Completely selfish cry for Help

[Heradel]

Hey folks,

This is a personal appeal for help, as part of my BA/English I have to do what my school names a Capstone Project — basically 10-15k words on a self-chosen topic under the advisement of a professor. (I have to do the same for my BS/CS, but I'm planning on finishing that major next year, while I'm hoping to have my BA by this summer.)

My problem is the self-chosen part. There are no real guidelines, just that the professor has to approve it. Which is both great (anything I want!) and horrible (anything I want?!). So if you guys could help me brainstorm that would be great. The professor I'm talking to about it right now specializes in stuff at least 300 years old (I've had him for Shakespeare, Medieval Lit, and Ancient Lit in Translation (Gilgamesh->Virgil and Ovid)), but I can grab pretty much anyone in the department, including one professor that's a lot bigger on SF and another that's bigger on F that I've had less.

So far I've had three different vague notions that I thought might be interesting, but that I'm not really happy with.

—Comparing reinterpretations of classic (or not so classic) tales in modern literature: For which I could scrape: quite a lot of PC, Sandman (and American Gods and Anasazi boys... Basically Gaiman's oeuvre), some bits of Harry Potter, and (glancing to the left at bookshelfshelf) Marvel 1602, Clueless, Naked Pictures of Famous People, and parts of Terry Pratchett's oeuvre. However, I'm feeling this this has been done. To Death.

—Reporters in SF/F/non-genre works. Immediate example that comes to mind is Nightfall, followed closely by His Girl Friday, All The President's Men (and Final Days), and The Truth (Pratchett).

—Comparing and contrasting SF/F under the influence of the Cold War vs. the influence of the War on Terror. It may be a bit hard to control for variables like the modern information age, but I'm sure I can find some works that'll fit.

I'm not really happy with any of the options, so any suggestions would be much appreciated.

—Heradel

[Bdoomed]

hm the first two didn't grab me but I really like the idea of SF/F under the influence of the Cold War vs Terror.
that WOULD be pretty difficult to pull off but i think it might make for some interesting outcomes

i dont know much War on Terror influenced F/SF... but Cold War would be easy...

maybe you would like to write an analysis of the evolution of SF over the years?

[Zathras]

If you wanted to contrast SF, you could start with the "Communism" era, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Then you could work through the Nuclear era, with stuff like Them (the giant ant movie).  Bring it around to the Cold War and wrap it up with modern.  I know I used movies for examples, but it was off the top of my head.



I'm not sure what exactly you need to do here, so just take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

How SF influenced real life which, after being influenced, influenced SF and so on.  Kind of a never ending loop.

How the modern era of messaging is changing fiction in general.  From form to medium.

In a similar vein, the different mediums that we now have available and how they influence SF.

Eh, that's about all I have now.  I'm normally better than that at brainstorming.  Give me a little more info, and I can throw about 2-300 ideas your way.

See?  That's what happens in your 666th post, you just crap out.

[deflective]

a special case of Bdoomed's topic: i have always been interested in reinterpretations of war of the worlds.

it is always, first and foremost, a story about fear and the way each time period changes the story reflects the fears of that time.

1. the initial story was written when we were just beginning to understand how small the earth is compared to our universe. this is a story about an usurped humanity, made small by a new dominate species. the story finishes with a passage about how god in his infinite wisdom has his eye on even the smallest organisms (such as the bacteria that defeated the martians).

2. Orsen Well's radio play during the second world war. americans had been hearing about the horrors of total war over the radio and felt secure with an ocean separating them, this brought it all home.

3. the first movie during the cold war. aliens arrive with their superior technology and a lot of time is spent trying to combat them but the tech divide is just too great. even the atomic bomb proves ineffective against their strange shielding.

4. the television series during the eighties. the aliens weren't dead, just contained in barrels of atomic waste. these remnants of a past generation refuse to stay buried and reemerge to cause problems.

5. the second movie during the war on terror. the war machines were always here, hidden among us waiting for a chance to strike when the most damage can be done.

there was also a musical reading of the story during the seventies but it didn't change the story at all. it was just a vehicle to experiment with the new electronic instruments that were emerging. at least, i don't know of anything that sets it apart.