The first issue of Gilman's Forerunner (1909).
What seems to be the first book (rather than serial) edition of Herland.
Gilman herself.
Friedrich Froebel, sometimes credited with an important invention.
Images from the Smithsonian's Making of Homemakers collection
There is an essential womanhood but it's not this. Maybe it's this?
There is evolution but it's not this; maybe it's this.
Not quite what this guy thought.
Another familiar contrast between men's tastes and women's.
One analogy for Herland.
Another analogy. Who's the snake?
A future that came true.
A hard problem for Gilman's Utopian program to solve.
Naming a genre.
Using another genre.
Explicitly feminist sf: much later examples.
Looking for secondary sources? You can reach the Modern Language Association (MLA) bibliography through the main Harvard library site.
Hawthorne: a famous garden.
Hawthorne: Genesis 3, the Fall.
Hawthorne: the Roman god Vertumnus, a dude made in part of fruit.
Artificial selection gave us maize, or American corn.
The dark purple flower of doom.
Nightshade's purple flowers and dark fruit.
An apparently reliable academically sponsored reading edition of "Rappaccini's Daughter."
Saturday, September 14, 2019
Monday, September 9, 2019
Connecticut Yankee
Another point of origin for a kind of sf.
From the University of Virginia, a useful guide to contexts for Twain's Yankee.
An 1889 edition of Connecticut Yankee.
About the production of Yankee and the illustrations by Dan Beard; a few of Twain's favorites.
A symbol for Connecticut.
The marvelous lightning rod.
Mark Twain's house in Hartford (built 1873-74); a virtual tour.
Illustrating Malory's Morte d'Arthur with 1890s artist Aubrey Beardsley.
P. T. Barnum, The Art of Money Getting (1886).
A full suit of armor. Heavy, isn't it?
Contemporary recreational armor.
The advent of outdoor electric lights.
An early telephone (1876).
Knights on pennyfarthing bicycles.
From the Mark Twain Museum in Missouri, a Twain timeline and brief publishing history.
The infamous Paige Compositor. More about it.
Remembering the U.S. Civil War-- dead soldiers at Antietam; anticipating trench warfare.
Does all sf tend to become military sf?
Key lines from Twain's novel: "Training is all there is"... "any Established church"... "a man is a man at bottom."
More key lines: the "ossifying" effects of slavery. Gutenberg, Arkwright, and so on, the real creators.
What Arkwright invented: the water-frame loom. A late nineteenth century Singer sewing machine.
Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla on public radio. (They don't become close till after the Yankee, though.)
An ad for tooth polish (1913).
The past is a place (apologies to Bud Foote.)
Hawthorne: a famous garden.
Hawthorne: Genesis 3, the Fall.
Hawthorne: the Roman god Vertumnus, a dude made in part of fruit.
Artificial selection gave us maize, or American corn.
The dark purple flower of doom.
Nightshade's purple flowers and dark fruit.
An apparently reliable academically sponsored reading edition of "Rappaccini's Daughter," from Jack Lynch's miscellany of online texts.
From the University of Virginia, a useful guide to contexts for Twain's Yankee.
An 1889 edition of Connecticut Yankee.
About the production of Yankee and the illustrations by Dan Beard; a few of Twain's favorites.
A symbol for Connecticut.
The marvelous lightning rod.
Mark Twain's house in Hartford (built 1873-74); a virtual tour.
Illustrating Malory's Morte d'Arthur with 1890s artist Aubrey Beardsley.
P. T. Barnum, The Art of Money Getting (1886).
A full suit of armor. Heavy, isn't it?
Contemporary recreational armor.
The advent of outdoor electric lights.
An early telephone (1876).
Knights on pennyfarthing bicycles.
From the Mark Twain Museum in Missouri, a Twain timeline and brief publishing history.
The infamous Paige Compositor. More about it.
Remembering the U.S. Civil War-- dead soldiers at Antietam; anticipating trench warfare.
Does all sf tend to become military sf?
Key lines from Twain's novel: "Training is all there is"... "any Established church"... "a man is a man at bottom."
More key lines: the "ossifying" effects of slavery. Gutenberg, Arkwright, and so on, the real creators.
What Arkwright invented: the water-frame loom. A late nineteenth century Singer sewing machine.
Mark Twain and Nicola Tesla on public radio. (They don't become close till after the Yankee, though.)
An ad for tooth polish (1913).
The past is a place (apologies to Bud Foote.)
Hawthorne: a famous garden.
Hawthorne: Genesis 3, the Fall.
Hawthorne: the Roman god Vertumnus, a dude made in part of fruit.
Artificial selection gave us maize, or American corn.
The dark purple flower of doom.
Nightshade's purple flowers and dark fruit.
An apparently reliable academically sponsored reading edition of "Rappaccini's Daughter," from Jack Lynch's miscellany of online texts.
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
H. G. Wells
A reliable text for The Time Machine (book version). First book edition.
Darko Suvin excludes some fiction from "science fiction" (1978), and offers an sf theory list in 1979.
Suvin gets interviewed at length in 1991.
The H. G. Wells Society and its journal.
Jules Verne versus H. G. Wells.
From the 1977 Burt Lancaster Island of Dr. Moreau.
Wells in 1926: respectable enough for the cover of TIME.
Wells as guiding spirit for a Romanian science fiction club.
British disasters and longue durée sf after Wells.
Toy Time Machines and a toy Time Traveller, by the sadly defunct toy designer Spookypop.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, outside and inside.
A poster for George Pal's 1960 film version.
Pure wonder.
Sketchy terror.
The future of characteristically British sadness.
Harmless flowers. More harmless flowers.
In a coal mine (Illustrated London News, 1876).
Coming out of a coal mine.
Contemplating evolution.
A real giant centipede, not for the squeamish, and some attractive jellyfish.
Darko Suvin excludes some fiction from "science fiction" (1978), and offers an sf theory list in 1979.
Suvin gets interviewed at length in 1991.
The H. G. Wells Society and its journal.
Jules Verne versus H. G. Wells.
From the 1977 Burt Lancaster Island of Dr. Moreau.
Wells in 1926: respectable enough for the cover of TIME.
Wells as guiding spirit for a Romanian science fiction club.
British disasters and longue durée sf after Wells.
Toy Time Machines and a toy Time Traveller, by the sadly defunct toy designer Spookypop.
The Victoria and Albert Museum, outside and inside.
A poster for George Pal's 1960 film version.
Pure wonder.
Sketchy terror.
The future of characteristically British sadness.
Harmless flowers. More harmless flowers.
In a coal mine (Illustrated London News, 1876).
Coming out of a coal mine.
Contemplating evolution.
A real giant centipede, not for the squeamish, and some attractive jellyfish.
Saturday, August 31, 2019
first lecture
Robot fanfare to open the course.
The visual future.
This guy likes cyberpunk.
Let's play a game. A brief not-especially-woke but favorable review of the game.
Fan culture worldwide, and in New Zealand. At Harvard itself. And at MIT.
Theodore von Holst's 1831 frontispiece to a book written earlier and made even more famous later.
Mythical tech. Mythical biotech.
The H. G. Wells Society. H. G. Wells looks worried.
Hugo Gernsback's Radio News and Amazing Stories.
Issues of Astounding Science Fiction, from 1939, and from 1950.
A paperback illustator's Mesklin.
More on the Cartmill affair. An A-bomb diagram.
Chesley Bonestell: spacecraft.
A beautiful robot B.E.M. head.
You can't avoid Robert A. Heinlein.
Stuff engineers like.
We can't avoid politics.
Neither can superheroes, who are indeed SF.
Also SF: near-future authoritarian dystopias. And giant hurricanes.
Mapping More's Utopia. Peter Fitting on Utopian studies.
Critics make theories of sf, and more theories.
SF as an experiment, with the real world, or realist fiction, as control.
Book cover for Ishiguro.
A poster for the midcentury film Destination Moon.
Later sf on TV. And on film, not necessarily popular American film.
Ice melts in Antarctica. Kim Stanley Robinson is right to worry about it.
The academic journal Science Fiction Studies.
The official Harvard College Canvas site for our course.
Everybody should read Strange Horizons. You might also consider helping Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. Also relevant: Lightspeed. Current issue of Apex. And Clarkesworld. And of course LCRW. Podcasts can be SF. Nightvale, maybe. Bright Sessions, certainly. Near future dystopia trends. Sandra Newman, for example. And yes, this.
The visual future.
This guy likes cyberpunk.
Let's play a game. A brief not-especially-woke but favorable review of the game.
Fan culture worldwide, and in New Zealand. At Harvard itself. And at MIT.
Theodore von Holst's 1831 frontispiece to a book written earlier and made even more famous later.
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Mythical tech. Mythical biotech.
The H. G. Wells Society. H. G. Wells looks worried.
Hugo Gernsback's Radio News and Amazing Stories.
Issues of Astounding Science Fiction, from 1939, and from 1950.
A paperback illustator's Mesklin.
More on the Cartmill affair. An A-bomb diagram.
Chesley Bonestell: spacecraft.
A beautiful robot B.E.M. head.
You can't avoid Robert A. Heinlein.
Stuff engineers like.
We can't avoid politics.
Neither can superheroes, who are indeed SF.
Also SF: near-future authoritarian dystopias. And giant hurricanes.
Mapping More's Utopia. Peter Fitting on Utopian studies.
Critics make theories of sf, and more theories.
SF as an experiment, with the real world, or realist fiction, as control.
Book cover for Ishiguro.
A poster for the midcentury film Destination Moon.
Later sf on TV. And on film, not necessarily popular American film.
Ice melts in Antarctica. Kim Stanley Robinson is right to worry about it.
The academic journal Science Fiction Studies.
The official Harvard College Canvas site for our course.
Everybody should read Strange Horizons. You might also consider helping Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. Also relevant: Lightspeed. Current issue of Apex. And Clarkesworld. And of course LCRW. Podcasts can be SF. Nightvale, maybe. Bright Sessions, certainly. Near future dystopia trends. Sandra Newman, for example. And yes, this.
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
First handout, 2017
If every man, woman, boy and girl, could be induced to read science fiction right along, there would certainly be a great resulting benefit to the community, in that the educational standard of its people would be raised tremendously. Science fiction would make people happier, give them a broader understanding of the world, make them more tolerant.
--Hugo Gernsback, editorial in Amazing Stories (1927), qtd. in Brooks Landon, Science Fiction After 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars (New York: Routledge, 2002 [1995]), 52
When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn’t all that warm and they could sit reading it and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head. I’d like to write like Delany or Heinlein or Le Guin.
--Jo Walton, Among Others (New York: Tor, 2010), 52
"OK, Chief! All tight here. You say it's ten light-years to that star. How long's it going to take us to get there?"
"About ten minutes."
--E. E. "Doc" Smith, Skylark Three (Lincoln, Neb.: Bison, 20004 [1930]), 172
Then her world exploded.
If such a string of words appeared in a mundane fiction text, more than likely we would respond to it as an emotionally muzzy metaphor...
He turned on his left side.
---Samuel R. Delany, "Science Fiction and 'Literature,'" in D. Hartwell and M. Wolf, eds., Visions of Wonder (New York: Tor, 1996), 448
"Mr. Million," my father said, "is perhaps a bit more sentimental than I—besides, I don't like to go out. You see, doctor, your supposition that we are all truly the same individual will have to be modified. We have our little variations."
---Gene Wolfe, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," in The World Treasury of Science Fiction, ed. David G. Hartwell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), 239
Although SF does not generate story-structures of its own, it transforms popular cultural materials by reorienting their concerns towards its characteristic horizons: the transformation of human societies as a result of innovations attending technoscientific projects.
--Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction_ (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2008), 7
Science fiction is always about the here and now, about this place where humans live.
--Justine Larbalestier, "Introduction," in Larbalestier, ed., Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the 20th Century (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ., 2004), xviii
All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook among them…. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.
--Ursula K. LeGuin, "Introduction" (1976), in The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1976 [1969]), xii
“Alien planets aren’t Earth, you know. You have to expect wacky things, get along with them, accept them on the basis of the logic that makes them the way they are.”
“I know all that, agreed Mackenzie, “but honest, chief, this place gets in my hair at times. Trees that shoot at you, moss that talks, vines that heave thunderbolts at you—and now, the Encyclopedia.”
--Clifford D. Simak, “Ogre” (1944), in The Best of Astounding, ed. Tony Lewis (New York: Baronet, 1978), 155
Only science fiction can properly confront the moral questions implicit in the political task of steering the human world into a future... I do not say simply that science fiction is useful in this respect: I say that it is necessary.
---Brian Stableford, "To Bring in Fine Things," in Visions of Wonder, 674
"Let me get this straight: you're the KGB's core AI, but you're afraid of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?" Manfred pauses in mid-stride, narrowly avoids being mown down by a GPS-guided roller-blader.
"Am have been badly burned by viral end-user license agreements... Manfred, you must help me-we. Am wishing to defect."
--Charles Stross, "Lobsters," in V. MacIntyre, Nebula Awards Showcase 2004 (New York: Penguin, 2004), 230
[The video] arcade seems nothing more than a defunct landmark around which has gathered this intense cult of paperwork-hobbyists. A wiry teenager in tight black jeans and a black t-shirt prowls among the tables with the provocative confidence of a pool hustler, a long skinny cardboard box slung over his shoulder like a rifle. "These are my ethnic group," he explains in response to the look on her face. --Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon (New York: Avon, 1999), 647.
--Hugo Gernsback, editorial in Amazing Stories (1927), qtd. in Brooks Landon, Science Fiction After 1900: From the Steam Man to the Stars (New York: Routledge, 2002 [1995]), 52
When I grow up I would like to write something that someone could read sitting on a bench on a day that isn’t all that warm and they could sit reading it and totally forget where they were or what time it was so that they were more inside the book than inside their own head. I’d like to write like Delany or Heinlein or Le Guin.
--Jo Walton, Among Others (New York: Tor, 2010), 52
"OK, Chief! All tight here. You say it's ten light-years to that star. How long's it going to take us to get there?"
"About ten minutes."
--E. E. "Doc" Smith, Skylark Three (Lincoln, Neb.: Bison, 20004 [1930]), 172
Then her world exploded.
If such a string of words appeared in a mundane fiction text, more than likely we would respond to it as an emotionally muzzy metaphor...
He turned on his left side.
---Samuel R. Delany, "Science Fiction and 'Literature,'" in D. Hartwell and M. Wolf, eds., Visions of Wonder (New York: Tor, 1996), 448
"Mr. Million," my father said, "is perhaps a bit more sentimental than I—besides, I don't like to go out. You see, doctor, your supposition that we are all truly the same individual will have to be modified. We have our little variations."
---Gene Wolfe, "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," in The World Treasury of Science Fiction, ed. David G. Hartwell (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), 239
Although SF does not generate story-structures of its own, it transforms popular cultural materials by reorienting their concerns towards its characteristic horizons: the transformation of human societies as a result of innovations attending technoscientific projects.
--Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction_ (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 2008), 7
Science fiction is always about the here and now, about this place where humans live.
--Justine Larbalestier, "Introduction," in Larbalestier, ed., Daughters of Earth: Feminist Science Fiction in the 20th Century (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ., 2004), xviii
All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical outlook among them…. The future, in fiction, is a metaphor.
--Ursula K. LeGuin, "Introduction" (1976), in The Left Hand of Darkness (New York: Ace, 1976 [1969]), xii
“Alien planets aren’t Earth, you know. You have to expect wacky things, get along with them, accept them on the basis of the logic that makes them the way they are.”
“I know all that, agreed Mackenzie, “but honest, chief, this place gets in my hair at times. Trees that shoot at you, moss that talks, vines that heave thunderbolts at you—and now, the Encyclopedia.”
--Clifford D. Simak, “Ogre” (1944), in The Best of Astounding, ed. Tony Lewis (New York: Baronet, 1978), 155
Only science fiction can properly confront the moral questions implicit in the political task of steering the human world into a future... I do not say simply that science fiction is useful in this respect: I say that it is necessary.
---Brian Stableford, "To Bring in Fine Things," in Visions of Wonder, 674
"Let me get this straight: you're the KGB's core AI, but you're afraid of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?" Manfred pauses in mid-stride, narrowly avoids being mown down by a GPS-guided roller-blader.
"Am have been badly burned by viral end-user license agreements... Manfred, you must help me-we. Am wishing to defect."
--Charles Stross, "Lobsters," in V. MacIntyre, Nebula Awards Showcase 2004 (New York: Penguin, 2004), 230
[The video] arcade seems nothing more than a defunct landmark around which has gathered this intense cult of paperwork-hobbyists. A wiry teenager in tight black jeans and a black t-shirt prowls among the tables with the provocative confidence of a pool hustler, a long skinny cardboard box slung over his shoulder like a rifle. "These are my ethnic group," he explains in response to the look on her face. --Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon (New York: Avon, 1999), 647.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Last lecture, 2017
A memory of the future.
The shape of things to come.
The world is amazing.
Modern tech helps people.
Modern tech could kill us all.
Modern experimental science helps us understand ourselves.
Modern tech creates beauty.
Modern tech hurts us all.
Kate Elliott is right.
One governing metaphor for sf in general.
One complement to that metaphor.
New worlds, far-future or otherwise.
Fabula and syuzet: a refresher.
One subgenre of sf.
Another subgenre of sf.
What happens to time?
A detailed but outdated nonacademic Ted Chiang fan site.
An interview with Ted Chiang from 2010 (at Boing Boing).
A more recent interview with Chiang (Asian American Writers Workshop). Another interview (Clarion Writers' Workshop).
Nnedi Okorafor clarifies some sources.
Nnedi Okorafor generally.
A good essay on "Binti" and its contexts.
The Clarion Workshop and the associated Clarion Foundation.
Want more book-oriented SF? Go here. Or, closer to home, here.
The shape of things to come.
The world is amazing.
Modern tech helps people.
Modern tech could kill us all.
Modern experimental science helps us understand ourselves.
Modern tech creates beauty.
Modern tech hurts us all.
Kate Elliott is right.
One governing metaphor for sf in general.
One complement to that metaphor.
New worlds, far-future or otherwise.
Fabula and syuzet: a refresher.
One subgenre of sf.
Another subgenre of sf.
What happens to time?
A detailed but outdated nonacademic Ted Chiang fan site.
An interview with Ted Chiang from 2010 (at Boing Boing).
A more recent interview with Chiang (Asian American Writers Workshop). Another interview (Clarion Writers' Workshop).
Nnedi Okorafor clarifies some sources.
Nnedi Okorafor generally.
A good essay on "Binti" and its contexts.
The Clarion Workshop and the associated Clarion Foundation.
Want more book-oriented SF? Go here. Or, closer to home, here.
Pie contest, 2017
We will award pie to any complete answer we get to this set of questions, or to the top three answers if we receive no complete and correct ones. Incomplete answers and guesses are encouraged.
Please email your answers by 4pm on Thursday Dec. 7 to Stephanie and to your TF.
(Note also that Stephanie will hold ordinary office hours, 1:30-4pm, next Tues. Dec 6; Stephanie will also be available to meet by appointment when on leave this spring.)
1. Where is Miriam called Miriam, where is she called Helge, and why?
2. What tattooed hero denies that he is a Sin-Eater?
3. What book of poetry set in the future features a main character who lived through the Kwangju uprising?
4. What name does Sax Russell later assume?
5. Why do scanners live in vain?
6. What do Sarah, Alison, Helena, Cosima, Tony, Beth, Krystal and Rachel have in common?
7. What got New Worlds magazine in legal trouble?
8. Did Doro die? If so, who killed Doro?
9. What 1990s rapper told the people of California he was born on Jupiter?
10. What French composer introduced electronic instruments to his postwar orchestra?
11. What British poet who died in 2015 edited sf and later wrote about Stalin?
12. What novella about a charismatic abbess is probably a tribute to James Tiptree, Jr.?
13. What are slipstream and steampunk?
14. What's the difference between the New People and the rest of the people in Bangkok?
15. What Easthampton, Mass.-based magazine had an amazing story about jellyfish, near-future genderqueer kids, and water pollution in its environmental-themed 33rd issue?
16. Who created a habitable future world that extends for 360 degrees around the sun?
17. Why will Ken Liu be in Quincy, Mass. in July 2018?
18. What was Deirdre's profession, when she was human?
19. What aliens' Language requires two speakers or phonemes at once?
20. How is a land ironclad like a communications satellite?
Please email your answers by 4pm on Thursday Dec. 7 to Stephanie and to your TF.
(Note also that Stephanie will hold ordinary office hours, 1:30-4pm, next Tues. Dec 6; Stephanie will also be available to meet by appointment when on leave this spring.)
1. Where is Miriam called Miriam, where is she called Helge, and why?
2. What tattooed hero denies that he is a Sin-Eater?
3. What book of poetry set in the future features a main character who lived through the Kwangju uprising?
4. What name does Sax Russell later assume?
5. Why do scanners live in vain?
6. What do Sarah, Alison, Helena, Cosima, Tony, Beth, Krystal and Rachel have in common?
7. What got New Worlds magazine in legal trouble?
8. Did Doro die? If so, who killed Doro?
9. What 1990s rapper told the people of California he was born on Jupiter?
10. What French composer introduced electronic instruments to his postwar orchestra?
11. What British poet who died in 2015 edited sf and later wrote about Stalin?
12. What novella about a charismatic abbess is probably a tribute to James Tiptree, Jr.?
13. What are slipstream and steampunk?
14. What's the difference between the New People and the rest of the people in Bangkok?
15. What Easthampton, Mass.-based magazine had an amazing story about jellyfish, near-future genderqueer kids, and water pollution in its environmental-themed 33rd issue?
16. Who created a habitable future world that extends for 360 degrees around the sun?
17. Why will Ken Liu be in Quincy, Mass. in July 2018?
18. What was Deirdre's profession, when she was human?
19. What aliens' Language requires two speakers or phonemes at once?
20. How is a land ironclad like a communications satellite?
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