Teaching Speculative Fiction

Here's the December 3, 2009 essay of Philippine Star columnist Isagani Cruz: Teaching Speculative Fiction.

At the Ateneo de Manila University this semester, I am teaching a course entitled “Speculative Fiction.” This is not the first time I have taught the course, having taught it before not just at the Ateneo but at De La Salle University (where I will teach it again next trimester).

Although I’ve been teaching nonstop since 1969 (40 years, most of them full-time), I’m still experimenting with various teaching techniques. With Specfict (that’s how I call it), I start the term by asking my students what novels or films they want to take up.

Since I have not read nor watched some of the novels and movies that the students suggest, I go double-time preparing for the class. That keeps me busy, but it also keeps me young. Specfict is itself a young literary genre (though its roots

can be traced to the ancient classics), having been identified and taken seriously by literature teachers only in the last half-century. Student-initiated syllabus design (where students prepare the syllabus rather than, or in cooperation with, the teacher) is also a new teaching technique, requiring a lot of work (and a lot of guts) for the teacher.

After the first day of class, which focuses on which works to take up, I then construct an egroup for the class (I still use Yahoo! Groups, although at Far Eastern University where I teach teachers, I champion the use of Moodle). During the rather frequent times when I have to away from campus to give a lecture or workshop

, I use the egroup to give my students texts to read and questions to answer, giving them the equivalent of the day’s intellectual work. In this way, I can do my community service and my teaching on the same calendar

days.

A typical class in Specfict includes a writing exercise (I ask students to answer speculative questions, such as “If you could return to a day in the nineteenth century, which day would it be and why?”), an oral report by a student, and a class discussion. I specify the contents of the oral report (a short summary of the plot of the novel or film, plus a lengthy explanation of why everyone should read or watch it). During the report, I ask the reporter to elaborate on certain points she or he has raised, or I volunteer information that might have been left out. We then discuss either as a whole class or in buzz groups, with me asking what I think are extremely provocative questions (such as “Why would God create an entire universe only for us?” or “Do you think aliens also need redemption?”). (For foreigners reading this column: both the Ateneo and De La Salle are Catholic schools.)

Specfict, for me, is teaching rather than research, but I do get some insights (which I share immediately with my students) about the place of the genre in literary theory. Last week, for instance, we had to process the Ampatuan massacre and the students were clearly disturbed by the horrible real-life news and could not focus on literature.

I talked a little bit about how we can discover the essential qualities of something by looking at its most extreme form. All novels and films are about unreal characters and places, but in Specfict, these characters and places are meant to be seen as unreal (unlike in many works of literature or cinema, where the reader or viewer is lulled into a suspension of disbelief). By highlighting the artificiality, Specfict shows fiction for what it really is – a bundle of lies, as Plato and later critics liked to put it. (In theoretical jargon, this is known as “deconstruction” or showing that a literary text is constructed according to conventional rules and not a natural “mirror of reality.”)

Similarly, we can see the essential qualities of Philippine politics from the Ampatuan massacre. Families or dynasties really kill each other, not as literally as in the case of Ampatuan, but just as effectively, by denying other families access to power and money and by being unfair during elections (money and guns, not votes, determine who will get elected). Elections are wars.

Specfict is the most intellectual of all literary genres, because it focuses on ideas much more obviously than other forms of writing. Instead of obsessing over technical details such as plot structure, character development, and figurative language, Specfict authors typically spend their energies putting forward ideas to challenge the common notion that ours is the best (or the worst) of all possible worlds.

Here is the description of my Specfict course: “A student-driven, text-intensive seminar on the different genres of speculative fiction, including different forms of science fiction (such as hard, soft, u/dystopian, time travel, military, horror, feminist, new wave, cyberpunk, first contact, genetic engineering, space opera, coming of age), fantasy (contemporary, dark, light, traditional), superhero fiction, alternate history, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, magical/marvelous realism, and supernatural fiction.”

Among the works suggested by my students and now included in the syllabus are New Moon, Surrogates, and District 9. Last term, my students forced me to study K_kaku Kid_tai (Ghost in the Shell) and World War Z. It’s fun trying to keep up with my students!