How Science Shapes Science Fiction: Course Guidebook

In this course, lectures examine the science portrayed in many different works of science fiction. The course also touches on certain works of fantasy. Each lecture centers around a notable work and the science portrayed in it. Along with those, the lectures also consider other works that are based around similar scientific themes.
These lectures cover many subjects in the natural and social sciences. Examples include the Star Wars films and how spacecraft really fly, the novel Dune and planetary ecology, and the film Avatar and the process of literal world-building, among many other topics. As you learn from this course, think about these questions:
++ If you were writing a science fiction story about any of this course’s topics, how would you write it? Would the science be central to the story, or peripheral?
++ What science would you keep? What would you ignore? What would you invent? These are the questions that any science fiction writer has to consider. This course aims to give you an insight into this process and show you how much fun it is to think about these factors.