Tues || 9.12: In-class meeting
□ "Telegraph Culture" and the Changing Nature of Space and Time in the Victorian Era
□ Discussion of TTAoLaB reading / consider essay qs

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week 4 reading
□ Padua, Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, front matter through p. 94

□ "The Victorians and Science Fiction" at the Virtual Victorian blog

□ [and read either Poe, Doyle, or the first five "chapters" of Flatland]

> Edgar Allen Poe, "Some Words with a Mummy" (1845)

> Edwin Abbott, Flatland (1884) [or listen to an audio version]

> Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Horror of the Heights" (1913)

□ View: "The Trip to the Moon" (15:36 minutes) / film of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865)
(1902, director George Melies) wikipedia description

Le voyage dans la Lune
□ A 19th-century vision of the Year 2000

□ weeks 4/5 slideset [sometimes there will be a slideset giving an overview of the topics we'll be looking at in that week and to come; sometimes I will wait to put a slideset together after having heard from you in class and read some of your blogs and worksheets and so on to put together a slideset that is more specific to what might be helpful for you when you are in the middle of learning about a topic -- that is the case for this slideset, which I will post on Thurs 9.18 for you to review.]

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Online lab session assignment

□ Upload a post at your blogger.com site by 10:00 p.m. on Monday 9.18 [in addition to your textual discussion, include a picture]

Instructions:

Taking into account the L&B book by Padua [the present looks back at a starting point of our present in the 19thc, the links in the reading to Victorian sf [the 19thc imagines the future] and the steampunk [the present imagines a future extrapolated from the 19thc as seen from the past] links below, discuss in a 2 or 3 paragraphs how it is that the 19thc, science and technology and the future seem to be so well-suited to each other in science and popular culture

It might help to use the passage below to kick-start your thinking:

I have a lot of curiosities about this genre. What is it that draws us to it? Why do we love this classical use of technology, turned in to science fiction? Perhaps it captures that sense of exploration and wonder that used to exist to a larger extent in scientific discovery. Science is still exciting, but it’s become something much more . . . technical these days. Back in the late 1800s–early 1900s, there was a feel that science could not only solve all problems, but that it was something every day people could explore and understand. A lot of branches of science were relatively new, at least in the modern form, and there was a general excitement and enthusiasm to the process. . .

Now, science is something we study in school and take tests on.

-- Brandon Sanderson (science fiction and fantasy author, 2016)

Steampunk Links

What is Steampunk?

What is Steampunk and is it Over? at "The Mary Sue"

□ Looking at Steampunk from the Outside

□ Steampunk Inventions (images)

□ q&a with Diana Pho (aka Ay-leen the Peacemaker) of Beyond Victoriana: A Multicultural Perspective on Steampunk

□ The League of Extraordinary Black People: African and African-American Steampunk! at the Chronicles of Harriet

□ Steampunk at Black Girl Nerds

□ Black Victorians: African Americans in Steampunk and Historical Fiction at Adopted by Aliens

Top Ten Best Steampunk Games at gameranx (2015, 4442, 385 views)

□ "Steampunk Rover Could Explore Hellish Venus"
□ "Giant Mechanical Elephant Nantes"