I want to begin by admitting that I had no idea what I was signing up for when I registered for this class. I was looking for classes that would fulfill my German minor requirements and Cold War Science Fiction seemed the most interesting (or least dry sounding) option. I had previously read Science Fiction works but had no especially strong interest in the genre. If asked at the beginning of the semester to explain the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy, I’m not sure if I would have been able to come up with an answer I would be confident in. When reviewing my blog posts written throughout the duration of this course, I think the most striking thing was how my perspective noticeably shifts as I learned more about the Cold War period and its relation to the genre of Science Fiction. My intention in this portfolio is to highlight the growth I had in terms of analyzing and interpreting Science Fiction texts and how I was able to state my thoughts and opinions in what I think is a more cohesive and understandable way.

The first post that I was able to confidently select for this portfolio was our first blog post for the semester, due on August 31st. I chose to write about Delany’s “About 5,750 Words.” Looking back, my writing was extremely rough. I focused way too much on the sentence where Delany explains that each individual word alters a reader’s mental image as he goes through a text. This assertion is just one of Delany’s main points, but because of how strongly I disagreed with the literal interpretation of his message, it was all I could focus on in my blog post. In retrospect, I was too hung up on his wording because while reading his essay, I was constantly questioning whether or not he was being literal in that each word changes the mental image or whether it was just an exaggeration for the sake of argument. I had no problems with the latter but the former felt like he was going too far. After ruminating on why I felt so strongly about this issue, I tried to put into words why I thought Delany’s definition of Science Fiction was suspect to me. I don’t think I did a really good job. I ended up having to cut off a few things that I had been considering but that I wasn’t able to write down in a way that was satisfactory. One of the things I had to cut off was how I realized that Delany was not entirely wrong when it came to word choice. For example, choosing between using the articles “a” or “the” before a noun can entirely alter what the speaker intends to convey. I had conceded this point in my first draft of the blog post but eventually discarded it when I couldn’t find a way to mention it naturally. As a result, I was disappointed in myself when I read the instructor feedback for my post which brought up that exact rebuttal to my argument. Honestly, reading that feedback made me feel a bit frustrated that I wasn’t able to communicate what I had meant and it was especially frustrating that I couldn’t blame anyone except myself for that.

For the three guest posts on my portfolio, I’ve chosen 3 other posts from the same day and with the same prompt as the one I had chosen. When rechecking HCommons to find the instructor feedback, I also started reading through everyone else’s blog posts. Initially, I had the idea that it was better to go into writing my blog posts blind without reading through what everyone else thought. I was worried about involuntarily plagiarizing other posts in my own work if I read through them before summarizing my own thoughts. When I first went through them, I was struck by the amount of analysis and thought going into everyone else’s posts.  I was impressed by the various analyses and interpretations of the different texts; many of them brought up concepts and questions that I had not previously considered when going through the readings myself. Unlike my posts, the others were able to summarize the reading they focused on while also speaking broadly of the main points of the writer. Although many of the blog posts from that day were impressive in my eyes, I finally chose 3 people who had also written about Delany’s text in order to give the best contrast between my writing versus others.  These blog posts of those 3 stood out to me the most, first because they were about the same topic that I had focused on and second because they seemed to be better versions of mine, in my opinion. Their overall themes and opinions aligned with my own, but they were better able to express what they meant and convey their interpretation of Delany’s work compared to my blog post. I think that it was because of this gap in writing quality that I really started to put more effort into the blog posts and polish my own writing abilities.

The second blog post I chose was the prompt on September 14th. This prompt was more open ended and allowed us to choose our own quote in the book for detailed analysis and reflection. I remember enjoying this prompt because I felt the freedom to choose my own quote also allowed me greater freedom to express my thoughts. The previous prompts to me felt like structured posts where I had to go down a checklist to make sure I had included everything. I think that the writing in this post is still a bit rough and a lot of it was still surface level analysis; if I still had the text available to me, I would have wanted to see if any other incidents similar to the one I was describing occurred in the novel and tried to relate those scenes. As it is now, ending the blog post by simply stating that Rosen treated Rachael better than a simple android seems a bit lacking in content. But I would say that this blog post was a definite improvement over my first post and I see how I started to look at the text more holistically instead of focusing too much on one aspect.

The third post was one of the most important turning points for me in this course. Previous to this semester, I had little knowledge of the Cold War from a non-U.S. perspective. What I had been taught of the Cold War was mostly limited to the Cuban Missile Crisis and other events that were pertinent to America. Things like the opinions and lives of the people living in the U.S.S.R. or East Germany were never brought up in the class. Going through the readings on Perusall for that week made me realize how ignorant I was to the history of the Cold War. I had never heard of the connection between the birth of Science Fiction and its popularity in socialist countries and had never considered the viewpoints of people living in such areas. How could I expect to accurately analyze and interpret the writings of Communist SF writers if I was ignorant of the social and political conditions of their surroundings? The way that some of these texts related the political and social tension in these periods to modern times made me realize how I needed to consider SF works from that time period from a different perspective.

Now that I’m finally finished with the course, I can finally conclude that Roadside Picnic is by far my favorite text of this class. I’m not sure what it was that made Roadside Picnic so enjoyable but I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the book. As such, my blog post for that week was one of the easiest ones to write. Summarizing the plot points of Roadside Picnic was simple and contrasting the aliens in Roadside Picnic and the one in Solaris was an interesting task. I had not previously considered the difference between the two novels and the contrast between the effects of alien life on society in both books was definitely fun to think about. I think it was from this point that the prompts for the blog posts felt less like constrictions and more like questions that allowed me to think and analyze the readings in ways that I had not done on my initial read through.

The 5th blog post I’ve chosen is one where I write about Shevek’s culture shock on A-Io. Although not on the same level as Roadside Picnic, the Dispossessed was also a novel that I enjoyed reading and which also provoked a lot of personal thinking. Initially, the way that Le Guin alternates the time period between chapters made piecing together Shevek’s motivations slightly confusing. For this blog post, I think I was able to accurately and cohesively explain Shevek’s intense reaction to being locked in his own room and delve into why that was so troubling to him. I believe this is when I really started using more quotations and references to exact scenes rather than speaking broadly about certain themes or aspects of the readings.

Finally, the 6th blog post I chose was the final blog post I had for this course. Looking back at my work through this semester, I realized that these blog posts became easier for me as we progressed through the syllabus. While going through the readings, I was better able to focus on and remember scenes or details that caught my interest. I have to admit that when I am first going through a book, contrasting that book to one I previously read is difficult for me. It’s my personal opinion that I should treat my first time reading a book as it’s own experience rather than trying to compare it to similar works I’ve read before. That said, the first page of Trouble on Triton was enough to make me directly compare it to the Dispossessed. The difference between humanity and societies in the two novels was particularly striking and was something that was always on my mind when I read through Trouble on Triton. For my final blog post, I think that I was able to accurately process and write down my thoughts on the differences between the two novels and why they were so different. I think my writing always has room for improvement, but this last blog post is one of the best ones I have written this semester. 

Selecting 6 blog posts for this portfolio out of 12 that I had written turned out to be much more difficult than I had originally expected. Without this limit, I might have chosen to edit and rewrite all 12 of my posts to highlight the improvement of my writing and analysis of the readings. The 6 posts that I finally ended up selecting though are the ones that I believe best showcase my personal growth in the class. In the beginning, I was ignorant to much of the history of the Cold War and did not think much of the genre, which is reflected in my very first blog post. But as time went on and I learned more about the genre of Science Fiction, I was able to better understand what the author’s of these SF works wanted to convey and form my own interpretation of their message. Although there is always room for improvement, I hope that this portfolio captures how far I was able to progress through this course.