I’m attending this year’s SFF Masterclass (for which there are a few places left, apparently, so you can still apply), and just received the reading list from this year’s tutors. Last time I attended, I managed to blog some of the reading; this time around I’m going to try to be a bit more ambitious, in part because, with only five weeks to go, putting a schedule up here is (I hope) going to keep me focused. Feel free to read along at home! Short Story Club fans will notice that there’s some short fiction in the mix although not, alas, much that’s readily available online.
The schedule, then:
- Sunday 9 May: “The Second Inquisition” by Joanna Russ
- Tuesday 10 May: Lysloff, Rene T. A. “Mozart in Mirrorshades: Ethnomusicology, Technology, and the Politics of Representation.” Ethnomusicology 41.2 (1997). 206-219.
- Friday 12 May: The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction: “Science Fiction and This Moment“
- Sunday 16 May: “Aye, and Gomorrah” by Samuel R Delany
- Tuesday 18 May: Jarrett, Michael. “Train Tracks: How the Railroad Rerouted Our Ears.” [pdf] Strategies, 14.1 (2001). 27-45.
- Thursday 20 May: The Heritage of Hastur by Marion Zimmer Bradley
- Friday 21 May: Milburn, Colin. “Nanotechnology in the Age of Posthuman Engineering: Science Fiction as Science.” Configurations 10.2 (Spring 2002). 261-295.
- Sunday 23 May: “The Queen of Air and Darkness” by Poul Anderson
- Tuesday 25 May: Byrne, David. “Machines of Joy: I Have Seen the Future and It Is Squiggly.” Leonardo Music Journal Vol. 12 (2002). 7–10.M
- Thursday 27 May: Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle
- Friday 28 May: Weheliye, Alexander G. “‘Feenin’: Posthuman Voices in Contemporary Black Popular Music.” Social Text 20.2 (Summer 2002). 21-47.
- Sunday 30 May: “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman
- Tuesday 1 June: McLeod, Ken. “Space oddities: aliens, futurism and meaning in popular music.” Popular Music 22.3 (2003). 337–355.
- Thursday 3 June: Winterstrike by Liz Williams
- Friday 4 June: López, José. “Bridging the Gaps: Science Fiction in Nanotechnology.” HYLE–International Journal for Philosophy of Chemistry, 10.2 (2004). 129-152.
- Sunday 6 June: “Rats” by Veronica Schanoes
- Tuesday 8 June: The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction: “Concluding Unscientific Postscript: The Singularity and Beyond”
- Wednesday 9 June: Collins, Karen. “Dead Channel Surfing: the commonalities between cyberpunk literature and industrial music.” Popular Music 24. (2005).165-178.
And as much of the rest of Seven Beauties as I can fit in. [Note: I haven’t been able to keep to the original schedule, but I’m still adding links as I go…]
Two of those – Delany’s ‘Aye, and Gomorrah’ and Anderson’s ‘The Queen of Air and Darkness’ – were definitely formative in my early sf reading. (Another was Zelazny’s ‘A Rose for Ecclesiastes’.)
An interesting mix.