Today, I showed my Science Fiction students the Fred M. Wilcox classic film from 1956, Forbidden Planet. Afterwards, I lectured about the tension that I see in the film between Golden Age emphasis on hard SF (space travel, harnessing atomic power, computers, chemistry, and metallurgy) and New Wave focus on inner space (cognition, mental power, exploration of the Freudian mind: id/ego/superego). This is one of my favorite films, and I hope that the students enjoyed the visual/auditory experience, too.
Tomorrow, we begin our module on New Wave SF with a lecture on New Worlds, England Swings SF, Dangerous Visions, and the assigned readings: J.G. Ballard’s “The Cage of Sand,” Harlan Ellison’s “Repent, Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman,” and Samuel R. Delany’s “Aye, and Gomorrah. . .”
Dynamic Subspace 