(no subject)

[lollardfish]

Ok sci-fi fans, what are your favorite science-fiction utopias? I'm thinking about teaching a class on utopias next year, and want to use some reasonably contemporary fiction (as well as Plato, More, Bellamy, Lost Horizon, SimCity, and other stuff).

Comments

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

Hm. I'd think it'd be hard to do the one without at least introducing the other. Few utopic visions have succeeded in practice without devolving into dystopias on one level or another. I personally quite like how Wicked overturns the idyllic childhood image of Oz.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a theme we'll certainly address. This course fits into a sophomore seminar which involves reading a book on race and immigration in America. I sort of think that we'll get to dystopia both by looking at exclusions in utopias (I want them to read John Winthop's "city on a hill" speech) and historical realities surrounding the authors of utopias. I'm not sure. It's a great assignment (and the Oz/Wicked thing is brilliant).

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Wicked has a lot more going on than the musical would lead most people to believe. It's an excellent satire of utopia, and encompasses tons of socio-political commentary on everything from racism to genetic engineering to class structures to religious establishment and charismatic evangelism. Whew. :) The kids who choose that text are usually stunned to realize how thorough and wide-ranging it is.

Anyway... Oz is sometimes viewed as Baum's utopian vision for America. Could be worth considering in and of itself.

[neogrammarian.livejournal.com]

This just reinforces my need to read this- did you have them read the novel or the libretto for the musical?

(I may be updating my Children's Media Culture comp class this summer, and the wheels in my head are now turning...)

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

Oh, the novel! Many of them have seen the musical, which played here in Toronto a couple of times. Even so, b/c of the nature of the course and the fact that I'm trying to deepen and broaden their repertoires in preparation for AP Literature the following year, I need them to read literary works.

Every once in a while, people on my AP listserv dismiss Wicked as "non-AP-worthy"... and I beg to differ, usually posting a long defense of it as a clever and highly topical satire. It's worth a look. It's too bad most of the author's follow-ups just weren't as solid.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

I'm going to have to read Wicked, I can see that.

[neogrammarian.livejournal.com]

non-AP-worthy. Piffle. You know as well as I do that a clever essay about an out-of-the-ordinary novel stands out from the crowd and can attract positive notice to a student's college app.

"many of them have seen the musical"....sometimes I forget how culturally challenged much of the US is, simply on account of its isolation, and distance from major cities. Here I am, an English professor; yet I've never gotten to see the show, b/c it's never toured anywhere vaguely near anywhere I've lived. (Tho it did finally tour through a place I -used- to live, but I didn't have the time for the 16-hr roundtrip drive to go see it.)

Ah well. Perhaps someday.

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

You know as well as I do that a clever essay about an out-of-the-ordinary novel stands out from the crowd and can attract positive notice to a student's college app.

You have no idea how many stupid and insecure and parochial and unimaginative and ignorant and bull-headed and canon-worshipping so-called "AP English teachers" there are on my list. For every three or four who do know this about student essays, there is one who thinks if it's not written on The Scarlet Letter, it won't get a top score.

And then there are those who believe that The Kite Runner is the literary achievement of the generation...

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Riffing on a related topic: my partner's daughter had to audition for entry to Houston's arts magnet school. As she was applying to the musical-theater program, her audition requirement was to perform a piece "from any published musical." Her choice? The opening number from the musical episode of BTVS, which had aired the previous season.

The judges loved it! One of them (himself a Buffy fan, as it turned out) nearly fell off his chair laughing when she announced what she'd be singing. And it most certainly was NOT something they'd already heard 6 or 8 times that day. We are convinced that her having the creativity to do that was part of the reason she got in.

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Nice! This pleases me.

Utopia?

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

Actually, re-reading Oz again when my children were small; it made my flesh creep. No death, therefore no children, nothing to strive for, nothing to fear . . . I know it sounds like what people think they want . . .

I am now reminded of a story in which everything in the world dissolved except the people; there was no sickness, no death, no growth, no hunger, just infinite existence on a featureless globe. This had happened because the Devil had convinced every single soul on earth that they wanted to live forever, so their wish was granted. The hero managed to finagle a way out of the wish and life returned to normal--wish I knew the name and author.