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[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]

Oh, you could also send them to one or more of the websites that asks them to learn what their actual political stances are, beyond the limited left/right spectrum. I've done this before in teaching utopia/dystopia (specifically Handmaid's Tale. I sent them there, got them to define what would constitutes "utopia" for them based on what they discover about their political tendencies and how they compare to historical ideologies (they got into groups with like-minded individuals and sketched out a rough outline of what their "country" was like). Then I gave each a random problem that their country would have to deal with, like the assassination of their leader, the breakdown of their infrastructure, a geo/environmental disaster, etc. We discussed whether their utopic vision would survive the problem, deal with it, and why/how.

Here are the sites:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
http://www.moral-politics.com/xpolitics.aspx?menu=Home

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they do this in PoliSci 101. It's interesting the way you connect it to utopia though.

I actually plan to have them play the new Sim City game with a comparable pedagogical goal, assuming I can get my friends who made it to donate some copies. I'll also look into flying one of them out to talk about trying to model society. The new game forces you to make choices that lead towards different kinds of societies.

[zinzinzinnia.livejournal.com]

Cool! Too bad I just don't have the time to get immersed in Sim City anymore. Or Civilization. Time-gobblers, all!

[lollardfish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but if you're going to use it in class, it's research! Of course, being a super-geek, I am currently trying to model society in ASCII for the game Dwarf Fortress (http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/), which is hi-larious.