Imaginative Writing

Well, I finished my latest of the Great Courses, and this was yet another winner. I mentioned this one in my overview of the courses I took during my first year.
Course: Masterpieces of the Imaginative Mind: Literature's Most Fantastic Works
Instructor: Eric S. Rabkin - University of Michigan; Ph.D., University of Iowa

Covering works from fairy tales, through Carroll, Poe and Wells, Dr. Rabkin describes the ways fantastic literature both influence and reflect the western mind and culture. He introduces authors we've heard of, author's with whom we are not familiar but should be - E.T.A. Hoffmann for example - and gives us a deeper appreciation for the skill some authors of the fantastic had to speak at multiple levels with their works.

Then, in the second half of the course, Dr. Rabkin covers Science Fiction. He begins by claiming that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the first true science fiction novel, and uses it to demonstrate a recurring point: When a piece of literature has been deemed important or classic, the mainstream literary community denies the science fiction label, for they carry as an unsupported truth that "science fiction" is somehow less than fiction which stays within a realism form.

Frankenstein, of course, is a complex work, with many layers, and significant messages about humanity, humane behavior, and community. It is also a work which relies on a fictional science to drive the core of the plot.

From then on, the course covers the history of science fiction, through the important -- though somewhat embarrassing -- pulp fiction phase to the modern classics of Heinlein, Asimov and Clark, and up through LeGuin to Gibson, cyberpunk, and postmodernism.

One of the best outcomes from this course, for me, is a reading list. I now remember that there are important works of fiction which I owe it to myself to read: the "Alice" books, Rendezvous with Rama, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The Left Hand of Darkness among them. And, yes, I think I will make another run at Frankenstein as well.