This is an archived course. A more recent version may be available at ocw.mit.edu.

Study Materials

In-class Writing Prompts

Short, in-class writing exercises were periodically administered throughout the course. Featured below are the writing prompts, organized by session and topic.

SES # TOPICS WRITING PROMPTS
2

George Saunder's "My Flamboyant Grandson"

Ursula LeGuin's "Science Fiction and the Future"

Russell Baker's "Marriage á la Mode" and "Completely Different"

 In Russell Baker's pieces "Marriage á la Mode" and "Completely Different" and in George Saunders' short story "My Flamboyant Grandson," what are some aspects of these imagined futures that you find frightening, and why?
6-7 Ursula LeGuin's The Word for World Is Forest One of the persistent tensions in The Word for World Is Forest is the competing definitions of what a human being is. What is Davidson's definition? Selver's?
9-10 Film: The Matrix What are two questions the film The Matrix raises, about the possible future, the world of today, or about human existence generally?
11-13 Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake

Students number off by threes and write on one of the following questions about Oryx and Crake:

1. In what ways did Crake design the Crakers to be an improvement over Homo sapiens?

2. What ethical boundaries had been crossed before the apocalyptic epidemic to bring the world to the place we see in Oryx and Crake?

3. Jimmy is twice told "Don't let me down" and "I'm counting on you" in the novel. By whom? That imperative comes back on the last page. Which of the two people should he obey there at the end? Why?
17-18 George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four In what ways is Nineteen Eighty-Four reminiscent of other things we've read this semester? Why is the world of the novel the bleakest of all the future worlds we've encountered so far?
19 Film: Blade Runner Images of eyes pervade the film Blade Runner. List some of those images—all you can remember—and then say why you think eyes are an appropriate or useful image pattern for the story the film tells.