UE: SCI 215SC: Science in Science Fiction: Home

Film/Novel Critiques

Students evaluate a science fiction film or novel to determine if the science and technologies used as plot devices are compatible with the laws of the universe discussed in the course .

• Try this list if you need a movie suggestion. Internet Movie Database Genre: Science Fiction
• Link to 40 Science Fiction films available from Saint Leo Library
• Take a look at this list if you need a book suggestion. Goodreads Science Fiction
• Search the library catalog or take a look at a list of recommended books owned by Saint Leo University's Library

Stranger than [Science] Fiction Report

Imaginative futurism in science fiction novels has a tendency to begin as predictions of technologies that are not yet realized. In this assessment, students research and report to their peers a technology or scientific plot device that originated in science fiction and is now currently being explored by the scientific community, such as: warp drive, ion propulsion, quantum teleportation, reanimation, electromagnetic levitation, cloaking devices, etc. 

• Link to 30 recent articles about science fiction technologies realized today.
• Link to video Science Fiction, Science Fact

Science Fiction Composition

Students will create an original science fiction work focused on how a future technology or altered environment alters the landscape of equity among social classes in a dystopian society and resolve these issues towards redistribution of equity among all. 

• Video Writing for Different Genres: Science Fiction

Messaging Intelligent Life

Students create and present an artifact representing a message to send to intelligent life representing directed first contact. Students will solve communication issues including the medium through which the message is sent, the “language” of the message, how to indicate awareness of a desire to communicate (i.e, get their attention), etc. 

• For inspiration, listen to the recordings sent on golden records with Voyager missions into deep space by NASA. Greetings to the Universe in 55 Different Languages
• Find out more about the contents of the golden records. https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/golden-record-contents/
• "The contents of the record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages, and printed messages from President Carter and U.N. Secretary General Waldheim."