Sci-Fi Scholar

When you're sitting around a table with many writers, and the sci-fi genre comes up, the general reaction is one of a patronizing endearment. It pleases the masses-or at least gets them reading-and the genre has become so mainstream and 'hip' that you can usually count on it being a topic of some conversation among even 'casual' readers. But on the whole they usually dismiss the writing itself as anything of real value to the literary world, and most film critics will tell you the same thing about most sci-fi movies (although many of the 'good' sci-fi films have garnered more critical acclaim and acknowledgement than the books of the same caliber.)

SO...last winter, I did a presentation about children's literature, that was basically a half-hour condensed history of the genre, and some key works and turning points. As sci-fi is SUCH a categorised genre, I think it would be even more effective to review the history of science fiction, from H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to Douglas Adams, and even touch on the impact of film to the genre, and how it has caused the bleed into mainstream culture, and even artistic significance of the principles discussed in much of sci-fi.

This sort of talk-kind of like a TED lecture, but way broader-is something that we've been doing in INDA, through Sean Starowitz's "Know-Show" lecture series, that have been extremely helpful and very entertaining, because we try to focus on things that are not normally discussed or taught within an institution. I would want to make a hand-out...a sort of 'quick reference' guide to science fiction, (in the form of a Zine? or perhaps a website...which I've never done before, so it would be a learning experience) that people could return to if they needed the name of an author or a title quickly.

This is a sort of old and new direction for me within my research of literature and film, because I've always been that casual observer of science fiction, an enthusiastic liker rather than a true lover. I think it is also for that reason, I don't want to focus on one book or film, because it would be fairly limiting because I've extensively analyzed individual books and films before, but the quick lecture format is newer, and I think more difficult...it's also something I would love to pursue further either here or in grad school.