Science Fiction, Compact Edition by Heather Masri - First Edition, 2015 from Macmillan Student Store

Science Fiction, Compact Edition

Stories and ContextsFirst Edition ©2015 Heather Masri

Although excellent collections of science fiction abound, few have been prepared expressly for classroom use. Like its comprehensive predecessor, this compact version of Heather Masri’s widely praised anthology Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts is designed to introduce students to some of...
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Science Fiction, Compact Edition by Heather Masri - First Edition, 2015 from Macmillan Student Store

A compact edition of “the best anthology for teaching science fiction, ever”

Although excellent collections of science fiction abound, few have been prepared expressly for classroom use. Like its comprehensive predecessor, this compact version of Heather Masri’s widely praised anthology Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts is designed to introduce students to some of the genre’s major works, authors, themes, and contexts. International and diverse, canonical and recent, the judiciously chosen stories are chronologically arranged within chapters that represent six central themes of science fiction. The book’s unique pedagogical features are critical and contextual documents that illuminate the stories and themes, with editorial apparatus that encourages students to think and write critically about how the genre reflects and affects culture. To expand teaching options, instructor’s resources provide additional stories and pedagogical advice, while the TradeUp packaging option makes further works of science fiction available at a discount.

Features

A carefully chosen selection of classic and recent science fiction. Based on surveys that revealed the most often assigned works from the full version of Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts, the compact edition includes 36 stories that offer a substantial array of important writings drawn from a variety of traditions and cultures. The selections range from classic works by early major figures (like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke), to groundbreaking fiction from late twentieth century writers (including Ursula LeGuin, Octavia Butler, and William Gibson) to probing stories by the early twenty-first century writers (Nalo Hopkinson, Ken Liu).

A thematic organization and alternate contents enhance teaching options. Six chapters explore major themes in science fiction: Alien Encounters, Artificial Life, Time, Utopias and Dystopias, Disasters and Apocalypses, and Evolutions. Within each chapter, the selections are arranged chronologically to suggest the development of the theme over time. Alternative chronological and thematic contents enhance the anthology’s teaching flexibility.

Contextual readings uniquely frame the fiction for critical thinking and writing. Each thematic chapter closes with selections suggesting the intellectual background informing the theme. These 12 critical contexts, by such thinkers as Jean Baudrillard (on artificial life and simulacra), Hannah Arendt (on totalitarianism and dystopias) and Susan Sontag (on disasters and apocalypses) help students forge interdisciplinary connections between the world of imagination and the world of ideas.

Highly praised editorial apparatus support teaching and learning. The lucidly written editorial matter includes an introduction to the genre and to each theme, biographical and explanatory headnotes for every selection, and annotated bibliographies of important works for further reading.

New to This Edition

“The best anthology for teaching science fiction, ever. It is intelligent, provocative, and thoroughly representative of major contemporary fiction and issues in the literature. I recommend it without reservation to every teacher of an introductory science fiction course.”
—David G. Hartwell, historian and anthologist of science fiction
 

Digital Options

Table of Contents

Chronological Contents

Alternative Thematic Contents

A Brief Introduction to Science Fiction and Its History

A Selective Guide to Science Fiction Research

Part One: Stories

1. Alien Encounters

Stanley G. Weinbaum, A Martian Odyssey (1934)

Frederic Brown, Arena (1944)

Ray Bradbury, Mars Is Heaven! (1948)

Sonya Dorman, When I Was Miss Dow (1966)

Ursula K. Le Guin, Vaster Than Empires and More Slow (1971)

Greg Egan, Wang’s Carpets (1995)

     Cultural Contexts:

     Carl Gustav Jung, The Shadow (1951)

     Frantz Fanon, The Fact of Blackness (1952)　

2. Artificial Life

Isaac Asimov, Liar! (1941)

Philip K. Dick, Second Variety (1953)

Kate Wilhelm, Baby, You Were Great (1966)

James Tiptree, Jr., The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)

William Gibson, Burning Chrome (1985)

Ken Liu, The Algorithms for Love (2004)

     Cultural Contexts:

     Jean Baudrillard, The Precession of the Simulacra (1981)

     Donna J. Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (1985; 1991)

3. Time

C.L. Moore, Vintage Season (1946)

Robert A. Heinlein, "All You Zombies--" (1959)

Robert Silverberg, When We Went to See the End of the World (1972)

Kim Stanley Robinson, The Lucky Strike (1984)

Connie Willis, At the Rialto (1989)

Ted Chiang, Story of Your Life (1998)

     Cultural Contexts:

     John-Paul Sartre, From Being and Nothingness (1943)

     Michio Kaku, To Build a Time Machine (1994)

4. Utopias and Dystopias

Damon Knight, Country of the Kind (1955)

Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman (1965)

Joanna Russ, When It Changed (1972)

John Varley, The Persistence of Vision (1978)

Mike Resnick, Kirinyaga (1988)

Nalo Hopkinson, Something to Hitch Meat to (2001)

     Cultural Contexts:

     William H. Whyte, Jr. From The Organization Man (1956)

     Fredric Jameson, Progress versus Utopia; or Can We Imagine the Future? (1982)

5. Disasters and Apocalypses

Arthur C. Clarke, The Nine Billion Names of God (1953)

J.G. Ballard, Terminal Beach (1964)

Stanislaus Lem, How the World Was Saved (1967)

Sakyo Komatsu, Take Your Choice (1967)

C.J. Cherryh, Cassandra (1978)

Ian McDonald, Recording Angel (1996)

     Cultural Contexts:

     Mircea Eliade, from The Myth of the Eternal Return (1949; 1954)

     Susan Sontag, The Imagination of Disaster (1965)

6. Evolutions

John W. Campbell, Jr., Twilight (1934)

Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon (1959)

Roger Zelazny, For a Breath I Tarry (1966)

Samuel R. Delany, Driftglass (1967)

Greg Bear, Blood Music (1983)

Terry Bisson, Bears Discover Fire (1990)

     Cultural Contexts:

     Stephen Jay Gould, Nonmoral Nature (1982)

     Marvin Minsky, Will Robots Inherit the Earth? (1994)　

Acknowledgments

Index

　

　

　

　

Heather Masri

Heather Masri is a full-time faculty member at New York University, where she earned her Ph.D. in literature and has served as assistant dean in the General Studies Program, an interdisciplinary liberal arts program. Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts grows out of her popular seminar on science fiction and technology, one of a series of writing intensive courses she’s taught on literature and critical theory. She is a member of the Science Fiction Research Association, and has been teaching science fiction at New York University since 1990.

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Notes on Teaching Science Fiction