Grokking the Future: Science Fiction in the Classroom.

This book demonstrates how science fiction offers new insights into current social issues and helps students become more creative in their thinking about the future. Chapters begin with a discussion of science fiction through "what if" questions. From there chapters explore the concept of ecological balances through a combination of sciences fiction and fact; selected sciences fiction works which can be used to pose the problem of overpopulation; ways in which science fiction can be used to help students confront the love/hate relationship which exists between men and machines; the automobile as revealed through the extrapolations of the science fiction writer; the threat of nuclear destruction as treated in science fiction; ways in which science fiction has dealt with social order and control, and deviance and nonconformity, tolerance and compassion, economic principles, the decay of cities, and speculations on the future; and how science fiction may be used to approach the study of generation gaps. Student exercises and selected bibliographies accompany each chapter. (HOD)