|
Active Reading Strategies for SF Texts
This is an outline only of the critical skills part of the lecture time; fill in your own comments, examples, and explanations as you listen during class. A related session on "The Protocols of Reading Science Fiction" will follow later in the course. As was the case in the Frankenstein lecture, that lecture will include close analyses of selected passages (but from other sf texts).
I. Questions to start with, before reading the text
1. Title
2. Author
3. Date and place of publication
3a. Edition
II. Who did what, when, and where?
1. Plot
2. Characters
3. Setting(s)
III. Presentation of the text
1. Point of view/Narrator
2. Atmosphere
3. Narrative technique(s)
4. Literary devices
5. Writing style
6. Opening scene/chapter
IV. Interpreting the text in its context
1. Historical context/interpretation/"afterlives"
2. Making sense and finding meaning/"exegesis" and "eisegesis".
3. Voice(s)
4. Themes
5. Concluding scene/chapter
6. Author, again
7. Audience/Readership
V. More questions specifically related to the concerns of this course
1. What makes this text a work of science fiction?
2. Which scientific disciplines, theories, discoveries, or technologies are represented in the text?
3. What is the role of technology and science in the fictional world the author has constructed?
4. Can you identify any assumptions or biases that the author seems to have about technology and science in relation to God and religion?
5. What messages does the text convey to you about science and in social context?
6. What ethical and social questions are raised? What ideas of human nature operate in the text?
7. In addition to descriptions of physical environments, is there some conception or attitude toward “nature” as a whole?
8. What assumptions, interests, values, and beliefs of yours were challenged or changed by this text?
9. Can you link this text (e.g., by subject, character-type, style, sub-genre, theme) with any others in the course? What can
you learn from such linkage?
Back |
