How Great Science Fiction Works

by Gary K. Wolfe

Streaming video, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

809.38762

Series

The Great Courses (2984)

The Great Courses: Literature and Language (2984)

Collection

Your library

Publication

Great Courses (2016), 12 hours, 24 lectures, 215 pages

Description

"Robots, spaceships, futuristic megacities, planets orbiting distant stars. These icons of science fiction are now in our daily news. Science fiction, once maligned as mere pulp, has motivated cutting-edge scientific research, inspired new technologies, and changed how we view everyday life -- and its themes and questions permeate popular culture. Take an unparalleled look at the influence, history, and greatest works of science fiction with illuminating insights and fascinating facts about this wide-ranging genre. If you think science fiction doesn't have anything to do with you, this course deserves your attention. And if you love science fiction, you can't miss this opportunity to trace the arc of science fiction's evolution, understand the hallmarks of great science fiction, and delve deeply into classics while finding some new favorites."--Provided by publisher.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member LisCarey

Gary K. Wolfe is both a reader and a scholar of science fiction, and this is a great, comprehensive look at the history of the field, the ideas it has explored, and the literary influences that have affected it.

He dates the beginning of real science fiction, rather than simply stories that in

retrospect somewhat resemble it, to Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Frankenstein, and looks at the social, intellectual, and physical world changes that helped inspire it. Wolfe then follows these themes forward through the next two centuries.

His focus, as he makes clear, is on literary sf, not media sf, which tends to lag forty or fifty years behind literary sf in the type and complexity of the ideas it is willing to explore. His discussion of the ideas, influences, and changes is thoughtful and enlightening. I've noticed myself in my own reading that current sf that for me invokes the feeling of "the good old stuff," the science fiction of the forties, fifties, and sixties, that came readily to hand when I was a pre-teen and young teenager (remember, the golden age of science fiction is twelve), has a really different caste of characters as well as very different social dynamics.

Any knowledgeable science fiction fan will have moments of "but why didn't he talk about..." but also learn things they never knew and gain new perspectives on things they thought they knew well.

Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

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LibraryThing member infjsarah

One of the Great Courses. Really interesting - I enjoyed all the lectures as an overview of sci-fi - and if you want to add to the TBR, you certainly will from these lectures.
I wish Audible would put these Great Courses on sale more often

LibraryThing member jamestomasino

Great depth of the history, types, and themes of science fiction. A bit too much focus on explaining the plots of novels and stories, but I guess that's nice to discover stories I might want to read myself.

LibraryThing member datrappert

Very enjoyable and coherent, though necessarily incomplete, survey of science fiction from its creators and progenitors to 2015. Wolfe is a great advocate for the importance and literary qualities of science fiction, while not being afraid to call out early science fiction in particular for its

gender, racial and other biases as well as for its simplicity--driven by writers trying to scratch out a living by selling stories sometimes for 1/2 cent a word! Great to see him single out stories like "Flowers for Algernon" and innovative writers like Lavie Tidhar. This is a very enjoyable 12 hours and can be viewed on Kanopy through your public library.

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LibraryThing member kevn57

This course is great if your interested in Science fiction, you'll learn some history of SF from the early authors and pulp magazines through the SF golden age and right up to today. Read it for recommendations of great works to read or for nostalgia of those classics you read in your youth.

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