Huston ESL and International Education : September 2017

I recently had the chance to teach a non-credit class on science fiction at the local engineering school. Of course, I accepted. And, although we've only completed three weeks I am enjoying myself and so are the students, I think.

Class #1 was devoted to the question of "Can one define what science fiction is?" and "What is the first Science Fiction story?"

I don't claim it's a definitive answer, but I chose Mary Shelley's Frankinstein as my answer.

In fact, I completely admit I took this answer from Brian Aldiss's wonderful book, "Billion Year Spree."
https://www.amazon.com/Trillion-Year-Spree-History-Science/dp/0380704617/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507513805&sr=1-1&keywords=trillion+year+spree+the+history+of+science+fiction

A wonderful book well worth reading and in much need of an update.

So here's a bit on Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley.

The story of the writing of Frankenstein is fascinating but has also been documented many times before.

For instance see:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/frankenstein-published

or
http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-summer-storm-that-inspired-frankenstein-and-dracula

This entertaining and well done video includes much on that subject, although I prefer to stop the video at about the point roughly half way through where the SPOILERS on this classic novel (much different from the films) start:

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (as well as Pollidori's much forgotten but highly influential novel, "The Vampyre.") were written on a particularly wild weekend by a group of decadent Bohemians including Lord Byron, the poet, and Mary's husband Shelley, another decadent, wild poet.

I'd heard there was a movie based on this weekend and the events that occurred. To my surprise, I learned there were two. interestingly, they were made only two weeks apart. "Haunted Summer" and "Gothic" --interestingly I stumbled across a bizarre looking film called "Liztomania" that was also produced by Ken Russel, producer of "Gothic."

Although "Liztomania," had nothing but nothing to do with anything related to the class, save for some bizarre science fiction imagery, I showed it to the students and they seemed to enjoy it.