Twentieth Century Literature (Focus on Science Fiction)

Created by Mike Page

This syllabus is from a section of an established 20th Century literature course at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The primary aim in this section of 20th Century Fiction is to explore how the future has been imagined in literature and how these "imagined futures" resonate in our own contemporary technological society. We will want to consider a variety of important questions as we work through these materials: Do we live in a "science fictional" society? What does it mean to be human in a technological civilization? What will or may emerge in the course of our own lifetimes as the frontiers of science are pushed further? Has mundane reality gotten "too weird"? How do we negotiate our way through a rapidly changing social environment? These are the kinds of questions that emerge in Science Fiction and are also increasingly becoming the questions that we must ask ourselves as we become an evermore "wired" society. That is why I think twentieth century science fiction is the most vital literary form through which we can engage these very important questions. With that said, we will spend a great deal of our time trying to figure out what this literature is all about, then we will examine a number of recent "mundane" fictions which show to what degree the contemporary scene has become "science fiction."