This course is conceived as an introduction to the strengths and variety of contemporary SF. You cannot always get all the books in any given term, due to the vagaries of paperback publishers, so the following list has extra titles and authors; it is a list to be condensed and tailored by the instructor.
1. Those Who Can. Robin Scott Wilson, ed. second edition, St. Martin’s Press, 1996. (An anthology on writing SF, with stories and essays introducing basic terminology such as “plot” and “theme.”)
2. Modern Science Fiction. Norman Spinrad, ed. Doubleday Anchor, 1976. (A historical anthology and presently out of print. You could substitute James E. Gunn’s The Road to Science Fiction, White Wolf, 1996 ff, but it is in an unwieldy six volumes, or Visions of Wonder, ed. David G. Hartwell and Milton Wolf, Tor Books, 1996.)
Alternatively, you might use excerpts from Alexei and Cory Panshin’s enormous historical work, The World Beyond the Hill (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1989) together with an anthology such as The World Treasury of Science Fiction (ed. David G. Hartwell, Little, Brown, 1989) or Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction (ed. Gardner Dozois, St. Martin’s Press, 1994).
3. A. E. Van Vogt. Slan (or The Voyage of the Space Beagle).
4. Robert A. Heinlein. The Past Through Tomorrow (or Beyond This Horizon).
5. Arthur C. Clarke. Childhood’s End.
6. Ray Bradbury. The Martian Chronicles (or Fahrenheit 451).
7. Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. The Space Merchants.
8. Alfred Bester. The Demolished Man (or The Stars My Destination).
9. Theodore Sturgeon. More Than Human.
10. Isaac Asimov. The Caves of Steel.
11. Frank Herbert. Under Pressure.
12. Robert A. Heinlein. Double Star.
13. _____. Stranger in a Strange Land.
14. Walter M. Miller, Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz.
15. Philip K. Dick. The Man in the High Castle.
16. Roger Zelazny. This Immortal (or The Dream Master).
17. Samuel R. Delany. Babel-17 (or The Einstein Intersection or Nova).
18. Joanna Russ. Picnic on Paradise (or The Female Man).
19. Thomas M. Disch. 334.
20. Ursula K. Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness.
21. John Varley. The Persistence of Vision.
22. Gregory Benford. Timescape.
23. Gene Wolfe. The Shadow of the Torturer.
24. William Gibson. Neuromancer.
25. Orson Scott Card. Ender’s Game.
26. Joan Slonczewski. A Door into Ocean.
27. Lois McMaster Bujold, Barrayar (or Falling Free or The Vor Game).
28. David G. Hartwell, ed. Year’s Best SF (annual).
Of course, Age of Wonders is designed to fit into such a course in several different ways. I have taught many versions of this course, from which the above list has been developed. As you can see, it tries to go to the heart of what everyone loves in the SF field. And I never found it impossible to demand a book (ca. 200 pages of reading) per class, since the average high-school-age SF fan reads one book, or more, every couple of days. This is not a field for slow students.
II. A Course in the Literary History of SF
This course presupposes a general knowledge gained through exposure to the material in the Introductory Course above. I have observed in many parts of the U.S. that the historical course is taught most often without any reference to, or knowledge of, contemporary SF. This has always struck me as unproductive.
1. H. Bruce Franklin. Future Perfect. (Third edition) This was the first and is still the best on nineteenth-century SF in the U.S. (You might substitute James E. Gunn’s second volume of The Road to Science Fiction.)
2. Harold Beaver, ed. The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.
3. Mary Shelley. Frankenstein.
4. Jules Verne. A Journey to the Center of the Earth.
5. H. G. Wells. The Time Machine.
6. _____ The Island of Dr. Moreau or The War of the Worlds or The First Men in the Moon.
7. _____. When the Sleeper Wakes.
8. M. P. Shiel. The Purple Cloud.
9. William Hope Hodgson. The Night Land.
10. Jack London. The Scarlet Plague.
11. Yevgeny Zamiatin. We.
12. E. M. Forster. “The Machine Stops.”
13. Aldous Huxley. Brave New World.
14. Olaf Stapledon. Star Maker.
15. H. P. Lovecraft. At the Mountains of Madness.
16. John W. Campbell. Who Goes There?
17. Karel Čapek. War with the Newts.
18. George R. Stewart. Earth Abides.
19. James Blish. Cities in Flight.
20. Clifford D. Simak. City.
21. Arthur C. Clarke. The City and the Stars.
22. Robert A. Heinlein. The Door into Summer.
23. Brian W. Aldiss. Starswarm or The Dark Light Years.
24. J. G. Ballard. The Drowned World or The Burning World or The Crystal World.
25. Stanislas Lem. Solaris.
26. Thomas M. Disch. 334.
27. Ursula K. Le Guin & Brian Attebery, eds. The Norton Book of Science Fiction.
It will be evident to the reader familiar with a number of these works that this course superimposes a literary/historical structure upon SF literature, at war with the theory of pulp origins. That’s the way it is.