The next academic year is just around the corner, so I wanted to give a shout out for the open educational resource (OER) that I published earlier this year, Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT), an over 60,000 word textbook on the history of SF literature that includes a syllabus, video lectures, and more.
And, if you’re an educator needing open and free teaching materials and textbooks, here are some useful resources where you can find OERs:
This past weekend, The New York Times ran an obituary for Lynn Conway, half of the namesake for the Mead-Conway VLSI Revolution and co-author of the groundbreaking textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems (1980). She died at the age of 86.
What is so cool about the Mead-Conway VLSI chip design revolution was not only that it was the paradigm shift that made possible the next step in microprocessor design and fabrication by enabling electrical engineering and computer science students to do the work that was previously the domain of physicists and the high tech industry, but also that it was a under-the-radar pedagogical hack. Conway writes in the October 2018 issue of Computer:
"With all the pieces in place, an announcement was made on ARPANET to electrical engineering and computer science departments at major research universities about what became known as "MPC79." On the surface, while appearing to be official and institutionally based, it was done in the spirit of a classic "MIT hack"--a covert but visible technical stunt that stuns the pubic, who can't figure out how it was done or what did it. (I'd been an undergrad at MIT in the 1950s).
The bait was the promise of chip fabrication for all student projects. Faculty members at 12 research universities signed on to offer Mead-Conway VLSI design courses. This was bootleg, unofficial, and off the books, underscoring the principle that "it's easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission" (p. 69).While this was a huge contribution to the development of the computer industry leading into the 1980s and beyond, it was only one of her many accomplishments–innovating an out-of-order queuing processing system for IBM only to be fired in 1968 when she began transitioning to become a woman, starting her career over and eventually making her way to Xerox PARC, later joining the University of Michigan as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and serving as associate dean of engineering, and becoming a transgender advocate later in life. She was recognized with many awards and honorary doctorates for her contributions to the field as an engineer and educator.
I added a whole new section on the Hard SF writer Joan Slonczewski (they/them/theirs) to the Feminist SF chapter of the OER Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT). It gives students an overview of their background as a scientist, writer, and Quaker, and it discusses three representative novels from their oeuvre: A Door Into Ocean (1986), Brain Plague (2000), and The Highest Frontier (2011). Like the Afrofuturism chapter, I brought in more cited, critical analysis of Slonczewski’s writing, which is parenthetically cited with a full citation instead of using a works cited list or footnotes.
Slonczewski’s A Door Into Ocean was the inspiration for the image above that I created using Stable Diffusion. It took the better part of a day to create the basic structure of the image, then there was inpainting of specific details such as the woman’s footprints in the sand, and finally, feeding the inpainted image back into SD’s controlnet to produce the final image.
The flag of the United States of America is the enduring emblem of our country and what our women and men in the armed forces protect through their service. Memorial Day is set aside to remember and honor those who died in service to our country. It’s origin is in honoring Union soldiers who gave their lives to preserve our country and uphold our constitutional foundation. For those like myself who have not served in the armed forces, we reflect on those who have fallen while in service and honor them through our own humble efforts to protect, preserve, and contribute to our country’s well-being.
The photo above is the Brunswick, Georgia Risley Middle School flag squad (1990-1991). The administration asked me to organize a group of students to raise and lower the US and Georgia flag each school day. On this day, Shannon, Robert, and Darrell joined me to lower and fold the flags. As a Boy Scout, I had participated on Color Guard and flag ceremonies many times. I was glad to support the school with this service and pass on what I had learned about flag protocols and folding to my school friends who were not in Scouts.
I’m very happy to announce the launch of a new open educational resource (OER) that I’ve been working on for awhile!
It’s called Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT). It’s over 60,000 words and includes additional resources that can be helpful for readers, students, and instructors.
YASFT is released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons License. It’s freely available to be read as it is. However, if anyone would like to use it in another way, there are licensing terms that must be followed: “This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only. If others modify or adapt the material, they must license the modified material under identical terms.”
You can find YASFT under the Teaching menu above or directly here.
Its abstract and table of contents are included below.
Abstract
Yet Another Science Fiction Textbook (YASFT) is an open educational resource or OER, meaning it is freely available for anyone to use and learn with. It provides a chronological history of Science Fiction (SF) with an emphasis on literature and film, and it includes other useful resources, such as a glossary of terms, an extensive list of SF definitions, additional resources, a syllabus with hyperlinked readings available online, and video lectures. It tells a story, but not the only story, about SF history. It’s also an experiment in using generative artificial intelligence (AI) to assist with editing a large body of text, in this case over 60,000 words.Table of Contents
Front Matter
What is YASFT?
Who made YASFT?
Why was YASFT made?
Why is it called YASFT?
How can YASFT be used?
How was YASFT made?
Acknowledgements
Preface
Origins of Science Fiction
Early Fantastic Stories
Scientific Revolution
Age of Enlightenment
Romanticism
The Gothic
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Science-Saturated Novel
Victor Frankenstein’s Hubris
Critique of the Age of Enlightenment
Tabula Rasa
Proto-SF
Historical Context
Edgar Allan Poe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Jules Verne
H. G. Wells
E. M. Forster
Pulp SF
Historical Context
Overview of Pulp SF
Hugo Gernsback
E. E. “Doc” Smith
C. L. Moore
Edgar Rice Burroughs
H. P. Lovecraft
SF Film Serials of the 1930s and 1940s
Buck Rogers
Flash Gordon
Golden Age SF
Historical Context
Overview of Golden Age SF
John W. Campbell, Jr.
Isaac Asimov
Ray Bradbury
Robert A. Heinlein
Frank Herbert
Tom Godwin
SF Film Through the 1950s
Film vs. Literature
Early SF Film
1950s SF Film Boom
Forbidden Planet
New Wave SF
Historical Context
Overview of New Wave SF
J.G. Ballard
Harlan Ellison
Philip K. Dick
Samuel R. Delany
Star Trek
“The City on the Edge of Forever”
Feminist SF
Historical Context
Beginnings of Feminist SF
Definitions of Feminist SF
Joanna Russ
Marge Piercy
Pamela Zoline
James Tiptree, Jr.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Octavia E. Butler
Afrofuturism
Steven Barnes
Tananarive Due
Nalo Hopkinson
Nnedi Okorafor
Cyberpunk
Historical Context
Coining the Cyberpunk Term
Cyberpunk Characteristics
William Gibson
Sprawl Trilogy and Stories
Hermes 2000 and Floppy Disk eBooks
The X-Files, “Kill Switch”
Bruce Sterling
Pat Cadigan
Contemporary Science Fiction
Historical Context
Ted Chiang
N. K. Jemisin
Cory Doctorow
Charlie Jane Anders
Martha Wells
Mary Robinette Kowal
Ken Liu
R. F. Kuang
SF Film from 1960 Onward
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
Global Perspective: Taiwanese SF
Brief Taiwanese History
Taiwanese SF Overview
Taiwanese Fandom
Cultural Comparisons
Issues with Translation
How to Keep Up With Science Fiction
Appendices
Appendix 1: Glossary of Science Fiction Terms
Appendix 2: Chronological List of SF Definitions of Science Fiction with MLA Citations
Appendix 3: Further Reading
Textbooks
Readers
Teaching
Online Research
Appendix 4: Sample Syllabus with Hyperlinked Readings
Appendix 5: Lecture Videos
Appendix 6: Version History