[ExI] SF books taught in college classes

[Gabe Waggoner]

> > 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
> > On Wed, Mar 3, 2021 at 1:11 PM Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat <
> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> >
> > > https://io9.gizmodo.com/11-science-fiction-books-that-are-regularly-taught-in-c-1716713814
> > > This is from 2015. I wonder how much it would be updated. Anyhow, it
> > > looks like some of the usual suspects here. BNW and 1984 were taught in
> > > high school for me.
> > > Regards,
> > > Dan

> --
>
> The Light of Other Days, a novel, was written by Arthur C Clarke and
> STephen Baxter. I confused it with a short story by Bob Shaw, on the list
> sent out by LaTorra bill w
>

That was my one of my favorite courses in undergrad (1998). I've since read several of the ones mentioned here. I loved "The Nine Billion Names of God" (and pretty much anything by Clarke and coauthors: Space Odyssey series, Rama series, "The Songs of Distant Earth," "Against [and Beyond] the Fall of Night," etc.). I never realized "Light of Other Days" existed as a completely different story; I had known (and loved) only "The Light of Other Days" (damn my inability to italicize in plain text). I'll have to read the Shaw story now. I also love the entire Dune series (with the hit-or-miss prequels and interquels). Greg Bear is enjoyable. I adored Asimov's "The Last Question" (though haven't yet read "The Last Answer").

But my favorite book of all time, which that class introduced me to, is "A Canticle for Leibowitz," by Walter M. Miller Jr. My professor back then told me that the sequel, "Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman," was less well regarded, so I've never read it (though I did recently buy it and will get to it eventually).

Great lists of sci-fi works here. Sometimes the digest has something to make me overcome my crippling introversion and reply.

Best to everyone,
Gabe