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Tana Jean Welch, Visiting Assistant Professor of Literature and Medicine, Florida State University College of Medicine

Benjamin Fraser

“At Portland State University,…”

OMG,  Grace Dillon, one of the essayists in our collection Orbiting Ray Bradbury’s Mars, teaches at your school.

You get old enough (let’s just say a couple years beyond 60) and you start to *know everybody*!  Tell Grace I said “Hi” and “Milli gwetch”–that “thanks” in Anishinaabe. -Glo

==================Bio o…[Read more]

HOW TO JUSTIFY SF AS SCIENTIFIC  AND WORTH INCLUDING IN CLASS: Tips from a veteran of the struggle

I work with the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory education outreach committee.  That may not sound like fun automatically, but we are planning a workshop around hard science SF, which is less written today than it was in A…[Read more]

Anna,

One way to explain the genre of SF is to use some of the grea writers’ words. Although Ray Bradbury only was a part-time SF writer, he made a case for the opening of minds and the stimulating of creativity that going beyond the mundane here and now can achieve.

This one-hour video from Point Loma Nazarene University is excellent and I use…[Read more]

Speaking of “Uncle Isaac” Asimov, I used to be one of his many pen pals.  He was a kind and generous man.

Glo

I think the SF from Central and Eastern Europe is a bit more varied than one or two anthologies exposure will credit.

The countries other than Russia have a variety of writers.  In the older generation Josef Nesvadba is one of the later generation of Czech writers after Karel Čapek, the creator of the word “robot” in his 1922 play R.U.R. (…[Read more]

Sorry for the typo marked and corrected at **.  I never know if correcting a typo is worth an extra post, but I felt embarrassed here because of the company of English professional colleagues.  Glo

Hello, all,

I agree that the stigma against science fiction in the classroom seems to be decreasing but the widespread teaching of science f…[Read more]

Hello, all,

I agree that the stigma against science fiction in the classroom seems to be decreasing but the widespread teaching of science fiction in college lit. classes also is declining.  I may be wrong, but I believe  that the number is down.  The number of science fiction course sections any given year or period of time may be keyed to th…[Read more]

Hello,

I have the history that explains this bias.  In Victorian London, Henry James took up H. G. Wells and hoped to mentor the younger man, even collaborate on a Mars novel.  When Wells–a Cockney from a lower social strata–chafed at the great man image that James cultivated and (horrors!) parodied James in his novel Boon, James broke off t…[Read more]

Good afternoon, Kafka fans,

The play is finished!  Anybody wish to read it?  I would love comments.
This is a surreal play about the Franz Kafka few people know.
Intriguing?

Just ask with a valid email address and I will sennd the play on to you.

Thanks,
Gloria

And here is that good article in the University of Arizona newspaper with the abysmal photo…

http://www.wildcat.arizona.edu/article/2014/01/exhibit-links-sci-fi-and-the-arts

Sorry about the typo.  OBVIOUSLY it is ARIZONA, not Atizona…

Here is more for college instructors planning curriculum…

The library display is called “Mars Madness: Sci-Fi, Popular Culture and Ray Bradbury’s Literary Journey
to Outer Space”and it opens on January 21st-though August. I am guest curating this exhibit for them.

We are opening an interdisciplinary display about science fiction writer Ray B…[Read more]