Sci-Fi Writing

This course teaches the craft of science fiction using the frameworks the field actually uses: Darko Suvin's novum and cognitive estrangement, Damon Knight's working definition of the genre, the hard-to-soft spectrum, Robert Heinlein's three flavors of speculative question (what if, if only, if this goes on), conservation of the one big change, Jo Walton's incluing for exposition, and the sources of sense of wonder named by Gernsback, Clarke, and Le Guin. You will construct a single premise as a novum, decide how rigorously to extrapolate it, deliver technology through implication instead of lecture, and engineer the conceptual breakthrough that makes a reader's mind expand. Every lesson pairs a concept with a named technique and worked examples drawn from books like Dune, The Left Hand of Darkness, The Martian, Project Hail Mary, Neuromancer, The Three-Body Problem, Blindsight, and The Dispossessed.