Welcoming New Student Authors to sf@SF

This semester I'm teaching 2 courses that are going to stretch the boundaries of this blog's "science fiction at SUNY Fredonia" focus. American Popular and Mass Cultures looks at fantasy, comic books, video games, tv, and film in addition to science fiction, while Major Writers: Tolkien, Donaldson, Pullman focuses primarily on fantasy. In both courses, I'm requiring a certain number of blog posts from everyone--whether here or on their own blogs (which I'll link to)--and expecting everyone to be reading, commenting on, and responding to each other's writing. The dialogues that I hope to see emerge here will be the public face of what goes on in class discussions and on our ANGEL discussion forum, which are for class members only, but will hopefully go beyond the limitations of the 50-minute class meeting or the quick-hit nature of a discussion board. Our common text to start the semester, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring (and the Peter Jackson movie based on it) should give us enough of a common ground to get some discussions going. Let's see what comes of them!