Short University Presentation Help

kathos

I have this short presentation to give in one of my liberal classes: "Science Fiction" (thank god for liberal courses).

But this damn assignment confused me... I have to discuss Post Apocalyptic literature (sci fi preferably) and also link it to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".

I really don't know where to start on this. I just have to discuss it (very vague) and make reference to the book (the class is a "read a book every week" and this book is the week's book).

And the question is open-ended:

Mateo will discuss post-apocalyptic literature.

Help?

MengerSponge

Honestly you're probably best off asking the professor for elaboration. If it were my project, and I couldn't ask, I guess I'd talk about the history of the genre (mention a few major titles), list a few common themes that a lot of titles share, maybe talk about if/how the genre has changed over the years, etc.

How short is "short"? If it's 5-10 minutes, this sort of stuff might get you through. If it should be longer, then you should definitely talk to the prof.; you don't want to be rambling on the wrong topic for half an hour, and it's usually easier to just double check and be sure.

falsedef

I don't remember Do Androis Dream being post apocalyptic. Anyhow, I think all you have to cover is the key points of what makes the genre. These are some key points that I think covers a lot of the literature:

1) apocalyptic event or large scale changes
3) the current conditions (usually constrained resources)
4) how those conditions change morality
5) the struggle of morality within the protagonist
6) the diametrically opposed survival of the antagonist

Basically, what's immoral in the past changes during the current events within a post apocalyptic novel. This is largely due to resource constraints. These constraints (food/shelter/etc.) usually put the protagonist and antagonist at odds, who usually have different moral codes that they follow to survive.

In Do Androids Dream, the society changes to allow what is essentially slavery (one of the moral questions is whether the androids are actually human, much like in the past where slaves were seen as subhuman). To make it more vague, androids show little empathy (often a trait found in antagonists of post apocalyptic novels), but not necessarily devoid of humanity. The testing of androids becomes muddled to Deckard, who has a harder and harder time differentiating between androids and humans (and effectively animals, which are so rare as to be more valuable than the life of androids), and his comparative actions.