It's 1895. A writer picks up a pen and tries to imagine the future.
What they couldn't imagine
You video-calling someone in another country — for free
A device in your pocket more powerful than any computer in existence
Civilians in space
AI writing essays
What they were afraid of
The gap between rich and poor getting wider and wider
Machines replacing human workers
Society splitting into groups that barely recognise each other
Power being held by a very small number of people
Sound familiar?
Think • Pair • Share — 3 minutes
What is the last piece of science fiction you watched, played, or read?
(A film, TV show, video game, manga, novel — anything counts.)
While you share, think about:
What was it actually about? Not the plot — the idea underneath it.
Did it make you feel anything about the real world?
Examples from our world right now
Marvel / DC universes
Black Mirror, Squid Game, Severance
Cyberpunk 2077, Halo, Destiny
Dune, The Hunger Games
Attack on Titan, Evangelion
So what actually is science fiction?
A working definition — not a textbook one
Science fiction asks "What if?" — and then uses the answer to say something true
about the world we already live in.
"What if technology..."
...gave some people total power over others?
→ The Time Machine, Metropolis
"What if the past..."
...had gone differently for colonised peoples?
→ Black Panther, Afrofuturism
"What if right now..."
...we followed this trend to its logical end?
→ Black Mirror, Squid Game
Part One
Where Did Science Fiction Come From?
1818 — 1927
The Origins: Four Books That Changed Everything
1818FrankensteinMary Shelley. A scientist creates life — and loses control of it. What are the limits of science?
1865From Earth to the MoonJules Verne. Adventure stories with real science. Optimistic — technology is exciting and good.
1886Jekyll and HydeStevenson. Science reveals the monster inside respectable people. Progress has a dark side.
1895The Time MachineH.G. Wells. A time traveller sees where human inequality leads. Our first text.
Notice the shift: early SF is hopeful about technology. By the 1890s, writers start to worry.
Wells' World: What Was Actually Happening in 1895
The World Wells Saw
Factory workers — including children — worked 12+ hours a day for almost nothing
Wealthy industrialists lived in a completely different world from the poor
Darwin's evolution theory: some people used it to argue the rich were "naturally" superior
Workers were starting to organise — the powerful fought back hard
Wells' genius
Instead of writing a political essay that no one would read, he asked:
"What happens in 800,000 years if we keep going like this?"
The result: two species. The Eloi — beautiful, helpless, kept like livestock — and the Morlocks — underground, working, and finally in charge.
Quick Poll — No wrong answers
If you were placed in Wells' future: are you an Eloi or a Morlock?
(Eloi: leisure class above ground. Morlocks: working class underground.)
Eloi
Beautiful and idle
Everything is provided for them
They've forgotten how to think, fight, or build
They are also... being eaten
Morlock
Driven underground, out of sight
Keep the machines running
Have adapted, organised, and taken power
But at what cost?
Follow-up question
Which group are today's wealthy elite closer to? Which group are low-wage workers closer to?
1927: Fritz Lang Makes a Film
Metropolis arrives 32 years after The Time Machine — and the problems have got worse
What was happening in 1927
Cities were exploding in size — people crammed into industrial slums
Assembly lines: workers performing the same task thousands of times a day
Fascism rising across Europe — strongmen promising to "fix" inequality
The gap between corporate owners and workers at its widest ever
Lang's vision
The rich live in gleaming towers. Workers live underground.
Workers are not individuals — they're parts of a machine
A robot is created to manipulate the workers
The film's famous line: "The mediator between head and hands must be the heart"
Think about Amazon warehouse workers vs. Jeff Bezos. Is anything different?
Then and Now
In Metropolis (1927)
In 2025
Workers live underground, invisible to the city above
Warehouse and delivery workers work in windowless facilities while customers never see them
Workers perform mechanical, repetitive tasks until they collapse
Documented: Amazon warehouse workers given 10-minute toilet breaks, tracked by algorithm
A robot designed to look human manipulates the workers
Social media algorithms designed to manipulate human attention and behaviour
The wealthy live in towers, consuming without producing
Billionaires build private rockets while workers' wages remain flat
Discuss
Lang made this film nearly 100 years ago. What does it mean that these comparisons still work?
Part Two
Who Gets to Imagine the Future?
And what happens when whole groups of people are left out of the story
Science Fiction Gets Political: 1960s–1980s
New voices start asking: "Wait — who exactly is this future for?"
What was happening in the world
Civil Rights Movement: systemic racism challenged on every level
Second-wave feminism: women demanding equal space in every field
Anti-colonial movements: countries gaining independence across Africa and Asia
Cold War: two superpowers, both claiming to represent the future
New SF writers asking new questions
Ursula K. Le Guin — gender, power, and what society could look like without fixed roles
Octavia Butler — race, biology, who survives, and at what cost
Samuel R. Delany — sexuality, language, and who gets erased from history
The Missing Voices Problem
For most of SF's history, the "default" future looked like this:
The "standard" future
Protagonist is white and male
Technology is created and owned by Western nations
Space exploration is a Western achievement
Non-Western cultures are "primitive" or simply absent
Women are support characters
Why it matters
There's a saying in the SF community:
"You can't be what you can't see."
If the future never includes you — if no one who looks like you is ever the scientist, the hero, the leader — what does that tell you about your place in the world?
Real consequences
NASA in the 1950s–60s: almost entirely white and male
Tech industry in 2025: persistent diversity gap in STEM
AI systems trained mostly on data from one demographic
Who decides which problems technology is built to solve?
Whose Future Is It?
Quick Reflection — Write for 2 minutes
Think of a sci-fi film, show, or game where the main character is from your cultural background.
If you can think of one easily — what does that feel like? If you're struggling — what does that tell you?
Share out
What names came to mind? What patterns do you notice about who appears and who doesn't?
The question we're building toward
Who gets to imagine the future — and why does that matter?
This is one of the essential questions of the whole unit.
Part Three
Afrofuturism
What happens when Black artists and writers take the future back
What Is Afrofuturism?
Afrofuturism imagines futures where African and African diaspora people, cultures,
and values are at the centre — not the margins. It refuses the idea that
"progress" only belongs to the West.
Core idea 1
Technology isn't neutral. It can be used to liberate or to oppress. Who builds it and who controls it changes everything.
Core idea 2
The past and the future coexist. Ancient knowledge, oral traditions, and spiritual practices are just as valuable as cutting-edge science.
Core idea 3
Survival is a form of genius. People who survived colonisation, slavery, and systemic oppression have unique insight into building a better future.
Before Black Panther: The Pioneers
Afrofuturism didn't start with Marvel. It has roots going back decades.
Sun Ra
Musician • 1950s–1990s
A jazz musician who claimed to be from Saturn. Created music that imagined Black people not as victims of history, but as cosmic beings with a future beyond Earth. Deliberately, playfully bizarre — and deeply serious underneath.
Octavia Butler
Novelist • 1970s–2006
The first major Black woman to write science fiction. Explored what race, gender, and power look like when you take them to their extremes. Her novel Kindred sends a Black woman back to slavery through time travel. Required reading.
Parliament-Funkadelic
Music collective • 1970s
George Clinton and his crew used space imagery, futuristic costumes, and mythology to create an alternative Black identity: free, powerful, cosmic, and joyful. Their concerts were performances of Afrofuturism before the word existed.
Asian Futures: Another Story Being Reclaimed
Afrofuturism opened a door. Similar movements are growing across Asia and the Asian diaspora.
The problem with Western SF's "Asia"
Asian settings used as exotic backdrop — not the centre of the story
Asian characters as sidekicks, villains, or stereotypes
Cyberpunk borrowed Japanese aesthetics (neon, katakana) while erasing actual Japanese people and stories
East Asian technology shown as cold and dystopian — never as a source of liberation or joy
What Asian SF writers are doing now
Liu Cixin — The Three-Body Problem: a future shaped by China's history, where Western assumptions about progress are turned upside down.
Ken Liu — translates Chinese SF and writes his own: stories where community, nature, and non-linear time replace Western individualism.
Anime and manga — Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Neon Genesis Evangelion: catastrophe, technology, and identity from a specifically Japanese post-war perspective.
Discussion — Bring your own knowledge
Think about anime, manga, K-drama, webtoons, or films from across Asia. How do they imagine the future differently from American or British SF? What values sit at the centre?
Black Panther (2018): Why It Was a Cultural Moment
What was happening in 2018
#BlackLivesMatter: ongoing, global, urgent
Representation gap in Hollywood still stark — few Black-led blockbusters
Tech industry diversity: Silicon Valley almost entirely white and Asian-male
Debates about global inequality — who benefits from technological progress?
African nations asserting identity on the global stage
What the film did differently
Wakanda: never colonised. An African nation that kept its knowledge hidden. What could Africa have become?
Technology serves the community — not individuals or corporations
Women are the scientists, the warriors, the strategists
The villain isn't simply wrong — he has a valid point about global inequality
Traditional culture and advanced technology coexist without contradiction
The Villain Who Might Be Right
"You sit up here, comfortable. Did you ever think maybe that was the reason why?
Wakanda has the most powerful metal on earth — and they've done nothing with it."
— Erik Killmonger
Debate Prompt — Think, then discuss
Team T'Challa: Wakanda has a right to protect its people and its knowledge. Sharing would bring war, exploitation, and destruction.
Team Killmonger: Hoarding power while the world suffers is its own form of violence. If you can help and you don't, you're complicit.
Which argument is stronger? Can you hold both at once?
Our Three Texts: The Pattern
Each one uses a fictional future to say something urgent about the present.
1895The Time MachineIndustrial inequality. Class warfare. Where does social Darwinism lead?
1927MetropolisUrban alienation. Workers as machines. Can technology and humanity coexist?
2018Black PantherRepresentation. Whose knowledge counts? Technology for liberation, not just power.
Theme
The Time Machine
Metropolis
Black Panther
Power & inequality
Physical: above / below ground
Vertical: towers / underground
Global: hidden / revealed knowledge
Technology
Progress without moral progress
Machines that liberate or enslave
Vibranium: unite or divide the world
Who is left behind
The working class, literally
Workers made faceless
Colonised peoples, globally
Why Science Fiction? Five Reasons It Matters
🪞The MirrorShows us our current world more clearly by making it strange enough that we can see it properly
🔭The TelescopeFollows a current trend to its logical end, so we can see where we're headed before we get there
🧪The LaboratoryTests "what if?" scenarios safely — in fiction — before real decisions have to be made
👁️The Empathy MachinePuts you inside experiences radically different from your own, building understanding across difference
⚡The SparkShows that things don't have to be the way they are — that change is possible and imaginable
Science Fiction Is Still Asking Your Generation's Questions
Climate fiction
What world will we leave our children? Who caused the problem and who suffers the consequences? (Don't Look Up, Snowpiercer)
AI stories
Who controls the algorithms shaping your life — your feed, your news, your job applications? (Ex Machina, Her, Black Mirror)
Representation futures
What happens when everyone gets to tell their story — when the future has more than one shape? (Everything Everywhere, Encanto, Turning Red)
Your turn
Which of these questions feels most urgent to you personally? What story would you tell about it?
The Questions We'll Keep Coming Back To
These aren't questions with one right answer. They're questions worth arguing about.
Essential Question 1
Why do we tell stories about the future when we're really talking about today?
Essential Question 2
Who gets to imagine the future — and what do we lose when some voices are left out?
Essential Question 3
Can a story change the world? Or does the world have to change first?
What We'll Do in This Unit
The Texts
The Time Machine (H.G. Wells, 1895) — novel
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) — film
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018) — film
The Skills
Reading a text and a film as equally serious works of art
Identifying how context shapes meaning
Comparing texts across time and medium
Arguing a position with evidence
The Project Options
Future Visionary Analysis — compare our three texts
Community Afrofuturism Project — imagine your own future
Social Justice Strategy Analysis — SF as activism
Media Literacy Project — how does SF shape public opinion?
Personal Narrative — your story, your future
You'll choose the project that fits you best.
Before You Go
Exit Ticket — write your answers, you'll keep these for the unit
Write — 3 minutes
One thing from today that surprised you, challenged you, or made you think differently.
Look ahead
Which of the three essential questions feels most personally relevant to you right now?
No right answer. Just honest.
Hold onto this
The stories we choose to tell — and the stories we choose not to tell — shape what we believe is possible.
We'll return to this at the end of the unit.
Next: We Read
For next class
Read Chapters 1–2 of The Time Machine
As you read: note the first moment something surprised you
One question that came to you while reading
You don't need to understand everything. Confusion is useful. Write it down.
Keep asking
What fears and hopes from 1895 do you recognise in your own life today?