Author: Jason W. Ellis

I wanted to thank everyone for being on time and ready to learn some more about Science Fiction and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Above, I’ve embedded a video of the second lecture. It covers the continuation of the Mary Shelley lecture started in the first video lecture and it concludes with the overview of the list of science fiction definitions.

Before our class on Feb. 19, add a comment to this post of at least 250 words that summarizes the lecture and your reading of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Remember, you only need to show best effort. Write about what you think is most important from the lecture. Write about how you might describe what you’ve read in Frankenstein to a friend. The goal is to look back at your notes, think about them, and write brief summaries of the lecture and reading. You should see if your comment posts correctly. If in doubt, reload the page and confirm that it posts. If not, copy-and-paste your writing again and click “Post Comment” and then confirm.

Some reminders:

• Make notes of your reading in your notebook. The kinds of things that I keep notes on of my readings include: character names, plot points, settings, words and their definitions, etc.
• If you want to read and then make notes after reading, you might write a summary of your reading by volume, chapter, etc.
• Again, I’m not looking for a particular way of your keeping notes as long as you are making notes in some way that are useful to you.
• Aim to have Frankenstein completed before class on Feb. 19 when we meet next.
• If you have any questions, email me at jellis at citytech.cuny.edu.

Since we’re just starting the class, this first writing assignment is much lower stakes than those that follow. For this first assignment, write a comment to this blog post that introduces yourself to me and your classmates, and that summarizes what I talked about in lecture and what you read before our next class.

For this first assignment, please spend more writing on yourself and tell us your major, your career goals, and your background/interest in Science Fiction. You can include your favorite SF or maybe what introduced you to SF. Then, briefly write about what I discussed in lecture (only a sentence or two) and what you are reading (again, only a sentence or two is necessary–but be sure to include the title, author’s full name, publication year, and something about what you’ve read so far–e.g., or for example, “So far, the book is about Walton sailing on a voyage of discovery and then his encounter with a man marooned on a floating piece of ice named Victor Frankenstein, who tells Walton about how he came to be there.”

It should be at least 250 words long. This is about 1 page, double spaced worth of writing. If you have the time and energy to write more, I highly encourage it as the 250-word mark is a minimal length. Looking ahead, there might be some weeks that you only write 250 words and others you might want to write more based on your reaction to the lectures and the readings.

These weekly writing assignments are based on best effort. If the word count is met and there are sufficient details, you will receive full credit for that week’s assignment. If the word count is low and/or the writing has too many empty words–meaning not focused on the task of summarizing lecture and readings–less credit will be received.

I STRONGLY suggest writing your weekly summary in a word processor like Microsoft Word, Apple Pages, or Google Docs first, so that your work is saved somewhere else. Then, copy-and-paste your writing into the comment box below this post (remember to click on the post’s title and scroll down the subsequent page to find the comment box). Finally, click the “Post Comment” button and wait for visual confirmation that your post was successful.

Always keep a copy of your work saved elsewhere in case your comment disappears from OpenLab for whatever reason. To check how many comments you have made over the semester, you can easily do so by going to our OpenLab site > Mouseover the title of the site at the top of the page > Click on Dashboard > Click on Comments on the left > type in your name in the search box on the right > Click “Search Comments.” The number of “approved” comments will appear under your name in the list.