Take to class: Virtually Now, Mozart, + book Mozart in Mirrorshades

Plethora

grading as learning experience for student and teacher

review "thirds" as bell curve, appropriate to grades this weekend

not types or categories; always ready to be surprised

can't know what students are dealing with, things clear up

revisions: less sf, more literature of the future, futuristic literature

coordinate ideas and texts

ideas + evidence;

use web highlights to solve problems identified

schedule, premidterm, midterm

review schedule: next class (20 March) last before midterm following Monday, due 27-28 March

questions?

show answers to questions in midterm

transition to "Somebody Up There Likes Me"

add Time Machine & Somebody to evolution text selection

Time Machine: Conclude Evolution Section; continue questions above +

1. conclusion of Eloi-Morlock story: apocalyptic or evolutionary? How like a romance narrative?

2. Late in novel, very deep future—what storytelling challenges? (evolution narrative)

3. Summarize science fiction style + problems or issues with "classic science fiction." How does Wells survive as "classic sf" when so little sf does?

"Mozart in Mirrorshades": Begin Alternative futures

1. Look for key terms in quantum & temporal physics: probability, temporal physics, time holes, parallel worlds (i.e., alternative histories & futures)

Time Machine: Conclude Evolution Section; continue questions above +

1. conclusion of Eloi-Morlock story: apocalyptic or evolutionary? How like a romance narrative?

6.2 these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin

6.10 I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with—hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still remained to me.

6.13 how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!

7.1  sickening quality of the Morlocks—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them

8.3 a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature

Brontosaurus

8.4 paleontology, fossils

8.5 ancient monument of an intellectual age

8.10 I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one’s own descendants!

9.1 a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning

[9.11] "The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting [action hero of sf]

9.12 the flames of the burning forest. It was my first fire coming after me.

9.13] "And now I was to see the most weird and horrible thing, I think, of all that I beheld in that future age. This whole space was as bright as day with the reflection of the fire. In the centre was a hillock or tumulus, surmounted by a scorched hawthorn [tree]. Beyond this was another arm of the burning forest, with yellow tongues already writhing from it, completely encircling the space with a fence of fire. Upon the hill-side were some thirty or forty Morlocks, dazzled by the light and heat, and blundering hither and thither against each other in their bewilderment. At first I did not realize their blindness, and struck furiously at them with my bar, in a frenzy of fear, as they approached me, killing one and crippling several more. But when I had watched the gestures of one of them groping under the hawthorn against the red sky, and heard their moans, I was assured of their absolute helplessness and misery in the glare, and I struck no more of them.

Where do two narratives merge, overlap?

11.10, 11.14 blood-red water (cf. Apocalypse, Revelation, but no heaven to escape to)

2. Late in novel, very deep future—what storytelling challenges? (evolution narrative)

[7.12] "All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore.

11.1 One dial records days, another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch—into futurity.  [metaphor, analogy]

[11.4] “The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. . . . the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible. [post-apocalyptic]

[11.7] "Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly . . . a monstrous crab-like creature. [metaphor, analogy]

11.8 another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me

11.9 the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world. [post-apocalyptic, but not sudden]

[11.11] "I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sand-bank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.  [post-apocalyptic, but not sudden]

3. Summarize science fiction style + problems or issues with "classic science fiction." How does Wells survive as "classic sf" when so little sf does?

college curriculum doesn't support except through electives like this (but Kindred)

book reviewers only occasionally review, or special column where several new books are summarily reviewed

sf as popular literature, fan base, author, series, content and characters rather than style and form

restriction to romance narrative

speed, quickness, doesn't bog down--essential to sf, where you don't want reader to ask too many questions; cf. Octavia Butler

[9.17] "I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined.

"Mozart in Mirrorshades": Begin Alternative futures

1. Look for key terms in quantum & temporal physics: probability, temporal physics, time holes, parallel worlds (i.e., alternative histories & futures)

1.2 The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.”

1.13 There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it.

[1.15] “It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimensional geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. . . . ”

1.18, 1.28 analogy to make unknown known

1.58 a breath of wind, and the lamp flame jumped. One of the candles on the mantel was blown out, and the little machine suddenly swung round, became indistinct, was seen as a ghost for a second perhaps, as an eddy of faintly glittering brass and ivory; and it was gone—vanished! Save for the lamp the table was bare.

[1.65] After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. “It must have gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,” he said.

1.71 We cannot see it, nor can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air.

[1.76] “Upon that machine,” said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp aloft, “I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more serious in my life.”

[2.8] He was in an amazing plight. His coat was dusty and dirty, and smeared with green down the sleeves; his hair disordered, and as it seemed to me greyer—

[3.4] "I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback*—of a helpless headlong motion!

night followed day like the flapping of a black wing.

3.6 with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity

[3.7] "What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought, . . .  I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me,

3.11 sphinx

[3.13] "Already I saw other vast shapes—huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns,

[3.14] "In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.

3.15 a slight creature—perhaps four feet high

how warm the air was

3.16 a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail.

[4.1] "In another moment we were standing face to face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence from his bearing of any sign of fear struck me at once. Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue.

4.2 touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and shoulders.

4.3 something in these pretty little people that inspired confidence—a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease

I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion, and put these in my pocket.

[4.4] "And then, looking more nearly into their features, I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden china [fine porcelain] type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild; and—this may seem egotism on my part—I fancied even that there was a certain lack of the interest I might have expected in them.

4.5 hesitating for a moment how to express time, I pointed to the sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in checkered purple and white followed my gesture, and then astonished me by imitating the sound of thunder.

4.6 were these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children

4.7 beautiful flowers altogether new to me

the memory of my confident anticipations of a profoundly grave and intellectual posterity came, with irresistible merriment, to my mind.

4.8 a long-neglected and yet weedless garden

4.10 innumerable tables made of slabs of polished stone, raised perhaps a foot from the floor, and upon these were heaps of fruits.

4.12 extremely rich and picturesque. There were, perhaps, a couple of hundred people dining in the hall, and most of them, seated as near to me as they could come, were watching me with interest, their little eyes shining over the fruit they were eating. All were clad in the same soft and yet strong, silky material.

4.13 strict vegetarians

horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, had followed the Ichthyosaurus into extinction.

4.14 presently a fair-haired little creature seemed to grasp my intention and repeated a name.

4.14 presently I had a score of noun substantives at least at my command; and then I got to demonstrative pronouns, and even the verb "to eat."

[4.15] "their lack of interest. They would come to me with eager cries of astonishment, like children, but like children they would soon stop examining me and wander away after some other toy.

4.16 the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand Seven Hundred and One A.D. For that, I should explain, was the date the little dials of my machine recorded.

palace-like buildings, but the house and the cottage, which form such characteristic features of our own English landscape, had disappeared.

[4.19] "Communism," said I to myself.

4.20 in all the differences of texture and bearing that now mark off the sexes from each other, these people of the future were alike. And the children seemed to my eyes to be but the miniatures of their parents. I judged, then, that the children of that time were extremely precocious, physically at least [sexually active?], and I found afterwards abundant verification of my opinion.

4.21 the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the differentiation of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force. Where population is balanced and abundant, much childbearing becomes an evil rather than a blessing to the State; where violence comes but rarely and offspring are secure, there is less necessity—indeed there is no necessity—for an efficient family, and the specialization of the sexes with reference to their children's needs disappears. We see some beginnings of this even in our own time, and in this future age it was complete. This, I must remind you, was my speculation at the time. Later, I was to appreciate how far it fell short of the reality.

4.22 a pretty little structure, like a well under a cupola

4.26 humanity upon the wane

We improve our favorite plants and animals—and how few they are—gradually by selective breeding; . . . Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. The whole world will be intelligent, educated, and co-operating; things will move faster and faster towards the subjugation of Nature. In the end, wisely and carefully we shall readjust the balance of animal and vegetable life to suit our human needs.

4.27 the air was free from gnats, the earth from weeds or fungi; everywhere were fruits and sweet and delightful flowers; brilliant butterflies flew hither and thither. The ideal of preventive medicine was attained. Diseases had been stamped out.

4.28 no toil. There were no signs of struggle, neither social nor economical struggle. The shop, the advertisement, traffic, all that commerce which constitutes the body of our world, was gone. It was natural on that golden evening that I should jump at the idea of a social paradise. The difficulty of increasing population had been met, I guessed, and population had ceased to increase.

[4.29] "But with this change in condition comes inevitably adaptations to the change. What, unless biological science is a mass of errors, is the cause of human intelligence and vigor? Hardship and freedom: conditions under which the active, strong, and subtle survive and the weaker go to the wall; conditions that put a premium upon the loyal alliance of capable men, upon self-restraint, patience, and decision. And the institution of the family,

4.31 the fate of energy in security; it takes to art and to eroticism, and then come languor and decay.

4.32 We are kept keen on the grindstone of pain and necessity

4.33 very simple was my explanation, and plausible enough—as most wrong theories are! 

[5.3] "The Time Machine was gone!

5.6 some hitherto unsuspected power

5.9  felt hopelessly cut off from my own kind—a strange animal in an unknown world.

5.11 queer narrow footprints like those I could imagine made by a sloth

5.15 their language was excessively simple—almost exclusively composed of concrete substantives and verbs. There seemed to be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use of figurative language

5.16 all of them I heard a certain sound: a thud-thud-thud, like the beating of some big engine

5.18 visions of Utopias and coming times which I have read

5.19 aged and infirm among this people there were none.

5.20 They spent all their time in playing gently, in bathing in the river, in making love in a half-playful fashion, in eating fruit and sleeping. I could not see how things were kept going.

[5.22] "That day, too, I made a friend

[5.25] "It was from her, too, that I learned that fear had not yet left the world. She was fearless enough in the daylight, and she had the oddest confidence in me; for once, in a foolish moment, I made threatening grimaces at her, and she simply laughed at them. But she dreaded the dark, dreaded shadows, dreaded black things. Darkness to her was the one thing dreadful. It was a singularly passionate emotion, and it set me thinking and observing.

5.26 some greyish animal

5.27 a solitary white, ape-like creature

5.29 how much hotter than our own was the weather of this Golden Age.

But people, unfamiliar with such speculations as those of the younger Darwin, forget

5.30 A pair of eyes, luminous by reflection against the daylight without, was watching me out of the darkness.

5.31 instinctive dread of wild beasts

a queer little ape-like figure,

5.32 a dull white, and had strange large greyish-red eyes; also that there was flaxen hair on its head and down its back.

like a human spider! It was clambering down the wall, and now I saw for the first time a number of metal foot and hand rests forming a kind of ladder down the shaft.

5.33 gradually, the truth dawned on me: that Man had not remained one species, but had differentiated into two distinct animals: that my graceful children of the Upperworld were not the sole descendants of our generation, but that this bleached, obscene, nocturnal Thing, which had flashed before me, was also heir to all the ages.

5.37 in this artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the comfort of the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the how of this splitting of the human species.

5.38 the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between the Capitalist and the Laborer,

5.39 exclusive tendency of richer people—due, no doubt, to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the rude violence of the poor—is already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier country is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulf—which is due to the length and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and temptations towards refined habits on the part of the rich—will make that exchange between class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labor.

6.2 these whitened Lemurs, this new vermin

6.3 an Oriental look: the face of it having the luster, as well as the pale-green tint, a kind of bluish-green, of a certain type of Chinese porcelain [analogy]

6.7 Living, as they did, in what appeared to me impenetrable darkness, their eyes were abnormally large and sensitive, just as are the pupils of the abysmal [deep-sea] fishes, and they reflected the light in the same way. [evolutionary analogy]

6.9 a little table of white metal, laid with what seemed a meal. The Morlocks at any rate were carnivorous! Even at the time, I remember wondering what large animal could have survived to furnish the red joint [cut of meat] I saw.

6.10 I stood there with only the weapons and the powers that Nature had endowed me with—hands, feet, and teeth; these, and four safety-matches that still remained to me.

6.13 how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!

7.1 an altogether new element in the sickening quality of the Morlocks—a something inhuman and malign. Instinctively I loathed them

7.3 The two species that had resulted from the evolution of man were sliding down towards, or had already arrived at, an altogether new relationship.

Ages ago, thousands of generations ago, man had thrust his brother man out of the ease and the sunshine. And now that brother was coming back — changed!

7.7 two withered flowers

[7.12] "All the old constellations had gone from the sky, however: that slow movement which is imperceptible in a hundred human lifetimes, had long since rearranged them in unfamiliar groupings. But the Milky Way, it seemed to me, was still the same tattered streamer of star-dust as of yore.

7.13 great precessional cycle that the pole of the earth describes. Only forty times had that silent revolution occurred during all the years that I had traversed. [<cosmic time]

for the first time, with a sudden shiver, came the clear knowledge of what the meat I had seen might be. Yet it was too horrible! I looked at little Weena sleeping beside me, her face white and starlike under the stars, and forthwith dismissed the thought.

8.2 idea of writing had never entered her head

8.3 a huge skeleton. I recognized by the oblique feet that it was some extinct creature

Brontosaurus

8.4 paleontology, fossils

8.5 ancient monument of an intellectual age

[8.8] “Then we came to a gallery of simply colossal proportions, . . . the huge bulks [bodies] of big machines, . . . fancied that if I could solve their puzzles I should find myself in possession of powers that might be of use against the Morlocks.

8.10 I longed very much to kill a Morlock or so. Very inhuman, you may think, to want to go killing one’s own descendants! But it was impossible, somehow, to feel any humanity in the things.

8.11 decaying vestiges of books. They had long since dropped to pieces, and every semblance of print had left them. But here and there were warped boards and cracked metallic clasps that told the tale well enough. Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labor

8.12 a box of matches

8.14 some new metal, . . . a vast array of idols—Polynesian, Mexican, Grecian, Phoenician, every country

9.1 a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning

9.3 what a rare thing flame must be in the absence of man

the art of fire-making had been forgotten on the earth. The red tongues that went licking up my heap of wood were an altogether new and strange thing to Weena.

9.5 the same queer sounds and voices I had heard in the Underworld.

9.8 since my arrival on the Time Machine, a matter of a week, no rain had fallen

[9.11] "The strange exultation that so often seems to accompany hard fighting

9.14 Weena was gone

[9.17] "I searched again for traces of Weena, but there were none. It was plain that they had left her poor little body in the forest. I cannot describe how it relieved me to think that it had escaped the awful fate to which it seemed destined.

[10.1] "I thought of my hasty conclusions upon that evening and could not refrain from laughing bitterly at my confidence. Here was the same beautiful scene, . . . Like the cattle, they [Eloi] knew of no enemies and provided against no needs. And their end was the same.

10.2 how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide.

[10.3] "It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.

[escape]

11.1 One dial records days, another thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had pulled them over so as to go forward with them, and when I came to look at these indicators I found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast as the seconds hand of a watch—into futurity.

[11.4] “The earth had come to rest with one face to the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. . . . the dim outlines of a desolate beach grew visible.

[11.7] "Far away up the desolate slope I heard a harsh scream, and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly . . . a monstrous crab-like creature.

11.8 another monster crab that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling on their stalks, its mouth was all alive with appetite, and its vast ungainly claws, smeared with an algal slime, were descending upon me

11.9 the sense of abominable desolation that hung over the world.

[11.11] "I looked about me to see if any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A shallow sand-bank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me to twinkle very little.

[12.1] "So I came back.

12.7 Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?"

[12.9] The Editor stood up with a sigh. "What a pity it is you’re not a writer of stories!"

12.22 the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz.

12.25 the squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle.

If you’ll forgive my leaving you now?"

[12.28] I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words

12.29 a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass

12.33 The Time Traveler vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

Where do two narratives merge, overlap?

11.10, 11.14 blood-red water (cf. Apocalypse, Revelation, but no heaven to escape to)

"Mozart in Mirrorshades"

"Mozart in Mirrorshades": Begin Alternative futures

1. Look for key terms in quantum & temporal physics: probability, temporal physics, time holes, parallel worlds (i.e., alternative histories & futures)

225 Rice knew a little temporal physics

time holes and parallel worlds [cf. wormholes]

227 history like a tree, another branch of history

Shift to "Mozart in Mirrorshades"

Background fact: the idea of "alternative futures" or "alternative paths of time" is strange to most people's minds but is actually supported by postmodern physics.

227 history like a tree, another branch of history

227 this world, my world, does not lead to your future

230 shuffling the deck of history [alt. Image]

236 anachronism gone wild [compare mixing decades in fashion]

225 Rice knew a little temporal physics

time holes and parallel worlds

237 plenty of 18^th centuries

226 Florida will be missed [apocalypse + capitalist prose]

branching tree of history, shuffled deck of cards to describe alternative futures are metaphors or figures of speech > figurative thinking

"time holes" and "portals" are also metaphors, though scientists may call them "models"--but serve same purpose of describing the unknown in terms of the known

Sterling and Shiner, “Mozart in Mirrorshades”

223 petrochemical x wilting oak

223 a taste for incongruity

223 getting the refinery operational

224 the gate people, the locals

225 Rice knew a little temporal physics

time holes and parallel worlds

226 Florida will be missed [apocalypse + capitalist prose]

226 cheap manufactured goods seducing the people of our great country, our minerals and works of art disappearing

[apocalypse]

227 common good requires . . . adjustment [evolution, adaptation]

227 come from future but destroy your past

227 history like a tree, another branch of history

[alt]

227 this world, my world, does not lead to your future

227 What do you want, really?

228 migraine pills—“you’ll feel better”

229 Realtime: six billion people, nobody has to work if they don’t want to [cf. Eloi]

229 how the portal works: just big enough for a phone cable and a pipeline full of oil

[digital + energy]

229 all the millions that wanted a free ride into the future—billions, if you counted the other projects

230 shuffling the deck of history [alt. Image]

230 x-write symphonies, can listen to them [decline]

231 former aristos > gardeners [productivity]

231 Marie Antoinette, Vogue, Hershey’s chocolate, leather bikini [anachronism]

232 drunk on history out of control; cf. Careening black motorcycle of imagination

232 quiche-to-go stores x guillotines

232 Comanches raising hell on the rigs in Texas

233 Gray Card would get her from one branch of time to another without letting her visit Realtime

234 color TV x satanic blandishments

234 machines = one more facet of your godlessness

234 reclaim our destiny . . . you have stolen from us

235 Trans-Temporal Army

236 horse > Harley

236 anachronism gone wild [compare mixing decades in fashion]

237 plenty of 18^th centuries

238 x-die in this dump > car & recording studio

Apocalyptic concerns humans, evolution concerns nature.

one appeal of Apocalyptic narrative is that it's one story for all of Creation.

Evolutionary narrative: many stories going on at once

cycles of evolution may resemble creation-apocalypse

(class discussion: apocalypse as event > series of apocalypses)

winners and losers, predators and prey, saints and sinners

conceivable that Revelation is right but will of God continually eludes human comprehension

conceivable that apocalyptic narrative is a human-scale comprehension of evolutionary narrative

> alternative future

conceivable that apocalypse and evolution are alternative perceptions of same reality

Discuss "Mozart in Mirrorshades"

student comments 2005:

Evolutionary narrative:

world / order is created but changeable [difference is that earlier order is not necessarily restored; also potentially no ending, open-ended narrative, lose the original model

potential for progress, heroic potential

but just as much potential for regress, no definite direction, esp. with increased time

progress and regress happen at once

science fiction rises contemporaneously with theory of evolution

Future-vision presenter: Sarah Hall

Hello my name is Sarah Hall I am in your LITR 4368. My son is sick and I can't find anyone to watch him. I won't be able to make it to class today but I wanted to send in the YouTube video for the future vision presentation

Topic: Future Foods

http://youtu.be/lUtnas5ScSE

A Chipotle commercial song by Fiona Apple  (Chipotle Mexican Grill)

This is an animated commercial depicting our current state and what is to come if we continue down the same path. 

Do Sci Fi films and books touch base on future foods? 

Do you think we will have to worry about food in the future?