{"id":1072,"date":"2015-07-14T12:44:57","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T10:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/?p=1072"},"modified":"2015-07-14T12:44:57","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T10:44:57","slug":"the-difficult-art-of-selecting-short-stories-choosing-sf-stories-for-my-course-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/2015\/07\/14\/the-difficult-art-of-selecting-short-stories-choosing-sf-stories-for-my-course-next-year\/","title":{"rendered":"THE DIFFICULT ART OF SELECTING SHORT STORIES (CHOOSING SF STORIES FOR MY COURSE NEXT YEAR) <\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever I think of short stories, I think of the late Prof. Guillermina Cenoz, from whom I learned to appreciate this genre. I took an undergrad and a post-grad course on short fiction with her and, later, already as a teacher, I inherited her undergrad course. This, I have taught twice: a first edition (1999-2000) in which I taught an ambitious selection of 24 stories, all adapted for the screen; and a second edition (2004-5) in which I limited myself to just 8, all of them SF and gothic fiction also adapted for the screen (yes, I used time for the films, which I had not done the first time around). Here is the complete reading list including both courses (the film adaptation has the same title, with the exceptions mentioned in parenthesis):<\/p>\n

Asimov, Isaac. \u201cThe Bicentennial Man\u201d
\nBarker, Clive. Books of Blood, Vol. 5: \u201cThe Forbidden,\u201d [Candyman<\/em>]
\nBierce, Ambrose. \u201cAn Incident at Owl Creek Bridge\u201d
\nCarter, Angela. The Bloody Chamber<\/em>: \u201cThe Company of Wolves\u201d
\nConrad, Joseph. \u201cAmy Foster\u201d [Swept from the Sea<\/em>]
\nConrad, Joseph. \u201cHeart of Darkness\u201d [Apocalypse Now!<\/em>]
\nDick, Philip K. \u201cMinority Report\u201d
\nDoyle, Arthur Conan. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes<\/em>: \u201cA Scandal in Bohemia\u201d
\nDu Maurier, Daphne. \u201cDon’t Look Now!\u201d
\nDu Maurier, Daphne. \u00abThe Birds\u00bb
\nGibson, William. Burning Chrome<\/em>: \u201cJohnny Mnemmonic\u201d
\nGreene, Graham. \u201cThe Basement Room\u201d [The Fallen Idol<\/em>]
\nIrving, Washington. Tales from the Alhambra<\/em>: \u201cThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow\u201d [Sleepy Hollow<\/em>]
\nJames, M.R. \u201cCasting the Runes\u201d [The Curse of the Demon<\/em>]
\nJoyce, James. Dubliners: \u201cThe Dead\u201d
\nKing, Stephen. Different Seasons<\/em>: \u201cApt Pupil\u201d
\nKipling, Rudyard. The Jungle Books<\/em>: \u201cMowgli\u2019s Brothers\u201d [The Jungle Book<\/em>]
\nLe Fanu, Joseph Sheridan. \u201cCarmilla\u201d [The Vampire Lovers<\/em>]
\nLovecraft, H.P. \u201cHerbert West: Re-animator\u201d [Reanimator<\/em>]
\nMcCullers, Carson. \u201cThe Ballad of Sad Caf\u00e9\u201d
\nPoe, Edgar Alan. \u201cThe Fall of the House of Usher\u201d [House of Usher<\/em>]
\nRunyon, Damon. \u201cThe Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown\u201d [Guys and Dolls<\/em>]
\nSinger, Isaac Basevis. \u201cYentl: The Yeshiva Singer\u201d [Yentl<\/em>]
\nStern, Philip Van Doren. \u201cThe Greatest Gift\u201d [It’s a Wonderful Life<\/em>]
\nStevenson, R.L. \u201cThe Body Snatcher\u201d
\nVan Vogt, A.E. \u201cBlack Destroyer\u201d [Alien<\/em>]
\nWoolrich, Cornel. \u201cRear Window\u201d<\/p>\n

These are all stories I love and I would certainly be very happy to teach them again.<\/p>\n

Then, in 2006 I was paid just 500 Euros, would you believe this?, to translate a collection I called Siete relatos g\u00f3ticos: Del papel a la pantalla<\/em>. This included a commentary on each of the seven film adaptations of \u201cThe legend of Sleepy Hollow\u201d, \u201cAn Incident at Owl Creek Bridge\u201d, \u201cHoichi, the Earless\u201d by Lafcadio Hearn, \u201cCasting the Runes\u201d, \u201cSpurs\u201d by Clarence Aaron \u2018Tod\u2019 Robbins (which inspired Freaks<\/em>), \u201cThe Most Dangerous Game\u201d by Richard Connell and \u201cThe Devil and Daniel Webster\u201d by Stephen Vincent Benet. The collection, by the way, is available from http:\/\/ddd.uab.cat\/record\/116808<\/a>, or you may download the Epub and Mobi files from my web at http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/content\/books<\/a>). I would like very much to have time to produce a sequel called Ocho relatos<\/em>, both gothic and SF, but a) I don\u2019t particularly enjoy translating, b) this is very hard work that counts for nothing towards my research assessment exercise. Perhaps when I retire\u2026<\/p>\n

Why the specific interest in the short story and cinema? No particular reason. I have always been interested in film adaptation and the short story happens to be arguably the most often unacknowledged source in terms of academic interest and popularity. With one exception: the many adaptations of stories written by Philip K. Dick.<\/p>\n

This brings me back to SF, a genre (or mode?) for which short fiction is essential, as 20th century SF grew basically out of the specialized magazines, beginning of course with Hugo Gernsback\u2019s Amazing Stories<\/em> (1926). I am not really a good short story reader, preferring instead novels. Yet, feeling curious about the function of short fiction in the development of SF and aware of the many gaps in my SF reading list, I have set out to fill this summer with all I can lay my hands on. Not randomly\u2026 <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the idea: students taking my elective \u2018English Prose: Considering Science Fiction\u2019 next Spring will have to read the 5 novels I have selected. They will also be offered a selection of 40 to 50 short stories. Each student will be assigned a story and she or he will do a class presentation based on it, followed by writing a brief index card. I\u2019ll collect the index cards and in this way we\u2019ll produce a nice online booklet to help other SF readers locate and read the stories. If students feel like reading the 40\/50 stories, they\u2019re welcome, though this is not compulsory. I just hope they get to hear in this way about many other SF writers apart from our 5 novelists.<\/p>\n

I started a while ago the process of choosing the stories, which is, in one word, mindboggling\u2026 I am using Hugo and Nebula lists of winners, and of short-listed authors, my own memories of stories I have read or heard about, and a wonderful website called Free Speculative Fiction Online (http:\/\/links.freesfonline.de\/index.html<\/a>). Even so, I despair\u2026 for I want the final list to be balanced chronologically and also in terms of nationality, gender, ethnicity\u2026 This means that I am working in two directions: selecting famous\/representative texts and finding texts for famous\/representative authors. I calculate that for the final 40 to 50 titles I will have to read 200. Am I complaining? No!!!!\u2026 it\u2019s wonderful to have the excuse to do this\u2026 It was about time\u2026<\/p>\n

In the first edition of the short fiction course I gave students the option to submit for assessment either a paper or a short story of their own. Many tried writing a short story (I\u2019m so sorry I didn\u2019t keep them\u2026) but then complained it had been much, much harder than they thought. This year, I am also planning to have my students write SF short fiction though not for assessment. Last June I was a member of the jury judging the entries to the Spanish SF short fiction contest Inspiraci\u00e8ncia (http:\/\/www.inspiraciencia.es\/ca\/<\/a>) and I aim at convincing my students to submit their own stories next year. I think the 800-word limit will help\u2026<\/p>\n

To finish, let me teach you a typical SF concept: the fix-up. What\u2019s a \u2018fix-up\u2019? A novel made up of diverse short fiction pieces. That would explain why Charles Stross\u2019s Accelerando<\/em> (2005), one of the best-known recent fix-ups, is such a crazy, demanding book\u2026 The first piece, \u201cLobsters\u201d is for now in my selection. We\u2019ll see\u2026<\/p>\n

Back to reading SF short fiction, then, and loving it!<\/p>\n

Comments are very welcome! (Thanks!) Just remember that I check them for spam; it might take a few days for yours to be available. Follow on Twitter the blog updates: @SaraMartinUAB. See my publications and activities on my personal web http:\/\/gent.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever I think of short stories, I think of the late Prof. Guillermina Cenoz, from whom I learned to appreciate this genre. I took an undergrad and a post-grad course on short fiction with her and, later, already as a teacher, I inherited her undergrad course. This, I have taught twice: a first edition (1999-2000) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,31,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-science-fiction","category-teaching-tools-and-rules"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}