Did they actually do a good job of the Science Fiction as Literature class?
I took an English class about the Lord of the Rings, and I knew more about the subject than the prof simply because I had read The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. It was pretty sad. That was the beginning of many disappointing experiences with the humanities as an academic pursuit.
I once took a class on Tolkien offered by the History and Religious Studies departments but not the English department. That was an odd class...
The SciFi class, like a lot of lit classes, was good because the prof was good. He really cared about the subject, knew his stuff, and was very good at convincing you that something you might not have thought was interesting actually was. Anyone who can convince me that Frankenstien (the book, not any of the movies) has redeeming value earns very large amounts of bonus points. We locked horns a couple of times over SciFi vs. Geek Lit and a couple of authors (including Asimov) but he was the sort of professor who liked having people argue with him and we had some good discussions. And he introduced me to some very cool obscure stuff I never would have come across otherwise.
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I took an English class about the Lord of the Rings, and I knew more about the subject than the prof simply because I had read The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. It was pretty sad. That was the beginning of many disappointing experiences with the humanities as an academic pursuit.
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The SciFi class, like a lot of lit classes, was good because the prof was good. He really cared about the subject, knew his stuff, and was very good at convincing you that something you might not have thought was interesting actually was. Anyone who can convince me that Frankenstien (the book, not any of the movies) has redeeming value earns very large amounts of bonus points. We locked horns a couple of times over SciFi vs. Geek Lit and a couple of authors (including Asimov) but he was the sort of professor who liked having people argue with him and we had some good discussions. And he introduced me to some very cool obscure stuff I never would have come across otherwise.
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