Speculative Fiction

Day 1
Dr. Will Kurlinkus
Ken Liu: Thoughts
and Prayers. What is
this story about?
What does it make us
reconsider? Give me
some lines you liked.
Ken Liu: Thoughts and Prayers
• Speculative Questions: What if…Internet trolling keeps getting
more and more extreme?
• How is recording technology (from cellphones to social media) changing now we
view the world and our relationship to memories and the past?
• How will such recording technologies change our relationship with death?
• How can/should the dead be used to make political arguments?
• How and why should/shoudn’t grief and true emotion appear on social media?
• How do we respond to/prevent trolling?
• Note how these speculative questions create an ecology/future
culture. Not just one point but a network.
Ken Liu’s Craft
• “It was a dreary, rainy Friday in October, the smell of fresh fallen leaves in the air. The black tupelos lining
the field hockey pitch had turned bright red, like a trail of bloody footprints left by a giant.”
• Juxtaposing the mundane and sci-fi: “The rest of the evening was a blur as the death toll climbed, TV
anchors read old forum posts from the gunman in dramatic voices, shaky follow-drone footage of
panicked people screaming and scattering circulated on the web. I put on my glasses and drifted
through the VR re-creation of the site hastily put up by the news crews. Already, the place was teeming
with avatars holding a candlelight vigil. Outlines on the ground glowed where victims were found, and
luminous arcs with floating numbers reconstructed ballistic trails. So much data, so little information.”
• Offering multiple perspectives on the technology from multiple viewpoints: the sister, the father, the
troll armer designer, the troll
• On Memory Capture Devices: “Do the people who take these photos believe them to be reality? Or
have the digital paintings taken the place of reality in their memory? When they try to remember the
captured moment, do they recall what they saw, or what the camera crafted for them?”
• Hints at a world beyond this one technology.
Redesign Based on
Liu
Leah Cypress: “BLU3RD.”
What is this story about?
What does it make us
reconsider? Give me some
lines you liked.
Leah Cypress: BLU3Rd

• Speculative Questions: What if…

• What is…?
• What…?
• What…?
• What…?
• What…?
Leah Cypress’s Craft
• Closure: “The College therapist tells me I never
felt loved as a child, that I am still damaged
from being shipped off for training at the age of
seven, that I was desperately lonely when I met
BLU3RD.”
• Misunderstandings, not paying attention to
the therapist, imperfect characters.
Foreshadowing.
What makes good
short fiction
writing?
1. Showing not telling: “Dad was
angry.”
2. Keeping open points of closure.
3. A system of points, questions,
morals without moralizing.
4. Combining the everyday with the
action.
Your Speculative Fiction Short Story Must
Include
• A several page long single-spaced short story about your future
design in action.
• A network of speculation and lessons provoked but not simply
told: no moralizing. Show don’t tell.
• A technological future world that exists beyond your design.
• More than one character
• Dialog
• Unforeseen complications surrounding your design
Journey Mapping
Rosenbaum Journey Mapping: models user
decision making, actions, and textual effects
over time.
• “a visual depiction of the sequence of
events through which customers may
interact with a service organization
during an entire purchase
process….pre-service, service, and post-
service”
• Horizontal axis is ”customer touchpoints”
across time, vertical access is strategic
initiatives of each touchpoint (eg.
emotional journey/empathy mapping)
• The client/mall gave the touchpoints vs.
deriving them from users/customers
• all customers don’t have the same
journey.
• Q. Journey map your undergrad
journey.