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First Degree in Science Fiction
gilest writes "This BBC story describes the UK's (the world's?) first University degree in science-fiction. Students will be asked to write essays on topics like 'Will Robots Take Over The Earth?' "
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You can read about the program at the following URL, there is not much, but these people are certainly HTML savvy!
http://www.glam.ac.uk/ScienceFiction/
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Posted by Mary CW:
Science fiction deals with all the big themes: who we are as a species, where we came from, where we're going, dealing with "the other," meaning of life, etc. Studying these issues is supposed to be what a liberal education is all about. And sci-fi certainly has more relevance for most people than, say, Dante, or Early Medieval History. (No offense, I did liberal arts myself).
They're an ex-Polytechnic (Polytechnic of Wales), and previous to that a Coal-mining college. In terms of staff, many I knew there were ignorant, arrogant or both.
That they'd come up with a popularist degree course with a pretentious title fits perfectly with my experience there.
(P.S. The canteen roof leeks something chronic, the Student Union is an expensive "fast"-food restraunt, with nothing but MTV on the overhead monitors, and the local area has a high crime rate against students. Unless you're in desperate need of a sci-fi degree, and nowhere else will do, it does not come recommended.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'd have to agree, they aren't impressing anybody overseas. "Hmm, you have a degree in science fiction... take cab #7 over there."
--
Apparently, the creators of the degree don't realize that essays on topics such as "Will robots take over the earth?" are pointless, as this is obviously already the case. Take for instance the purely mechanical response of the pol-bots in Washington D.C., and the mindless following of the MTV-Drones. In fact, the truth has surfaced about /., and we now know that Rob and his cadre of site admins are nothing more that an elaborate set of perl scripts generated by a WinNT based AI developed by Microsoft, which was created by Bill Gates at the request of space aliens.
YOU ARE ALL SHEEP!!!
Repent, Win2K is neigh!!!
After all the Brits graduate with the degree in Sci-fi, I'll be more than happy to take their money in my new (unaccredited) graduate school.
I will offer courses in in-demand fields of study, such as Cursive Writing , Fully Exploiting the Power of the Ubiquitous Times New Roman font, Expert Coupon Clipping and How to Start Your Own Graduate School.
Sign up now, as seating is limited.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
How about working with the Languages faculty and offering a joint degree in Science Fiction with Klingon? Or joint honours with the Physics department - Science Fiction and Warp Field Theory?
Duane
P.S. - Who the heck said (in another post) that Asimov's robots influenced technology? Most of the robot stories I read these days go out of their way to talk about how *ridiculous* the three laws are. They're a nice literary device, absolutely, but they have nothing to do with real tech.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Hmmmm...first a CS degree strictly in video games, now a literature degree strictly in science fiction. Note to self : Throw resumes from UK colleges in trash.
Ideas for new UK degrees:
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Censored? Hardly. Ignored and dismissed? Doubtful. Relative to most other genre fiction, sci-fi gets a sizable amount of attention. The fantasy/sci-fi works of Poe, Lovecraft, Orwell, Italo Calvino, Vonnegut, Doris Lessing, Jorge Luis Borges and Philip K. Dick are all considered fair game by academic literary critics.
There's trash, to be sure, but there are "classics," and there is a vast middle ground between the classics and the trash.
The name for this vast middle ground -- and it is indeed vast -- is "mediocrity." There are worse things than to be a mediocre but entertaining writer, of course, but those who fall into that category shouldn't expect to become subjects of serious attention from academics.
And let's face it, much of what we now call "classic" was not perceived as such at the time. Shakespeare's Macbeth was the Friday the 13th of its day, more or less.
Er, no, it wasn't. Though Shakespeare wasn't acclaimed as the great genius of English literature during his lifetime as he is today, he was recognized by his contemporaries as a significant talent. Excepting possibly those who wanted the theatres closed altogether, I don't believe anyone at the time considered "the Scottish play" to be artistic dreck on the order of Friday the 13th.
OK, so having the article use "Will Robots Take Over The World?" as a sample essay topic was bad form. Then again, I was a communication major, and I had my fair share of inquiries as to whether it was really true that we spent most of our classes watching Leave It to Beaver re-runs and Ricki Lake.
It was nowhere near that simple. Some classes did study Ricki Lake, or the ads that get displayed on the Super Bowl. However, I also learned how to write for print and broadcast media and how to operate sound and video editing equipment. I also took courses on communication ethics (this was one place where discussing Ricki Lake made some amount of sense, unfortunately), the psychology behind advertising and public relations, and I wrote a 25-page research paper tracking media coverage of specific environmental issues during five different years (over a 40-year span) that had major environmental news stories.
Returning to the topic of a science fiction degree, there's much more to study than "Will Robots Take Over the World?" Off the top of my head, at work, I can think of:
1. Common ground between science fiction and actual science, especially studying older science fiction and comparing the "predictions" to current reality.
2. Artificial intelligence and the myriad ethical issues it brings up, starting with Asimov's Laws of Robotics and going on to projects like Ghostwheel, and how we should react and "help" (or not) if our creations suddenly gain self-awareness.
3. The end of work. Again, more ethics: Is it ethical to create an intelligent race of slaves? What does this say about the value (or lack thereof) of human creativity? In this era of Wal-Marts on every corner, this is pretty relevant, I should think.
4. Science as religion or as replacement for religion. Perhaps along with this the correlations (or lack thereof) between "technology" and "magic."
There's probably a lot more, but I have to get back to work. But seriously, folks, this is not as silly as it sounds.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
So maybe Macbeth-as-Friday-the-13th was a slight overstatement. (BTW, I like Shakespeare, but have an intense dislike for that particular play, after once seeing a production of it that LOOKED like a cheap horror flick).
Perhaps a better comparison would be to Pulp Fiction, or to a Steven King novel.
Shakespeare may have been recognized as "talented," but at most the recognition while he was alive would be similar to that given to King or to Quentin Tarantino.
Theater was popular entertainment. And yes, a hell of a lot of people wanted the theaters closed. In fact, there's this lovely succession:
1. Plays are evil. (Puritans)
2. Fiction is evil. (Ditto)
3. Acting is an "immoral" occupation (You can still see this today if you look hard enough.)
4. Recent fiction is Bad; you should only read The Classics.
5. Science ficiton will rot your brain. (VERY prevalent attitude at the time that for instance, Ray Bradbury was doing his best-known work; as this thread shows, it still persists.)
6. Role-playing games are Satanic.
7. Goths, gamers, geeks, and other high-school misfits are all going to kill you.
All of the above comes from the same basic idea: "If it ain't in the Bible, it ain't true." Admittedly, those peddling the above aren't as likely to say so in so many words anymore
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Too bad you weren't there in the late '60s/early '70s. From what I've heard, they were doing some nifty design-your-own-degree programs.
Then again, I don't know what it's like there NOW, but considering that they are at least the only American university ever to have awarded a degree in Magic, they may well have gotten scared of doing "independent study" degrees.
;)
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
You aren't the sort of person I'm complaining about here. Just so you know
The folks that get to me on this issue are the ones who think that it's just fine and dandy to overspecialize in the IT flavor of the month, or in some really narrow and obscure "classic" field, or concentrate entirely on math and science that the general public doesn't understand WITHOUT the knowledge of how to make it understandable. Yet specializing in science fiction is "fluff," and specializing in mass media studies is "sitting around watching Leave it to Beaver all day."
THOSE are the people I'm taking issue with. And I know a hell of a lot of 'em, both from the math/science/CS side and from the literary side.
That said, there are two ways to have a useful science fiction degree. One is to have it as a possible concentration within English. The appropriate analogy here is a technical theater degree. Yes, you may really want to be a light/sound designer, but you still have to take the survey of technical theater course, you still have to take Shakespeare and classes in contemporary plays, and you may even have to take an acting class or two.
The other possibility is to have this degree be an interdisciplinary study. The appropriate analogy here is environmental studies (and indeed, there may be some cross-over). An environmental studies program may include courses based in biology, chemistry, geography, psychology, sociology, and even English, as well as an interdisciplinary "specialty" course or two. However, you still need the appropriate background before beginning the courses in the various disciplines (no taking Advanced Ecology without a foundation in basic biology, and probably chemistry and calculus as well).
The advantages this could offer? Motivation to take the background courses in order to get to the specifics. Someone who is going to work hard to get a degree they WANT to get, not one that they think will hand them big bucks on a platter. Honestly, which would you rather have working for you?
(That, BTW, is the difference I see between specializing in science fiction and specializing in video games.)
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I was an English minor in college. I would have been a major, but I ran out of time/money and came up a few courses short.
I'm intending to go to grad school for English, and my areas of interest are poetry (studying and writing), Icelandic sagas, and -- you got it -- science fiction. The school I'm looking at has a course on science fiction, and one on fantasy. They also have a sci-fi/fantasy writers' workshop.
Science fiction has been censored, ignored, and dismissed as "not-serious" by academics for far too long. There's trash, to be sure, but there are "classics," and there is a vast middle ground between the classics and the trash. And let's face it, much of what we now call "classic" was not perceived as such at the time. Shakespeare's Macbeth was the Friday the 13th of its day, more or less.
While I was in school, I wrote as many papers on sci-fi and fantasy authors as I could get away with. The one I'm happiest with compared the book and movie versions of The Wizard of Oz, and showed how the story was distorted from a children's fantasy story into a story about the dangers of fantasy and the "need" to be content with the "real world." [I think it's a horrible corruption of L. Frank Baum's work, but I digress.]
Run, don't walk, and get thee a copy for Ray Bradbury's Zen and the Art of Writing. I can't remember the title right this second (at work and don't have the book in front of me), but the book includes an excellent essay on the suppression of speculative fiction in schools.
Sure, a degree in science fiction may not be the most useful thing in the world, but is it really any less an indicator of intelligence than a degree in, say, medieval studies? I think not.
And for those of you who will insist that degrees must be Immediately Useful and Practical, and that Reading Books Is A Waste Of Time? Shut up and go away. I mean that in the nicest way possible.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
BTW, Asimov certainly didn't invent robots.
Certainly not, but Asimov's Laws of Robotics are commonly regarded as Science Fact, and have a clear influence on Robot and Artificial Intelligence design now and in the future.
He (and many other Science Fiction authors) has made us think about technologies that are either in their infancy or not yet invented, and this has altered the way we have gone about implementing certain technologies. Science Fiction is often an early influence of future Scientists. When new technologies are introduced, often the only terms we have capable of describing them come from Science Fiction literature. The media plays a large role in this, why else is the Gibsonian term "Cyberspace" nearly synonymous with "The Internet" although in fact, the Gibsonian Cyberspace is actually much more than the current technology level of the Internet. When we do finally have a "shared consensual hallucination" that is our interface to the global computer network, what will we call it? Cyberspace, of course. A word created by a Science Fiction author. (Who, interestingly enough had never even used a computer when he wrote "Neuromancer")
Science Fiction and Science Fact are so intermingled in today's world, and this will only become increasingly true as Science Fact continues to catch up with Science Fiction. As a matter of fact, the very idea that Science Fact is attempting to "catch up" with Science Fiction only illustrates my point further. Therefore, a working knowledge of Science Fiction is imperative to living in and understanding today's technologies, as well as tomorrows. As such, I believe that all schools should offer courses in Science Fiction, if for no other reason then to help non-geeks understand the terms used to describe technology.
-Count Zero-
I will always remember my Science Fiction class in High School. That and Mythology where my two favorite classes. I am glad to see a college that is beginning to take a serious look at Science Fiction, and that emphasizes the link between Science Fiction and Science Fact. So much of what the general public thinks about Science Fact is in actuality derived from Science Fiction. How many non-geeks watch a movie and think that Mac's are the world's most popular computer? Or that "hackers" float around "virtual cities" to crack into corporate computer systems that have high-voltage electricity arcing between the towers? Artistic License makes for some neat special effects and a nice escape for those of us who know the truth, but can often confuse the unwashed masses who have no clue about technology.
I would love to be one of the first people to earn a Doctorate in Science Fiction. But alas, I shall just have to be satisfied with the label "Geek" as I can not afford to attend college in the UK.
-Count Zero-
(Yes, I am a fan of Gibson)
What's somebody with a scifi degree going to do, exactly? Edit a scifi zine?
What, exactly, is someone with any other sort of English degree going to do? Someone with a specialized degree in science fiction is probably going to do fairly similar things, and in certain cases are going to be even better suited to it.
1. Teach. There's the obvious one. A sci-fi specialized HS English teacher probably has the jump on one that is specialized in a given stereotypically-uninteresting-to-teens area.
2. Technical writer (which is what I do). Again, someone specialized in sci-fi, who has done it properly, is likely to have the edge over someone specialized in Victorian poetry or whatever, simply because the sci-fi specialized person is likely to be (or at least to be perceived as) more comfortable with technological terms than someone with a more "traditional" English specialization.
3. Write! As a career, even. Not viable for most people, but the possibility exists.
4. With an appropriate minor or double major, a myriad of possibilities open up. A major in science fiction, if done correctly, should be a great lesson in "thinking outside the box." The lessons it teaches would be a great asset to (off the top of my head) computer science (obviously), environmental science, psychology, law, engineering, and possibly even medicine.
:)
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today