Are any of these books worth taking a class on?

[Bdoomed]

Hey all, signed up for a class called Science and Fiction, which I thought might be awesome.  I just looked at the reading list for it, however, and only recognize Cat's Cradle (great friggin book and I loved it, but ... already read it)

So...
here's the reading list... should I take this class, or should I just read maybe one or two of these on my own time?

Black No More by George Schuyler
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth
Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Intuitionist by Claudia Rankine
Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

I trust in the judgement of the almighty EA forumites!

[stePH]

Suddenly Last Summer is the only one I have any familiarity with. I haven't read it but I saw the movie.

[jrderego]

Good luck with Nightwood, it's a really surreal sort of poem-novel. The Dr. Character who monologues endlessly is interesting and the shell of the story is interesting, if not sort of troped out by now (it wasn't when Nightwood was written though) about a woman who destroys every lover she encounters. I reread it this summer and enjoyed it but more for the language and the occasional little witicisms than the actual story which is sort of incomprehensible. I wonder why it's in a science and fiction class.

[tpi]

The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth is an excellent book and it is considered a one of classics of science fiction.  "Herland" rings some bells, but very strange selection of books for a science fiction class. I didn't know that Suddenly Last Summer is science fiction, I thought it is a literary play. 

[Sgarre1]

There are elements in SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER that would qualify it as *horror*, but not any sci-fi that I know of.

HERLAND is a utopian novel about a feminist colony written by the woman who wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" - I could see why that qualifies.

[eytanz]

About SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER - remember that this is a "Science and fiction" course, not a "Science fiction" course. SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER deals (among other things) with topics of psychology and psychotherapy - perhaps the purpose is to discuss how these were dealt with in literature back when they were not yet nearly as part of the mainstream as they are now.

[Kanasta]

Strange these all seem to be pretty old books. I read "Black No More" years ago and enjoyed it - it's about a new procedure discovered that can turn black people white. Everyone eventually goes for it, so you can no longer tell who's black and who's white. Then the 'actual' white people get annoyed, because they no longer have any way of feeling superior... Quite a funny, thought-provoking conceit but perhaps a bit of a dated approach to race relations to be studying in a "Science and Fiction" module.