LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Web-Highlight 2009

 Denise Pope

6 July 2009

Web Highlighter-Final Exam

LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample final exams 2001

Glenn Hough

By which yardstick shall these six different scenario archetypes be judged and ranked?  I think I shall pick a thread which was not mentioned in class but which has more relevance to me.  I shall ask the following: of these scenarios, which is the most important to our future?  Which scenario, and it’s associate main theme, in my opinion, does need to happen to ensure our long term survival as a species?

            How do they rank?  What’s most important and what’s least?  I’d rank them like this: most important is

            Ecotopia

            High Tech

            Low Tech

            Off Planet

            Alien Contact and

            Virtual Reality as being least important.

Now we get to the big question as to why I’d rank them like this.  Why ecotopia as number one?  Ecotopia, as we’ve seen, is a spin off of the utopian literature.  It mainly deals with a concern for the earth, of living in harmony with things/people/resources.  In the process this literature condemns most of western thought as destructive.  To ecotopian thought, their distopia is the current US over-consuming, overproducing, hyper-accelerated living.  This is but a reflection of what I mentioned in the midterm as Literature of the Future as being a literature of current concerns.  To the ecotopia school, their concern is the US lifestyle.  As we saw in Chocco, the background theme was of ecotopia, of living not as we do, but as, say, the American Indians did, in harmony with nature.

LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample Student final exams 2007

 Pamela Richey

What Makes Me Human?

I came into this class a bit wide eyed and naïve. To me science fiction was merely a good yarn. It was something to curl up with and enjoy. And because it was a bit more on the intellectual side of literature I did not even have to hide the title from those who look down on “light” reading. Through the progression of the course I have reevaluated my earlier suppositions. I am now able to see the social conscience behind many of the better written books and short stories of the genre. One theme that has come up more often than naught is the question: What does it mean to be human?

In House of Bones, the main character must explore his own humanity. Can he kill the Scavenger and potentially jeopardize not only his precarious position in the tribe, but his survival as well? He must ask himself whether his survival is worth the barbaric killing of another sentient being. In accepting his own humanity and empathizing with the Scavenger’s plight, he not only comes to grips with who he is, he is also able to see the civilization of the Neanderthals he lived with.

Lauren in Parable must not only discover her humanity, but must also reevaluate it as she travels through an apocalyptic land. At first she only accepts into her small group of refugees those who can obviously add to their group, whether it is resources or strength or firepower. Later she must reevaluate her own thinking and begins taking in people who are potential liabilities, i.e. the corporate slaves.