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The work of Ursala K. Leguin and Philip K Dick. Twentieth Century Literature: Science Fiction. Science Fiction. Fantastic literature portrays, in rational and realistic terms, future times and environments that are different from our own. show awareness of the concerns of the times
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The work of Ursala K. Leguin and Philip K Dick Twentieth Century Literature: Science Fiction
Science Fiction • Fantastic literature • portrays, in rational and realistic terms, future times and environments that are different from our own. • show awareness of the concerns of the times • provide implicit commentary on contemporary society • explores effects - material and psychological - that any new technologies may have upon it.
By Ursala K. Le Guin (1972) “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”
Discussion Questions • Who is the narrator? • What are her feelings about Omelas, particularly about the misery of the child on which the happiness of the city depends? • Does the narrator sympathize with those who walk away? Or with those who remain? Or is she ambivalent? • Is Omelas described in sufficiet detail, or are there other things about the city you wish the author had included? • Is Omelas a utopia? Why or why not? • What is the conflict in the story? • Is this story still relevent today? • How does the narrator make up compliant in this child’s suffering? • Why do only a few actually leave? • If we haven’t figured it out already, how is this story allegorical? • Why is the genre of science fiction appropriate?
By Philip K Dick “A Little Something for Us Tempunauts”
“A Little Something for Us Tempunauts” • This story, first published in 1975, focuses on three Tempunaunts – time travelling astronauts – who are sent merely a few days into the future rather than 100 years. Dick said the following about writing this piece: • In this story I felt a vast weariness over the space program, which had thrilled us so at the start -- especially the first lunar landing -- and then had been forgotten and virtually shut down, a relic of history. I wondered, if time-travel became a 'program', would it suffer the same fate? Or was there an even worse possibility latent in it, within the very nature of the paradoxes of time-travel? • Have the following three goals in mind as you read. We will have a quiz tomorrow: • Basic plot understanding. Things are explained, it sometimes takes a bit of patience. • How is government portrayed? Specifically General Toad? • In what ways is this a criticism of the Space Race?