Science Fiction: The Literature of the Technological Imagination
Clarkson University Convocation
September 1, 2006
Greeting
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)
C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures (1959)
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953) Oxford English Dictionary
Joseph T. Shipley, The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-European Roots (1984)
How did science fiction arise and why do we need it now?
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus (1818)
Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872)
When might it be wrong to align the values of the individual with those of the group?
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed (1974)
Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters (1951)
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (1920)
Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human (1954)
How do we know the good in a morally relativistic world?
Olaf Stapledon, Odd John (1935)
What is the role of the spiritual in the lives of realists?
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)
Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (1961) The Bible (King James Version, 1611)
What is the role of imagination in the lives of realists?
Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen (1998)
Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17 (1966)
Lewis Carroll, A Tangled Tale (1880; 1885)
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles (1950)
What does this all mean for you, entering Clarkson University?