from the list of twenty below and write, for each of the ten, just one phrase or sentence about what it means and how it functions in a work we have read for this course; give the name of the author of that work (you may but need not give the title of the work as well). A few terms may have more than one right answer (20%).

PART II. Then, from among those ten, pick three and write two or three substantial paragraphs about each, making an argument about how it functions in that work and what it means (45%).

Granny Nanny     The Palace of Green Porcelain


The Avvenger     A solar eclipse
Beatrice     Cyberspace
HelthWyzer     The Three Laws of Robotics
Gelle-Klara Moynlin    Lentz

Twitter      Ellador
C. P. (“Cold Pig”)    Joe Chip
River      cognitive estrangement
Ann Clayborne     A sudden shift into color from black and white
Calliagnosia     habermans

PART III. In a cogent essay with a well-supported argument, answer one of the following questions. Your answer should refer to, and demonstrate that you have thought about, at least two works we have read for this course (35%). You may, of course, refer to others. Please do not duplicate in this part the claims that you made in part II (you may refer to the same works); do not simply duplicate arguments you made in the papers you wrote for our course. You may refer to the works on which you wrote papers, though the best essay for this exam would remind us that you have read some other works too.

1. “All sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” says a claim widely attributed to Arthur C. Clarke (sometimes cited as Clarke’s law). Does this claim hold, when applied to sf? If not, what’s the difference between sf effects and magic, and how does it affect what sf can do?

2. Can sf depict, with aesthetic power and intellectual conviction, consciousness, intelligence or personality that we can recognize as not human, and as in some important way not like what’s human? If so, how? If not, why do authors keep trying?

3. SF by definition depicts a world in at least one respect (the novum) unlike our own. Does that mean that sf always works as escape, as a way to give readers pleasure by imagining lives outside the real world, real life, real history? If not, why not? If so, is that a problem, or a strength, and either way, why?