Science Fiction Short Story Reading & Discussion for Teens

Centered around reading short stories from a variety of mostly contemporary authors, the purpose of this class is to read, examine and discuss short pieces of speculative and fantasy fiction.  The stories selected have strong themes related to social justice, environmentalism and  growing up under less than ideal circumstances, for example:

…In Pearl Rehabilitative Colony for Ungrateful Daughters by Henry Lien, Radiant goddess Suki is a young woman growing up in  a culture of competitive martial arts skating and dire amounts of peer pressure.

…In The Weight of the Sunrise by Vylar Kaftan, we imagine an alternative world history wherein the Spanish conquest of the America’s has failed and the Incan Empire is a technological and military power successfully battling the ravages of small pox with advanced (for the time) medical techniques.

…In The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu a young man explores the legacy of his mother, a Chinese immigrant to America and the weight of the cultural divide separating her from her new home as well as her own son.

Each class students will discuss the reading they finished from the previous week and begin reading a new selection with their class. There will be about 45 minutes of homework reading each week with 2-3 short response questions to prepare for a lively discussion at the next class.