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(2016
premidterm assignment) Model Student Pre-midterm answers 2016 (Index) Essay 2: Personal / professional research topic proposal |
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Mark Stapelfeldt
Essay 2: Humanity Recalled
If
I had to choose from the many topics I have invested interest, it would have to
be about the concept of humanity and its place in the universe. From all of the
stories I’ve read and the video games I’ve played, the one thing that stood out
to me was the alteration of how to define a ‘person.’ In future narratives,
there are so many different humanoid looking individuals who interact with human
beings from aliens, robots, animals, plant life, etc. During the recent fall
semester in 2015, I wrote a paper about people living secondary lives in
alternate forms of reality in order to conveniently communicate in an
interesting way.
Personally, I’m obsessed with latent futures
either immediate or down the line. I usually blame it on my personality type
(ENTP), but perhaps it may also be an excuse for trying to not have to deal with
real life problems. Professionally I am currently writing a future narrative
story that has concepts being represented by characters. What I want to learn is
something along the lines of why I care so much about what could happen instead
of what is happening around me
But
you broach so many possible topics—probably the one best aligned with our
readings would be variations on the humanoid. So far we’ve talked about
enhancements and implants but more to come. A rant of mine against most
cinematic sf at least is how much life or intelligence is limited to the
humanoid, which I smirk at as vanity. Welcome to read ahead to our late short
short story titled “They’re Made Out of Meat.” Otherwise you might consolidate
your interest in fiction and vid-games in terms of variations on the humanoid.
I’d need more details on your current fiction project, but it sounds at least
generically like what I learned as allegory. (An 80s movie I liked for varying
the alien form was Liquid Sky,
which has some cult-classic status.)
In The Time Machine movie
(2002), the Time Traveler stays in the future to rebuild what humanity lost
instead of traveling back to his era to try and prevent the possibility entirely
(the romantic plot in the beginning hinted that events in time are bound to
happen and time travel would do nothing to change them).
It is as you stated, some
are contempt with routine and are happy living day to day, but they remember the
extraordinary. Future narratives provide people what history cannot: a story
they can actively play a major role.
I appreciate your continuing to develop your topic. I never heard “false
reality” before but you mention it as though it’s familiar—if so, define, and
expand on what you said about the narrative freedom it enables, which is
potentially a feature of all alternative reality stories EXCEPT for that old
standby (Star Trek, Back to the Future) of being careful not to disorient the
present (or future) to which the time traveler is expected to return. The upside
for alt-futures is a kind of playfulness or exuberance of having many time-lines
to waste, but the downside is a degradation or relativization of any supposedly
privileged time or reality.
My main warning is to do what you can to connect your research and analysis to
our course readings, since that’s part of the assignment, though I’ll have to
vary that requirement according to topic.
I like your conclusion that future narratives provide an opportunity for readers
to feel real possibilities, also maybe a resolution to avoid past mistakes.
You show a fertile mind, but the greatest risk in
your style is lack of unity. Welcome to confer on some standard techniques for
improving. Here’s my standard link / handout for when I teach writing—review
with me as inclined:
http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/INST/unity.htm
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