[ExI] SF books taught in college classes

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Mar 3, 2021, at 2:05 PM, Michael LaTorra <mlatorra at gmail.com> wrote:
> Before my retirement, I taught a course in SF&F. I structured the course around weekly thematic topics, such as personhood, aliens, etc. Most weekly reading assignments included a chapter from a novel as well as one more short stories that fit the theme of the week. The class was very popular.
> 
> Here is a list of the assigned books. A couple of the books are short story collections. I'm not listing here which stories from those collections were assigned. The individual stories listed below were included in a special ebook that was created for this course by a textbook publisher based on my story requests. The publisher handled copyright issues and other matters, which saved me a lot of time.
> 
> LITERATURE OF SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY English 328
> 
> Reading list for course taught by Prof. Michael LaTorra
> 
> 
> NOVELS / STORY COLLECTIONS
> 
> "The Player of Games" by Iain M. Banks
> 
> "Accelerando" by Charles Stross
> 
> "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett
> 
> "The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge"
> 
> "Borges: Collected Fictions" by Jorge Luis Borges
> 
> 
> SHORT STORIES (not from the STORY COLLECTIONS above)
> 
> "The Perfect Man" by Lauren McLaughlin
> 
> "Reasons to Be Cheerful" by Greg Egan
> 
> "Learning to Be Me" by Greg Egan
> 
> "Oceanic" by Greg Egan
> 
> "—All You Zombies—" by Robert Heinlein
> 
> "Blood Music" by Greg Bear
> 
> "Guardian Angel" by Arthur C. Clarke
> 
> "The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke
> 
> "Light of Other Days" by Bob Shaw
> 
> "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov

Thanks! I wanted to ask people here what works they’d design a course around, and there you go reading my mind. :)

I’ve heard lectures by Gary K. Wolfe (almost typed ‘Gene’;) on SF that divides them up thematically — the alien, the city, the spaceship, etc. They were quite good.

Regards,

Dan