Reader's Choice

As this course comes to an end I really feel like I have an in depth understanding of Sci-Fi as a genre in literature. This has caused me to have even more of a love of these works which is saying a lot! I originally took this class because I had enjoyed a few books that fell into the futuristic dystopian area of Sci-Fi, I loved The Twilight Zone, and my dad had always been a huge fan of the genre.

Due to the fact that we haven’t covered this particular sub-genre of sci-fi and it was my dad’s favorite, I chose to pick Time Travel as my Reader’s Choice Topic. I think that time-travel is a super important aspect of Sci-Fi. Although it wasn’t really popularized till H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” in 1895”. Authors then started to explore the idea of technological time travel. This caused a “boom” in time travel literature around the 1950’s.

Some of the common themes that are exemplified in time travel over and over again are:

-Changing the Past/Future: This can be to create a positive outcome or reverse a negative one

-The Future Protectors: People who must protect the past and future from other travelers who might change it

- Unintentionally Altering the Future: People will change something in time that causes detrimental effects on the future.

I chose to read three short stories for this presentation, “All You Zombies-“by Robert A. Heinlein, “The Skull” by Philip K. Dick, and “A sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury. These three stories show all of the classic themes in time travel that I mentioned before. I of course go more in depth of these themes in my presentation.

Below I attached the video I used of some classic time travel clips in my presentation. I hope my class enjoyed!