Scification:
Education via Science Fiction
On October 9th of 2009 NASA fired a rocket into the south pole of the Moon. This was an attempt to determine if water was present and how deep it might be in the lunar crust. I remembered having recently read something about water on the Moon and had to track it down. It turned out to be the science fiction story All Day September by Roger Kuykendall. It is about a lunar prospector luckily finding water to keep himself alive after a meteor damaged his tractor.
Science fiction has changed since the 50s and 60s and technology for reading and producing it has changed also. But since the advance in technology has affected society the modern authors have been influenced along with it. The expectations about the future and the style of SF literature has changed. Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse was my first encounter with science fiction literature. Nourse was a doctor and wrote about a heart transplant in that story even though it was years before one was actually done. So science fiction can involve speculation about the future and sometimes those speculations come true. Arthur C. Clarke explained the possible usefulness of geosynchronous satellites 12 years before the Russians launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in 1957, and 20 years before any geosynchronous satellites were launched. Now they are common and we have ugly satellite dish antennae stuck on buildings all over the United States.
Many people say we are having a crisis in education and there is even a movie about the subject, Waiting for Superman. We have children that cannot attain good reading scores much less do well at the science but what are the children encouraged to read? Are they supposed to read about a boy wizard going to a school for wizards? What good is that?
In 1971 Michael Hart began Project Gutenberg with the Declaration of Independence. Project Gutenberg has grown considerably since 1971 and many works of science fiction have been added since 2000. The book Star Surgeon was added to the collection in 2006. There are now more than 1000 works of science fiction in the public domain and on-line at various Internet sites like:
Science fiction has changed since the 50s and 60s and technology for reading and producing it has changed also. But since the advance in technology has affected society the modern authors have been influenced along with it. The expectations about the future and the style of SF literature has changed. Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse was my first encounter with science fiction literature. Nourse was a doctor and wrote about a heart transplant in that story even though it was years before one was actually done. So science fiction can involve speculation about the future and sometimes those speculations come true. Arthur C. Clarke explained the possible usefulness of geosynchronous satellites 12 years before the Russians launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite in 1957, and 20 years before any geosynchronous satellites were launched. Now they are common and we have ugly satellite dish antennae stuck on buildings all over the United States.
Many people say we are having a crisis in education and there is even a movie about the subject, Waiting for Superman. We have children that cannot attain good reading scores much less do well at the science but what are the children encouraged to read? Are they supposed to read about a boy wizard going to a school for wizards? What good is that?
In 1971 Michael Hart began Project Gutenberg with the Declaration of Independence. Project Gutenberg has grown considerably since 1971 and many works of science fiction have been added since 2000. The book Star Surgeon was added to the collection in 2006. There are now more than 1000 works of science fiction in the public domain and on-line at various Internet sites like:
Material is now easy to get in our electronically permeated society but there is so much of it the problem is finding what suits our taste and is worth the time. But what do we suggest to the kids to help solve our education problem?
Netbooks and smartbooks can now provide children with inexpensive and easy access to information sources. This is just going to become a more and more science and technology dependent culture. They should use the technology to adapt to the sci-tekulture to come. The cyberculture will not go away.
Here are more than 500 sci-fi e-books. But only a few more than 200 passed muster and have been selected. The well known science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon said, "90% of everything is crud." The selected stories have been put into 14 categories. Many stories fit into multiple categories and are listed more than once. Space travel would be necessary to encounter aliens in a story but it only goes into both categories if both are important to the events in the story. It is usually impossible to determine what a story is about just from the title so trying to pick good material directly from the Internet without reading it is like stumbling around in the dark. I hope you find my choices helpful.
Only five of the stories are in audio-book form but they take up half of the CD, more than four times as much space as all of the ebooks. These stories are also in e-book form so they can be read while listening if desired. This might be helpful as reading lessons for children. And they might pick up some real science along the way.
Netbooks and smartbooks can now provide children with inexpensive and easy access to information sources. This is just going to become a more and more science and technology dependent culture. They should use the technology to adapt to the sci-tekulture to come. The cyberculture will not go away.
Here are more than 500 sci-fi e-books. But only a few more than 200 passed muster and have been selected. The well known science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon said, "90% of everything is crud." The selected stories have been put into 14 categories. Many stories fit into multiple categories and are listed more than once. Space travel would be necessary to encounter aliens in a story but it only goes into both categories if both are important to the events in the story. It is usually impossible to determine what a story is about just from the title so trying to pick good material directly from the Internet without reading it is like stumbling around in the dark. I hope you find my choices helpful.
Only five of the stories are in audio-book form but they take up half of the CD, more than four times as much space as all of the ebooks. These stories are also in e-book form so they can be read while listening if desired. This might be helpful as reading lessons for children. And they might pick up some real science along the way.
Instructions for the e-book reader software are HERE!
So Tally Ho!
- A Place to Start
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- The Alternate Realities of Mack Reynolds
- Aliens
- Business & Economics
- Comedy
- Computer & Robots
- Crime
- Education
- Chemical & Medical
- Metaphysics
- Politcs+Non-SF
- Psychology
- Space Travel
- Technolgy
- Time Troubles
- War
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- Hairy Heap of Sci-Fi History.
Jump into the SF heap at your own risk.
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- Sci-Fi Audio Books
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Copyright © 2010, John P. Barlow