Essential Questions notes and in text citation

1. Essential Questionsnotes and in text citation Jes Briere

2. How do sci-fi authors hook and hold readers? • Authors use a lot of detail that make the reader use their imagination to create an image of what is being described to them. • “To use the bait successfully, writers need to be able to identify the conflict for the story and the players involved in an engaging manner. An author needs to pick strong verbs to show the action of his or her story and needs to use concrete nouns. This means providing information that makes the reader ask questions” • They tell you things that are unexpected. Like in maximum ride by james patterson. He will tell you something is going to happen and when you expect not only that one thing to happen something else happens that gives the story line a “twist” • “prologs” • They give teens an escape from the world and give them ideas of how the world may turn out. (maximum ride-pollution and gene splicing)

3. Hook and hold readers (continued) -”congratulations. The fact that you’re reading this means you’ve taken one giant step closer to surviving till your next birthday. Yes, you, standing there leafing through these pages. Do not put this book down. I'm dead serious- your life could depend on it.” (patterson-prolog)

4. What is the relationship between sci-fi and truth? • “Hi, I read the interview which Penthouse had with L Ron Hubbard's son many years ago. In the interview his son said that his father was really a satanist and that he remembered his father saying that "if you wnat to get rich, start your own religion". What truth is there to this?I have also read that Scientology is a godless religion, which is in many ways similar to a science fiction story, where there are aliens from other planets which come to earth and souls are trapped in volcano. What truth is there to the things which I have heard and read? “ • Answer“L. Ron Hubbard's son said many stupid things and retracted his statements. It's very doubtful Hubbard was a satanist. He was interested in occultism, which for many zealous Christians amounts to the same as satanism. Hubbard didn't consider himself a satanist nor was he practicing worship of the Christian devil. Per Scientology beliefs there are spiritual beings (thetans) that have existed as pure thoughts since the beginning of time. These beings used to be supreme in their own universe but then started to interact and merge their universes and lost their omnipotence and omniscience to the point where they started to live in human bodies and forget who they used to be. Every human being would then be a thetan who forgot he was a spiritual being. Per the above the belief in gods or in a single god is not outside of Scientology. On such matters Scientology says it's for you to figure out these questions and doesn't provide a set answer like other religions.Also in Scientology terms there are not really "aliens" just thetans trapped in bodies (which can include extraterrestrial bodies). (Scientologists do believe that life didn't start on Earth. In fact life is not organisms evolving but thetans animating organisms that they built or evolved) What you have heard and read is a surface description from people who don't understand Scientology and would be like somebody from a different religion in a different part of the world describing the Christian trinity as a set of three gods. I hope I was clear enough. It's easier to answer such a question when one knows the beliefs of the asker. “ (Hubbard-en.allexperts)

5. What truths are best communicated through sci-fi? • Its how you take it all in. its all based on how a person looks at the things that are presented to them. • (find more info supporting this) • A good thing about sci-fi is you can make your own truth out of it in a way.

6. How do authors create characters out of this world? • Very carefully! • It depends on what the book is going to be about. Maximum ride has children with an avian gene in them so they have wings, and they were “created” by scientists to “protect the world” and be the ones to survive in the world today that is being destroyed by people and their advancements.

7. Why did you become a sci-fi author? “Because I loved the Arthur Conan Doyle stories when I was a kid. And one of the things that really impressed me about them was the sense of how real it was. How true it was. People go to London and look for 221B Baker Street. They used to. And I always aspired to have that quality of reality in what I do. Trying to make people think it was true.” Michael Crichton -it seems like people like to be sci-fi authors so they can not only have an escape for themselves but for others.

8. When was the first sci-fi book published? -Ludvig Holberg from Norway, wrote in 1741 "Niels Kims reise til den underjordiske verden"/"The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground". This book is considered the first science-fiction novel ever. Some people consider Mary Shelley"s Frankenstein to be the first science Fiction novel this was written in early part of the nineteenth century. It was and still is in advance of its time. in a more familiar usage, Verne"s science fiction novels catapulted into life after the period of the American Civil War.-Around l969 20,000 Leagues took the plunge into deep water, the Moon shot novel was around that period, an NRA type organization was responsible for the monstrous artillery piece called the Columbiad in Verne"s Moon shot. Launch site was Tampa , Florida, not far from Canaveral.

9. How has sci-fi changed through the ages? -“While every movie is subject to the trends of each time period, science fiction has an intimate connection to both technology and the real world. The very definition of science fiction references the impact that current and past events have on the genre. As defined by scifi author Robert A. Heinlein, science fiction is a realistic speculation about possible future events based on the past and present knowledge of the real world. For these reasons, the cause of the evolution of science fiction movies is the real world, stated in another way: science fiction comes from reality.” (Los Angeles Free Press 2010)

10. Throughout the ages (continued) “The evolution of science fiction movies over the last 50 years can be attributed to much more than the advances in special effects and movie-making technology (although those changes have had an effect); the biggest influence on scifi during this time period are the events that occurred in the real world. These past five decades leading up to today have been subject to an ever-accelerating onslaught of technological achievements and world-changing events” (Los Angeles Free Press 2010)