Practice exam 2017

Our December final exam will have this structure and these kinds of questions, though all the examples will be different. We’re distributing this practice exam before Thanksgiving in response to student requests. We’ll discuss the exam and how to take it after Thanksgiving, in one of our final lecture classes.

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%).

Obsidian ---------------------------The Palace of Green Porcelain
Yorkie --------------- --------------A solar eclipse
Andy ------------------ -------------Cyberspace
The space elevator ----------- ----The Three Laws of Robotics

Gelle-Klara Moynlin -------------Lentz
Florida ------------------------------Ellador
C. P. (“Cold Pig”) -----------------Joe Chip
Jordan -------------------------------cognitive estrangement
Ann Clayborne---------------------A sudden shift into color from black and white
Frelks -------------------------------Joe-Jim

 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 duplicate the 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 other works too.

1. Sf developed first as prose fiction, consisting of nothing but printed words. What can images, sound or digital media do for sf that print, on its own, cannot?

 2. How do sf works and sf authors construct a tradition, or propose lines of descent, connecting their own works to earlier works within sf?

 3. Can sf effectively represent 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?

4. SF by definition depicts a world in at least one respect (the novum) unlike our own. Does that make all sf an escape from history, or from the present, or from the real world? If not, why not? If so, is that a problem, or a source of strength?