Questions:

Sorry for the delay. I have been dealing with a bit of an emergency at home. My apologies.

For the second paper, I would like you to compare the way some scientific/technical subject is rendered/addressed/portrayed in literature/film/television and the way that you experience it in "real life" then discuss if there are interesting overlaps, lessons that could be learned from literature, or dangers of pursuing the fictional instead of attending to the real. That sounds complicated, but it isn't as bad as it first seems.

For example, in many science fiction texts, food problems are addressed by relying on pills, nutrient paste, or "recycling" people. In real life, advances have made it possible to solve many nutrition problems, but we've created others. Chemicals have solved many problems but created others. (I'm not going to go into any detail in case someone wants to use this topic, but you get the idea.)

You can have until Friday to figure this out and send me a proposal, since I took a while to respond to your questions. I hope that helps.

T. F.



Professor? Did you get our questions about the proposals and stuff?

I was wondering the same as Byrna. Also, do we need to write anything specific about Ender's Game? My last question is do we need to post anything about the 5 min video on the syllabus?

Are there any guidelines for proposal 2? I'm having a hard time thinking of a new topic considering the fact that I haven't finished the first paper yet...