Author: Glenn Hauman

ONLINE SCIENCE FICTION COURSE
June 30-August 8, 2003
University of Connecticut
Instructor: Leigh Grossman
e-mail: english217@swordsmith.com
This course traces major themes and concepts in science fiction from
the Golden Age writers of the 1930s, through the New Wave of the 1960s
and 1970s, to the present day. You will read works by Asimov, Bradbury,
Heinlein, Clarke, Delany, Dick, Le Guin, and other seminal writers–
some still well-known and some almost forgotten– and learn about their
impact on the field. Mostly, the course traces the development and
impact of particular ideas in speculative fiction, along with the
relationship of science fiction literature to other genres and other
media. The state of the SF publishing field today– including the
dramatic editorial and demographic shifts of the last 10 years, and
some of the most important current writers– will also be an ongoing
focus of the course.
READING LIST:
A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller

Fool’s War, Sarah Zettel

The Price of the Stars, Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman

I, Robot, Isaac Asimov

Startide Rising, David Brin

Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Philip K. Dick

Expendable, James Alan Gardner

Modern Classics of Science Fiction, Gardner Dozois, ed.

The SFWA Grand Masters Volume 1, Frederik Pohl, ed.

The SFWA Grand Masters Volume 2, Frederik Pohl, ed.

To register, go to:

http://continuingstudies.uconn.edu/specialsessions/Summer_2003/index.html

You will need the following information:

Class #: 2110

Campus: STORR

Dept. ENGL

Course number: 217

Section: 921

If you watch tonight’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien, you’ll see me on the far left, front row of the audience, shaking hands with Conan for his farewell performance.

Honest.

Thanks to Lisa Sullivan for getting me tickets. Feel better, kiddo.

From the comments at PeterDavid.net:

My point is that for whatever reason, the public is behind this war.
I personally think we’re lynching Negroes. A black man raped a white
girl and since we can’t find that black man, we’re going to ride into the outskirts of town and lynch a black man because you know how those people are and even if he claims he wasn’t involved in that rape, he must have been up to something and if you have any kind of problem with that, you’re obviously in favor of little girls getting raped.
I’d never looked at it in quite that way before, but unfortunately it
makes just too much sense to ignore. Can’t find Osama? Get Saddam. The
fact that the war is being run by the party of Trent Lott makes the
similarity just chilling.
Because lynch mobs always bring peace to an area, even if you have to flout the law to do it– especially if you have to serve a higher law. And the darkies never give us any problems after that.

…here’s Kirk Anderson’s last poltical cartoon for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Of course, nobody in St. Paul knows this, because the paper pulled his final cartoon. So it’s up instead at, of all places, Dork Tower‘s
website.
Here’s hoping his unemployment is a short one. Of course, I’ve been
hoping that for all of my friends too, and it hasn’t been working all
that well…

AOL’s front page today has some heavy stuff on the unemployment
problems so many folks are facing. And then there’s the poll results from their questions:

What do you blame for the scarcity of work?

32% Bush’s policies 47,288

28% The depressed market 41,667

25% Nothing specific, it’s cyclical 36,144

15% Corporate scandals 22,036

Total votes: 147,135

(current as of when I looked last)
And if you happen to think that Bush has something to do with the
corporate scandals and the depressed market– well, you might be right.
In any event, a real damning situation. I read recently that Bush has
presided over the biggest job loss in America since Hoover… and look
where that led us.

For those of you who’d like to read more about it, click here.
I just grabbed a copy of the book from Simon & Schuster earlier
today, and it looks quite neat. (Yes, I read the other stories a while
back, but it’s still a good package, and you should click on the link
below and buy it if you haven’t already. Mama needs a new cable to hook
up her DVD player…)

No Surrender (Star Trek: SCE, Book 4)
is now out from Simon and Schuster. Written by by Mike Collins, Ian
Edginton, Robert Greenberger, Jeff Mariotte, and yours truly bringing
up the rear. Last time I looked, the book was in the top 5000 in sales
at Amazon. Unfortunately, the time I checked before that, it was in the
top 3000… and I refuse to buy my way to the top like some authors do;
I want you to buy them as well.

There’s a bill kicking around that would repeal the 22nd amendment,
which restricts US Presidents to two terms. Follow the link and search
on H. J. RES. 11.
Bush might really want to try for his open-ended junta, but I’d bet a
lot of money that if this passed, Clinton would come back and mop the
floor with him. It’s noteworthy that it was introduced by Jose Serrano,
a New York Democrat.

From a poll on the AOL/Netscape sidebar:
Has the war in Iraq made you more likely to vote to re-elect President Bush?

* Yes, he’s my choice now

* I would have voted for him anyway

* I would never vote for Bush now

Oh lord, how can there be so many problems in so few words…? Perhaps more interesting are the results at the moment:

Yes, he’s my choice now – 15%

I would have voted for him anyway – 40%

I would never vote for Bush now – 45%

55% voting for him, eh? Those are damn soft numbers coming off a war… and that’s before we look at the depressed economy.

Excellent essay by Steve Gilliard over at the Daily Kos.

I want to get back to his topic of fear at some point, as soon as I can catch my breath…