(curious about the title of this page? go here)

Resources that might be relevant to your semester projects

New New York, via Doctor Who  — helpful for Matt?

Telltale Games — helpful to Charlie?

The End (game); Speak, Memory (AI created replace a friend who has died) — helpful to Stacy?

Second Person Present Tense — short story by Daryl Gregory — helpful to Sigrid?

Perdido Street Station, a novel by China Miéville — especially elements about people remade with animal appendages, limbs, etc. as punishments — for Sophie?

In the novel Still Here, by Lara Vapnyar, a character creates an app that let’s the deceased “speak” through their aggregated social media profiles — useful for Stacy?

Relevant News and Other Sundries

 

Wired magazine’s fiction issue (December 2016) has a lead-off story by N.K. Jemisin.

Cool project that Sigrid’s friend did at the Met with interactive/AR art stuff called “Missing the Megafauna” 

The World Wide Cage — how the Internet isn’t liberating anyone but is actually constraining and confining and limiting us

Pointing to science fiction’s Big Themes: Maria Popova (of the Brain Pickings blog) writes about the new book Pinocchio: The Origin Story. It’s a children’s book, but that doesn’t compromise its provocative message. — Robin

Our timing is a little uncanny; how is it that our Science Fiction class debut coincides with the 50th anniversary of “Star Trek”? For your reading pleasure and general edification, I give you this essay in today’s New Yorker magazine. Enduring lessons indeed!

And this: the remarkable story of Gene Roddenberry, illustrated by Matthew Inman (@Oatmeal). — Robin

Adding to our ongoing conversation about genres (and their lack of usefulness), I recently came across the subgenres catagories of cyberpunk and biopunk. — Sigrid

There’s Going to Be a Whole Line of Doctor Who-themed Mr. Men Books

Human?

Frankenstein (book, film(s))

Dracula (book, films)

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Bladerunner

The Left Hand of Darkness

RUR

Planet of the Apes

I Am Legend (story, film)

Less Than Human, a book by philosopher David Livingstone Smith. The themes he explores connect to many of the conversations we’ve been having in class throughout the semester.

 

Machine?

I,Robot (book, film)

Ex Machina

Metropolis

Ghost in the Shell

Black Mirror, 2.1 “Be Right Back”

The Island (2005 Michael Bay film; stars Scarlett Johansson, Ewan McGregor, Djimon Hounsou)  // Could also be listed under Human

The Pentagon’s ‘Terminator Conundrum’: Robots That Could Kill on Their Own — The New York Times, October 25, 2016; a companion piece discusses SF sources of our ideas about AI; many of them have been in our discussions this semester

 

Xenos

Alien

Prometheus

The Martian Chronicles

John Carter of Mars (books, film)

The Blob (1958 film; Steve McQueen’s movie debut)

Golden Record 2.0 — Science Friday, October 7, 2016

[The missing piece: there’s no anthropologist in the conversation.]

Are We Alone in the Universe? Podcast from the New York Academy of Sciences. Includes mention of the Fermi paradox

Intersectionality

 

Urban/Spaces

Neuromancer

Snow Crash

Perdido Street Station

Dhalgren

The Word for World is Forest (book, film — Avatar)

Attack the Block

The Vanishing City — documentary about “old” and “new” New York

Downsiders — they live in the sewers

Dystopia/Utopia

1984 (book, film)

Brave New World

Fahrenheit 451 (book, film)

Children of Men

Brazil

Minority Report (book, film)

Dogma/Doctrine

Ender’s Game (book, film)

Starship Troopers (book, film)

Dune (book(s), films)

Time/Space

Time Machine (book, film)

2001: A Space Odyssey (book, film)

Star Wars

 

Sci-Fi Culture

Stranger Things via SNL (October 8)

Lengthy and lovely profile of Ursula K. Le Guin in the New Yorker magazine.

Other?? Etc.??

Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand

 

 

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Book and Radio)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

World War Z

Marvel Comics

Marvel Cinematic Universe

DC Comics

DC Extended Universe

 

Sigrid’s Favorites

Orphan Black

TO BE CATEGORIZED

Earthsea Trilogy

The Scar

Embassytown

Un Lun Dun

Railsea

The Foundation Series

Oryx and Crake

The Handmaid’s Tale

The Wind-Up Girl

The Golem and the Jinni

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Children of the Sky

The Magician

Wicked

Station Eleven

Stranger in a Strange Land

The Dog Stars

The Hyperion/Endymion novels

Canticle for Liebowitz

Flatland (1st-ever sci fi novel?)

We

Raising Stony Mayhall

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves (Karen Russell)

Strikebreaker (Asimov)

The Garbage Collector (Bradbury)

Akira

A Trip to the Moon

Twelve Monkeys

Moon (cloning)

Star Trek 2 (eugenics, terraforming)

Robocop (cyborg)

Iron Giant

A Scanner Darkly

Inception

The Blob

Andromeda Strain

E.T.

Back to the Future

Men in Black

Dr. Strangelove

Black Mirror

Dr. Who

Star Trek

Battlestar Galactica

V

Twilight Zone

The Prisoner

Orphan Black

Continuum

Firefly

Sense8

Mass Effect series

Portal

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

Doom

Starcraft

Bioshock Series

Borderlands 2

 

The Martian (book, film)

Solaris (book, film)

War of the Worlds (Book, Radio Play, Film(s))