這是超好用科幻工具書 Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction, 5th Edition 的第十四章，談的是如何「教」科幻。這一章有其實用價值沒錯，不過其中的方法也需要學生主動參與。以臺灣目前科幻知識完全由一元化推廣者灌輸，學生照單全收，缺乏互動討論空間的情況來看，要直接移植恐怕不是那麼簡單。話說回來，反正我又沒要教科幻，當成自修工具也好。
閱讀出處：
Dennis M. Kratz, “Teaching Science Fiction” in Neil Barron (ed.), Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction, 5th ed. (Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited, 2004), pp. 793-810.
劃重點：
教授科幻的理由：
p. 793
…… Science fiction is a major form of literary expression. It is also a vibrant and important form of popular narrative entertainment that reflects American culture in powerful ways. It provides unique opportunities to study the translation of scientific ideas into popular thought. It is a valuable mirror for observing our culture, our selves, and our response to the New and Different. It can help teach aboutp. 794
the processes of scientific discovery. It can help develop the imaginative powers of students. It can excite them about science. It is a powerful force in our culture that we are stupid to ignore. This list is far from exhaustive and every one of these arguments implies slightly different approaches and courses.
A more profound and general reason exists that we should declare forcefully and often: the study of science fiction can help, in powerful and particularly appropriate ways, to fulfill the essential goals of a humanistic education for the 21st century. ……
……
…… It concerns change wrought by scientific discovery and technological innovation. It spans the existing media, from book to film to video game, and even imagines new owns such as the holodeck. Its long fascination with the subject of the alien places issues of cross-cultural understanding in a more embracing context impossible for traditional realistic narrative. Finally, science fiction courses are well suited to approaches that encourage not only critical but also creative thinking.
教授科幻的方法
有效方法的特點：
…… the most effective approaches have one or more of the following characteristics. First, they embrace science fiction’s contradictory nature as both popular entertainment and serious literary genre; moreover, they pay attention to the diverse media in which it appears. Second, they take advantage of its expansive nature that defies clear definition or generic limits. As Jack Williamson has said, “Science fiction has grown and diversified far beyond the reach of any valid general statement about it, including this one.” Third, they explore comparatively the treatment, over time and (if possible) across cultures, of specific questions or issues. Fourth, they ignore conven-p. 795
tional boundaries separating “creative writing” from other academic courses. Students should not leave a science fiction course without having written a story, drafted a screenplay, designed a game, or participating in exercises that nurture creativity.課程範本：
Most science fiction courses are designed to address three intertwined topics. Almost all look at the history of SF and engage students in thinking about what might reasonably be call “SF appreciation” or the “aesthetics” of SF. Third, course devote part or even the majority of time to exploring SF as a means of social commentary or exploring the implications of scientific discoveries and technological developments.p. 796
Here is an imagined syllabus from a composite course that touches on all these issues:
Science Fiction
I. The Nature of SF
A. Defining SF
B. Some Stories and Ways to Read Them
II. The History of SF
A. From Frankenstein to Amazing Stories
B. The "Golden Age" of American SF〔主題嫌少了點，不過以通識課來看的話，這些東西能講得完已經很硬了說......〕
C. The 1960s on: Beyond the Ghettoes
D. Modern SF: The Media Age
III. Great Themes
A. Mad Scientists and Mutant Children
B. Life on Other Planets
C. Traveling through Time
D. Blurred Boundaries: Humans/Machines
IV. Conclusions: SF and the New
如何搞定定義問題？
…… Since the issue of "defining" SF is inevitable, I prefer to start with it. I link discussions to specific stories, using critical discussions as a supplement rather than a focus. We read stories (and see films), then try to extrapolate the qualities that make them SF rather than fantasy or realism. I think it important to set the context by emphasizing that all works exist in multiple genres, just as all individuals can be placed in a wide range of groups.如果符合教學目標的話，開始放各大頭的眾多定義，一起研討。〔絕對不可以搞獨賣市場，獨尊一說〕
……
The resulting discussion can lead the students to see what elements all forms of fiction have in common and what elements tend to differentiate SF from other genres. Students can then be guided to theoretical discussions of SF as a genre, as well as attempts to define its essential nature. ……
p. 797
以下是作者 Kratz 的教學策略：
My first personal contribution to this ongoing discussion, one that I have used to good advantage for years, is a proposed definition of SF as “fantasy made plausible through the rhetoric of science.” Granted, the term “rhetoric” requires some explanation; for I mean by this the use of sufficient references to science to ease the leap of imagination required of the reader. How valid the science proves to be is less important, in this view, than how convincing it is. Having come to definition from narratives, we then return to the narratives from the perspective of definition and criticism, assessing both from the rhetorical view that emphasizes value more than correctness.
This said, I confess that I have always been uncomfortable with any approach that seeks to establish clear definitions, especially in a genre as fluid and vibrant as SF. This discomfort has led me, in courses focusing on subjects as diverse as classical epic and medieval romance to SF, to set up a series of continua and ask students to place works on each continuum and to explain the reasons for that placement. One version of a useful spectrum places "mimetic" and "fantastic" at the poles, with SF in the middle:
Mimetic ---------- Science Fiction ---------- Fantastic
Another places (hard) SF and fantasy at opposite poles, with "science fantasy" in the middle. The goal of this exercise is to show students that such placement is to some degree always arbitrary, depending on the perspective of the definer. The role and nature of the "rhetoric of science" employed by the authors can be one of the criteria that students are required to consider. Another could be the conscious allusion to other works clearly identified as SF. The students keep personal journals of their reading during the semester, recording their placements on an electronic bulletin board. By collating their comparative placements, I can initiate throughout the semester valuable discussion both about specific works and about the students’ developing notions of what SF is and can be.
…… Take your examples from literature, film, television, graphic novels, and (if possible) games. Better yet, identify a theme and ask the students to find works from multiple media dealing with it. …… If possible, announce this project early in the semester and set teams the assignment of collecting versions (mingle levels of familiarity with SF if you can). ……
教授科幻主題的方法：
p. 798
The very diversity of SF—from space opera to philosophic fable—can play to the instructor’s advantage. Consider grouping various treatments of the same theme (e.g. alien encounter, artificial life, an experiment gone wrong), placing intellectually powerful explorations next to second-rate exploitations. In this exercise, as in the consideration of defining SF, placing works along a continuum—in this case with “exploit” on one extreme and “explore” on the other—can prove educationally valuable. What constitutes exploiting a theme? Exploring it? If your syllabus deals with works available in two or more media, does the place on the continuum move as the medium changes? Does this happen regularly?Kratz 以翻譯為策略增進學生對科幻主題的詮釋：
This brings us to the more general issue of promoting effective interpretive skills. I retain my long-lasting enthusiasm for an approach to interpretation based on the practice of literary translation. Put in simplest terms, this approach asks students to look at a work as if they were going to translate it into another language. The theme of communication across barriers of language and culture (and, of course, species) has made numerous appearances in science fiction. ……p. 799
Since translation involves the reconstruction of the artistic process that created the original, this charge can lead students to a more complex appreciation of narrative (whatever its medium) requires a mixture of imagination and intellect. ……
…… Reading from a translator’s perspective, with the goal of re-creating the vision of the original author rather than (say) writing a paper to prove a point, can lead students to a greater understanding of what constitutes artistic creation, understanding, and the limits of understanding. ……
It follows from this perspective that to appreciate science fiction (or any form of creative expression), we must think to some degree like an artist. To respond with intelligent appreciation to a science fiction narrative, we must learn to think science-fictionally. What characterizes this mode of thought? And how can we as instructors nurture it in our students?
如何學習科幻的思維方式？
The most obvious source for information about the way that science fiction writers think is the writer of science fiction. Many writers are willing to speak to classes. Consider setting up a funded series of speakers or find a way to include SF authors in an existing one. Recent graduates of writing workshops can provide insights into the ways stories are imagined and brought to completion. ……要嘛自己就來當科幻作家〔不一定要到職業等級，參加 writing workshop 即可〕；要嘛透過管道找一個。
教授科幻寫作：
To evoke the fusion of imagination and logical extrapolation that characterizes science fiction thinking, many instructors devise specific exercises. …… here is a sampling of possible exercises:p. 800
1. Write the future technological history of something that we use now.
2. Write the future history of communication, travel, play, or education.
3. Write a political history of the future. In fact, write two: one optimistically and the other pessimistically.
4. Compose an “alternate” history based on a radically different outcome of a historical event now regarded as significant: e.g. the American Revolution, World War II, the rise of Christianity.
5. Imagine yourself a visitor from another planet: describe your reaction to a specific part of American culture.
6. You have the opportunity to travel in time. Do you travel to the past or the future? If to the past, when and why? If to the future, what do you most fervently hope and fear to discover?
If you decide to employ fiction writing, consider assigning every student to write a story on the same theme. Form writing combines and assign each a different perspective from which to design its story. Ask students to rewrite an assigned story from the perspective of a different character (……). Or take advantage of the continuing popularity of the franchise novel (also known as “shared world” fiction). Such fiction has proved remarkably valuable in a classroom setting. ……另外還可以引入遊戲、科學、哲學等等議題協同教學。
結論：科幻教學在教育方面的作用
p. 801
In Cultivating Humanity, her thoughtful book defending liberal education, Martha Nussbaum adopts the classical notion of education as preparation to become a “citizen of the world”. She sees two elements as essential to gaining this more inclusive vision of one’s self. First is the development of “capacity for sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves”; later she suggests that literature can and should “foster an informed and compassionate vision of the different.” Second, she argues that to come to an understanding of our own culture we must develop the capacity to become “exiles from our own ways of life, seeing them from the vantage point of the outside.”p. 802
Science fiction can help educators who agree with these goals to reach them. Encounters with aliens and alien cultures permeate the history of SF. The encounter with the alien can serve as a powerful metaphor for our engagement with differing cultures. ……
It is in this realm of human values that SF can make its most important but far from only contribution to education. It can help create citizens of the world—and universe—whose engagement with Alien Others can make human others less strange. It can help nurture intellectual agility and comfort with change relating to technology and science. That welcoming attitude toward change should characterize teachers as well. The very technology that SF makes one of its most important subjects is transforming education as I write this chapter. Those of us involved with SF and the literature of the future should be in the forefront of developing new approaches to teaching and exploring the potential of new forms of communication and learning, particularly the interactive media associated with digital technology and the new “immersive” environments. Most of these innovations had already appeared in works of science fiction. Now we should take the lead in adapting them for use in science fiction course.
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