Year 8 summer project Science Fiction writing Week 1 This summer project is to help to inform you about topics linked to the work you will start in year 9. The project will help to develop your understanding of a fascinating genre of fiction as well as helping you to think about the impact of science and technology in our world today. We will be using different mediums in order to get you thinking about our world today, the predictions made about the future from the past and the future developments that could be made in science and technology. You will be creating a portfolio of your work, which you can then bring into school in September, as you start year 9.

Your portfolio can be created in whatever way best suits you. It could be completed on your computer using word of PowerPoint or another application, or it can be done as a hard copy on paper. You might want to get a folder or a book to store your work. Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton imagines a What is science fiction? world in which dinosaurs are brought back Science fiction, often called sci-fi typically deals into the world through genetic with imaginative and futuristic concepts, such developments in science. as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universe, extra-terrestrial life. Science fiction often looks at real life examples of changes to science and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is about a technology and imagines how these could scientist who tries to use science to re- develop in the future. It is a form of fantasy, but create life. based on the impact of actual or imagined science and technology on society or individuals, or has scientific elements as the Brave New World by Aldous Huxley imagines essential component to the story. Here are a futuristic future world state in which some examples. humans/citizens are environmentally engineered into a social hierarchy based on You can use this video to give you some more intelligence, in order to keep state control. information. There is a bonus quiz on this videos if it helps you. You can check your answers at the end of the PowerPoint. War of the Worlds is one of the earliest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BUAV7ZP stories to detail a conflict between mankind MQA and extra-terrestrial forces. Week 1 task We are going to be looking at Science fiction writing through different sub-genres. A genre is a style or category of art, music, or literature. Sub-genres are genres that are part of a larger genre. Here are some of the sub-genres of Science Fiction. Alien invasion Your task – You are going to be designing your own futuristic Alternate/parallel universe world. You can write a description of this world, draw a picture of this world or use another medium in order to present your Sci-Fi Apocalyptic/post apocalyptic worlds world. Here are some ideas to think about: Artificial intelligence 1. What advances in technology and science might make this world different? Robots / androids / genetic engineering? Cyberpunk On the next 2. How might people live? Will they still live in house? If so, what Dying earth slide there are might these houses look like? If not, where might they live? some pictures Galactic empire 3. What kind of government will be in charge? Will there be a and video links, government? Robots and androids which might help you design 4. Will be people have jobs? If so, what jobs might they have? If Space exploration your futuristic not, what might they be doing instead? 5. What remnants our current world will still be there? Will there Time travel world. be anything from our current world in this new Sci-Fi world? Virtual reality My Sci-Fi future world…

Information Films https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNficZQdh2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSNL1qE6VY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI9lVkJdif4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5YMEwX2-88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28Z_D9Grh18 Bonus quiz… 1. Name one of the novels written by Michael Crichton 2. Name one of the novels written by William Gibson 3. Who wrote 1984 and Animal farm? 4. Who is most known for 2001 Space Odyssey? 5. Who wrote the Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451? 6. Which famous BBC radio comedy was written by Douglas Adams? 7. Name one of the novels written by Phillip K. Dick 8. Where does Nemo in Finding Nemo get his name from? 9. Who wrote Foundation and Nightfall? 10. Who wrote War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Invisible Man? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BUAV7ZPMQA Week 2 – Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and current developments in science and technology. What predictions can we make about the future?

A lot of Science Fiction In Aldous Huxley’s novel ‘Brave New World,’ he predicted that writing predicts new people in the future would become reliant on prescription scientific and drugs. He also predicted that there would be vast steps forward technological advances in in genetic engineering and that cloning would happen. The the future. Let’s look at novel was published in 1932, but predicted a lot about our the predictions for the world today that has come true. future made by some famous writers. Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953 predicted that would have Bluetooth headsets, which he described as ‘thimble radios’ and George Orwell's novel 1984 was ‘seashells’. He also predicted that we published in 1949, but he managed to would become consumed with television predict that we would have facial on huge screens and in the short story, recognition, surveillance cameras, and the Pedestrian, he predicted the music made using Artificial Intelligence. loneliness people would feel if they did not use technology, especially televisions. We are now going to look at the predictions we might make for the future, based on current technological and scientific developments. First of all, let’s look at how far we have come. Can you name any of these forms of technology from the past? – answers are at the end of the PowerPoint We are now going to look at the predictions we might make for the future, based on current technological and scientific developments. Let’s look at current developments in science and technology. Make a table of positive and negative effects of these advances in AI Artificial Intelligence - the theory and development of computer systems able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, Positives Negatives decision-making, and translation between languages. Watch these videos and consider what you think about these developments in Artificial Intelligence. Do you think that these developments are positive or do you think they might cause issues in the future. If so, what issues might arise? Definitions: Android - (in science fiction) a robot with a human appearance. Watch these clips and think about the impact AI has Robots - a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and functions automatically. on the world and the possible problems it can cause. The Avengers – what happens when the enemy is an https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZwG6pfqLEM android? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNT3xWfMW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmeOjFno6Do https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_jp9CwJhcA A.I – what happens when a robot has feelings? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_19pRsZRiz4 I, Robot (15) – what happens when robots become too powerful? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dlo-VB0-HI We are now going to look at the predictions we might make for the future, based on current technological and scientific developments. Make a table of positive and negative Let’s look at current developments in science and technology. effects of these advances in VR Virtual Reality - the computer-generated simulation of a three- dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in Positives Negatives a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors. What are the positive and negative implications of these developments in Virtual Reality? What do you think the next developments in VR will be? Watch these clips to help you think about the impact of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PxI7LHU_mA developments in VR. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXN6Hc4K8T0 Jumanji – what happens when people get sucked into a computer game as different people? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QKg5SZ_35I Ready Player One – What happens when you can escape into a different world? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSp1dM2Vj48 Johnny English – What happens when your virtual world goes wrong? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5W19mLb-9JM Task – Read this short story called ‘There will come soft rains’ by Ray Bradbury.

Task 1- This is a short story about a mechanical house which Task 2- Now that you have looked at some of the has been left unoccupied after a nuclear explosion destroys current developments in technology, research humanity. some of the current developments in science that Answer these questions are happening at the moment. 1. what do you think Ray Bradbury is trying to tell the reader about these imagined advances in technology? Write down your predictions for the future. What 2. What is he trying to tell the reader about a reliance on advances in science and technology will there be technology? in the future? 3. Would you want to live in a house like this? Extension – design and label your own robot / Alternatively – you can listen to the story here, while you read android. along. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npk8Wi73r2c

Once you have read the story, you might like to watch this video adaptation of the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LNHYz89sNc There will come soft rains by Ray Bradbury

In the living room the voice-clock sang, Tick-tock, seven o'clock, time to get up, time to get up, seven o 'clock! as if it were afraid that nobody would. The morning house lay empty. The clock ticked on, repeating and repeating its sounds into the emptiness. Seven-nine, breakfast time, seven-nine! In the kitchen the breakfast stove gave a hissing sigh and ejected from its warm interior eight pieces of perfectly browned toast, eight eggs sunny side up, sixteen slices of bacon, two coffees, and two cool glasses of milk. "Today is August 4, 2026," said a second voice from the kitchen ceiling, "in the city of Allendale, California." It repeated the date three times for memory's sake. "Today is Mr. Featherstone's birthday. Today is the anniversary of Tilita's marriage. Insurance is payable, as are the water, gas, and light bills." Somewhere in the walls, relays clicked, memory tapes glided under electric eyes. Eight-one, tick-tock, eight-one o'clock, off to school, off to work, run, run, eight-one! But no doors slammed, no carpets took the soft tread of rubber heels. It was raining outside. The weather box on the front door sang quietly: "Rain, rain, go away; umbrellas, raincoats for today. .." And the rain tapped on the empty house, echoing. Outside, the garage chimed and lifted its door to reveal the waiting car. After a long wait the door swung down again. At eight-thirty the eggs were shrivelled and the toast was like stone. An aluminium wedge scraped them into the sink, where hot water whirled them down a metal throat which digested and flushed them away to the distant sea. The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry. Nine-fifteen, sang the clock, time to clean. Out of warrens in the wall, tiny robot mice darted. The rooms were a crawl with the small cleaning animals, allrubber and metal. They thudded against chairs, whirling their moustached runners, kneading the rug nap, sucking gently at hidden dust. Then, like mysterious invaders, they popped into their burrows. Their pink electric eyes faded. The house was clean. Ten o'clock. The sun came out from behind the rain. The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes. This was the one hou se left standing. At night the ruined city gave off a radioactive glow which could be seen for miles. Ten-fifteen. The garden sprinklers whirled up in golden founts, filling the soft morning air with scatterings of brightness. The water pelted window panes, running down the charred west sidewhere the house had been burned, evenly free of its white paint. The entire west face of the house was black, save for five places. Here the silhouette in paint of a man mowing a lawn. Here, as in a photograph, a woman bent to pick flowers. Stillfarther over, their images burned on wood in one titanic instant, a small boy, hands flung into the air; higher up, the image of a thrown ball, and opposite him a girl, hands raised to catch a ball which never came down. The five spots of paint - the man, the woman, the children, the ball- remained. The rest was a thin charcoaled layer. The gentle sprinkler rain filled the garden with falling light. Until this day, how well the house had kept its peace. How carefully it had inquired, "Who goes there? What's the password?" and, getting no answer from lonely foxes and whining cats, it had shut up its windows and drawn shades in an old-maidenly preoccupation with self-protection which bordered on a mechanical paranoia. It quivered at each sound, the house did. If a sparrow brushed a window, the shade snapped up. The bird, startled, flew off! No, not even a bird must touch the house! Twelve noon. A dog whined, shivering, on the front porch. The front door recognized the dog voice and opened. The dog, once huge and fleshy, but now gone to bone and covered with sores, moved in and through the house, tracking mud. Behind it whirred angry mice, angry at having to pick up mud, angry at inconvenience. For not a leaf fragment blew under the door but what the wall panels flipped open and the copper scrap rats flashed swiftly out. The offending dust, hair, or paper, seized in miniature steel jaws, was raced back to the burrows. There, down tubes which fed into the cellar, it was dropped into the sighing vent of an incinerator which sat like evilBaal in a dark corner. The dog ran upstairs, hysterically yelping to each door, at last realizing, as the house realized, that only silence was here. It sniffed the air and scratched the kitchen door. Behind the door, the stove was making pancakes which filled the house with a rich baked odour and the scent of maple syrup. The dog frothed at the mouth, lying at the door, sniffing, its eyes turned to fire. It ran wildly in circles, biting at its tail, spun in a frenzy, and died. It lay in the parlor for an hour. Two o'clock, sang a voice. Delicately sensing decay at last, the regiments of mice hummed out as softly as blown gray leaves in an electrical wind. Two-fifteen. The dog was gone. In the cellar, the incinerator glowed suddenly and a whirl of sparks leaped up the chimney. Two thirty-five. Bridge tables sprouted from patio walls. Playing cards fluttered onto pads in a shower of pips. Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg-salad sandwiches. Music played. But the tables were silent and the cards untouched. At four o'clock the tables folded like great butterflies back through the panelled walls . Four-thirty. The nursery walls glowed. Animals took shape: yellow giraffes, blue lions, pink antelopes, lilac panthers cavorting in crystal substance. The walls were glass. They looked out upon colour and fantasy. Hidden films clocked through well-oiled sprockets, and the walls lived. The nursery floor was woven to resemble a crisp, cereal meadow. Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors! There was the sound like a great matted yellow hive of bees within a dark bellows, the lazy bumble of a purring lion. And there was the patter of okapi feet and the murmur of a fresh jungle rain, like other hoofs, falling upon the summer-starched grass. Now the walls dissolved into distances of parched grass, mile on mile, and warm endless sky. The animals drew away into thorn brakes and water holes. It was the children’s hour. Five o'clock. The bath filled with clear hot water. Six, seven, eight o'clock. The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click. In the metal stand opposite the hearth where a fire now blazed up warmly, a cigar popped out, half an inch of soft gray ash on it, smoking, waiting. Nine o'clock. The beds warmed their hidden circuits, for nights were cool here. Nine- five. A voice spoke from the study ceiling: "Mrs. McClellan, which poem would you like this evening?" The house was silent. The voice said at last, "Since you express no preference, I shall select a poem at random.“ Quiet music rose to back the voice. "Sara Teasdale. As I recall, your favourite... There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground, And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night, And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire, Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree, If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn Would scarcely know that we were gone." The fire burned on the stone hearth and the cigar fell away into a mound of quiet ash on its tray. The empty chairs faced each other between the silent walls, and the music played. At ten o'clock the house began to die. The wind blew. A falling tree bough crashed through the kitchen window. Cleaning solvent, bottled, shattered over the stove. The room was ablaze in an instant! "Fire!" screamed a voice. The house lights flashed, water pumps shot water from the ceilings. But the solvent spread on the linoleum, licking, eating, under the kitchen door, while the voices took it up in chorus: "Fire, fire, fire!" The house tried to save itself. Doors sprang tightly shut, but the windows were broken by the heat and the wind blew and sucked upon the fire. The house gave ground as the fire in ten billion angry sparks moved with flaming ease from room to room and then up the stairs. While scurrying water rats squeaked from the walls, pistoled their water, and ran for more. And the wall sprays let down showers of mechanical rain. But too late. Somewhere, sighing, a pump shrugged to a stop. The quenching rain ceased. The reserve water supply which had filled baths and washed dishes for many quiet days was gone. The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisse's in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings. Now the fire lay in beds, stood in windows, changed the colours of drapes! And then, reinforcements. From attic trapdoors, blindrobot faces peered down with faucet mouths gushing green chemical. The fire backed off, as even an elephant must at the sight of a dead snake. Now there were twenty snakes whipping over the floor, killing the fire with a clear cold venom of green froth. But the fire was clever. It had sent flame outside the house, up through the attic to the pumps there. The fire rushed back into every closet and felt of the clothes hung there. The house shuddered, oak bone on bone, its bared skeleton cringing from the heat, its wire, its nerves revealed as if a surgeon had torn the skin off to let the red veins and capillaries quiver in the scalded air. Help, help! Fire! Run, run! Heat snapped mirrors like the first brittle winter ice. And the voices wailed. Fire, fire, run, run, like a tragic nursery rhyme, a dozen voices, high, low, like children dying in a forest, alone, alone. And the voices fading as the wires popped their sheathings like hot chestnuts. One, two, three, four, five voices died. In the nursery the jungle burned. Blue lions roared, purple giraffes bounded off. The panthers ran in circles, changing color, and ten million animals, running before the fire, vanished off toward a distant steaming river.... Ten more voices died. In the last instant under the fire avalanche, other choruses, oblivious, could be heard announcing the time, cutting the lawn by remote-control mower, or setting an umbrella frantically out and in, the slamming and opening front door, a thousand things happening, like a clock shop when each clock strikes the hour insanely before or after the other, a scene of maniac confusion, yet unity; singing, screaming, a few last cleaning mice darting bravely out to carry the horrid ashes away! And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked. The fire burst the house and let it slam flat down, puffing out skirts of spark and smoke. In the kitchen, an instant before the rain of fire and timber, the stove could be seen making breakfasts at a psychopathic rate, ten dozen eggs, six loaves of toast, twenty dozen bacon strips, which, eaten by fire, started the stove working again, hysterically hissing! The crash. The attic smashing into kitchen and parlour. The parlour into cellar, cellar into sub-cellar. Deep freeze, armchair, film tapes, circuits, beds, and all like skeletons thrown in a cluttered mound deep under. Smoke and silence. A great quantity of smoke. Dawn showed faintly in the east. Among the ruins, one wall stood alone. Within the wall, a last voice said, over and over again and again, even as the sun rose to shine upon the heaped rubble and steam: "Today is August 5, 2026, today is August 5, 2026, today is..." Week 3 – Space exploration and time travel Space exploration People have always been fascinated by space exploration. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon. He and Aldrin walked around for three hours. They did experiments. They picked up bits of moon dirt and rocks. NASA’s human lunar exploration plans under the Artemis program call for sending the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024 and establishing sustainable exploration by the end of the decade. The agency will use what we learn on the Moon to prepare for humanity's next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars. For centuries the exploration of space has been a fascinating idea and therefore it has filtered into much of science fiction works. Using these pictures on this slide, describe your journey into space. Watch these videos to gain some more information about Space exploration. When did it begin? What will it look like in the future? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hO6WpwFpf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN_JDIxRL7U What if Earth is not as important in the Galaxy as we think? The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, including stage shows, novels, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 video game, and 2005 feature film. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy begins with contractors arriving at Arthur Dent's house, in order to demolish it to make way for a bypass. His friend, Ford Prefect, arrives while Arthur is lying in front of the bulldozers, to stop them from demolishing it. He tries to explain to Arthur that he is actually from a planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and that the Earth is about to be demolished. The Vogons, an alien race, intend to destroy Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Here is the trailer for the 2005 film version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWvN5Nlf-E Read the opening to the novel ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’ and answer the questions on the following slide. Far out in the unchartered backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy lies a small un-regarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue- green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for the problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. And then, on Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place, This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever. This is not her story. But it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of the consequences. It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthmen. Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book. In fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor – of which no Earthman had ever heard either. Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one – more popular than The Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling that Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least widely inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. But the story of this terrible stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with the remarkable book begins very simply. It begins with a house. Questions… 1. According to the novel, how far away is the sun from the earth? 2. According to this novel were the people on Earth happy or unhappy? 3. What is being referred to in this line? ‘ape-descended life forms’ 4. According to the novel, where should humans not have left? 5. Why could the girl from Rickmansworth not tell anyone about her great idea to make the world a happy place? 6. Had ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’ ever been published on Earth? Here are some fun clips from the film versions of the novel. 7. Where was the book ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c published? AyTA98J3to 8. Was the book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide tot eh Galaxy’ a successful book? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a boZctrHfK8 9. What are the two reasons the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide tot the Galaxy’ has been popular? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 10. Where does the story begin? WV_w6oT7oj8 Time travel… If space adventures are not enough for Sci-Fi writers, then perhaps time travel might take their interest. Time travel has interested people for hundreds of years. In 1895 ‘The Time Machine’ by H. G. Wells was published. The work is generally credited with the popularization of the concept of time travel by using a vehicle or device to travel purposely and selectively forward or backward through time. The term "time machine", coined by Wells, is now almost universally used to refer to such a vehicle or device. Here are some other examples of time travel in fiction. Here are some clips: Dr Who https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwdbLu_x0gY Back to the Future https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27Rn_Mqpxd8 Lucy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_ajrfTrp8 Quantum Leap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjK9GJMBpt0

Task – If you could travel in time, where would you go and why? Write an explanation. What would happen if we changed something in the past? Would it change the present? Read this story ‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury. It is about a futuristic society, in which people have made it possible to go back in time. A company has set up a Time travel safari to the past, where tourists can go back to the Jurassic period, when dinosaurs existed and hunt them. However, they are warned that they need to stay on the path, because they cannot alter the past, however, if you step on a butterfly, the world might change forever. This is called the butterfly effect.

Answer these questions: 1. Would you like to travel back in time like this? 2. What does one of the characters do, which changes the present? 3. How does the present change when they go back (or should that be forward)? The sign on the wall seemed to be moving under a thin film of warm water. Eckels closed his eyes for a moment, the sign burned in his memory: TIME SAFARI, INC. SAFARIS TO ANY YEAR IN THE PAST. YOU NAME THE ANIMAL. WE TAKE YOU THERE. YOU SHOOT IT. Warm liquid gathered in Eckels' throat. He swallowed and pushed it down. The muscles around his mouth formed a smile as he put his hand slowly out upon the air. In that hand he waved a check for ten thousand dollars to the man behind the desk. "Don't I get some kind of document promising that I will come back alive?" "We promise nothing," said the official, "except the dinosaurs." He turned. "This is Mr Travis, your Safari Leader in the Past. He'll tell you what and where to shoot. If he says no shooting, no shooting. If you don't do as he says, you will have to pay another ten thousand dollars, plus face possible government action, on your return." Eckels looked quickly across the large office. Hundreds of wires snaking together so as to look like a single mass, gave off low continuous sound. Metal boxes gave off ever changing bands of light... now orange, now silver, now blue. There was a sound like a huge fire burning all of Time, all the years and all the calendars, all the hours piled high and set on fire. "Unbelievable." Eckels breathed, the lights from the Machine on his thin face. "A real Time Machine." He shook his head. "Makes you think. If the election had gone badly yesterday, I might be here now running away from the results. Thank God Keith won. He'll make a fine President of the United States." "Yes," said the man behind the desk. "We're lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have the worst kind of government. There's a man who is for war but against everything else; against religion, against helping people, and against people knowing too much. People called us up, you know, joking but not joking. They said if Deutscher became President, they wanted to go and live in 1492. Of course it's not our business to sell Escapes, but to run Safaris. Anyway, Keith is President now. All you got to worry about is..." "Shooting my dinosaur!" Eckels finished it for him. "A Tyrannosaurus Rex. The Tyrant Lizard, the most incredible monster in history. Sign this release. Anything happens to you, we're not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry." Eckels flushed angrily. "Trying to scare me!" "Frankly, yes. We don't want anyone going who'll panic at the first shot. Six Safari leaders were killed last year, and a dozen hunters. We're here to give you the severest thrill a real hunter ever asked for. Traveling you back sixty million years to bag the biggest game in all of Time. Your personal check's still there. Tear it up."Mr. Eckels looked at the check. His fingers twitched. "Good luck," said the man behind the desk. "Mr. Travis, he's all yours." They moved silently across the room, taking their guns with them, toward the Machine, toward the silver metal and the roaring light. First a day and then a night and then a day and then a night, then it was day night day night. A week, a month, a year, a decade! A.D. 2055. A.D. 2019. 1999! 1957! Gone! The Machine roared. They put on their oxygen helmets and tested the intercoms. Eckels swayed on the padded seat, his face pale, his jaw stiff. He felt the trembling in his arms and he looked down and found his hands tight on the new rifle. There were four other men in the Machine. Travis, the Safari Leader, his assistant, Lesperance, and two other hunters, Billings and Kramer. They sat looking at each other, and the years blazed around them. "Can these guns get a dinosaur cold?" Eckels felt his mouth saying. "If you hit them right," said Travis on the helmet radio. "Some dinosaurs have two brains, one in the head, another far down the spinal column. We stay away from those. That's stretching luck. Put your first two shots into the eyes, if you can, blind them, and go back into the brain." The Machine howled. Time was a film run backward. Suns fled and ten million moons fled after them. "Think," said Eckels. "Every hunter that ever lived would envy us today. This makes Africa seem like Illinois." The Machine slowed; its scream fell to a murmur. The Machine stopped. The sun stopped in the sky. The fog that had enveloped the Machine blew away and they were in an old time, a very old time indeed, three hunters and two Safari Heads with their blue metal guns across their knees. "Christ isn't born yet," said Travis, "Moses has not gone to the mountains to talk with God. The Pyramids are still in the earth, waiting to be cut out and put up. Remember that. Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitlernone of them exists." The man nodded. "That" Mr. Travis pointed "is the jungle of sixty million two thousand and fifty five years before President Keith." He indicated a metal path that struck off into green wilderness, over streaming swamp, among giant ferns and palms. "And that," he said, "is the Path, laid by Time Safari for your use, It floats six inches above the earth. Doesn't touch so much as one grass blade, flower, or tree. It's an antigravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching this world of the past in any way. Stay on the Path. Don't go off it. I repeat. Don't go off. For any reason! If you fall off, there's a penalty. And don't shoot any animal we don't okay." "Why?" asked Eckels. They sat in the ancient wilderness. Far birds' cries blew on a wind, and the smell of tar and an old salt sea, moist grasses, and flowers the colour of blood. "We don't want to change the Future. We don't belong here in the Past. The government doesn't like us here. We have to pay big graft to keep our franchise. A Time Machine is finicky business. Not knowing it, we might kill an important animal, a small bird, a roach, a flower even, thus destroying an important link in a growing species." "That's not clear," said Eckels. "All right," Travis continued, "say we accidentally kill one mouse here. That means all the future families of this one particular mouse are destroyed, right?" "Right" "And all the families of the families of the families of that one mouse! With a stamp of your foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, then a thousand, a million, a billion possible mice!" "So they're dead," said Eckels. "So what?" "So what?" Travis snorted quietly. "Well, what about the foxes that'll need those mice to survive? For want of ten mice, a fox dies. For want of ten foxes a lion starves. For want of a lion, all manner of insects, vultures, infinite billions of life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Eventually it all boils down to this: fifty-nine million years later, a caveman, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes hunting wild boar or sabre-toothed tiger for food. But you, friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By stepping on one single mouse. So the caveman starves. And the caveman, please note, is not just any expendable man, no! He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus onward to a civilization. Destroy this one man, and you destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life. It is comparable to slaying some of Adam's grandchildren. The stomp of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the effects of which could shake our earth and destinies down through Time, to their very foundations. With the death of that one caveman, a billion others yet unborn are throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never rises on its seven hills. Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and only Asia waxes healthy and teeming. Step on a mouse and you crush the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and you leave your print, like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not cross the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all. So be careful. Stay on the Path. Never step off!" "I see," said Eckels. "Then it wouldn't pay for us even to touch the grass?" "Correct. Crushing certain plants could add up infinitesimally. A little error here would multiply in sixty million years, all out of proportion. Of course maybe our theory is wrong. Maybe Time can't be changed by us. Or maybe it can be changed only in little subtle ways. A dead mouse here makes an insect imbalance there, a population disproportion later, a bad harvest further on, a depression, mass starvation, and finally, a change in social temperament in far flung countries. Something much more subtle, like that. Perhaps only a soft breath, a whisper, a hair, pollen on the air, such a slight, slight change that unless you looked close you wouldn't see it. Who knows? Who really can say he knows? We don't know. We're guessing. But until we do know for certain whether our messing around in Time can make a big roar or a little rustle in history, we're being careful. This Machine, this Path, your clothing and bodies, were sterilized, as you know, before the journey. We wear these oxygen helmets so we can't introduce our bacteria into an ancient atmosphere." "How do we know which animals to shoot?" "They're marked with red paint," said Travis. "Today, before our journey, we sent Lesperance here back with the Machine. He came to this particular era and followed certain animals." "Studying them?" "Right," said Lesperance. "I track them through their entire existence, noting which of them lives longest. Very few. How many times they mate. Not often. Life's short, When I find one that's going to die when a tree falls on him, or one that drowns in a tar pit, I note the exact hour, minute, and second. I shoot a paint bomb. It leaves a red patch on his side. We can't miss it. Then I correlate our arrival in the Past so that we meet the Monster not more than two minutes before he would have died anyway. This way, we kill only animals with no future, that are never going to mate again. You see how careful we are?" "But if you come back this morning in Time," said Eckels eagerly, you must've bumped into us, our Safari! How did it turn out? Was it successful? Did all of us get through alive?" Travis and Lesperance gave each other a look. "That'd be a paradox," said the latter. "Time doesn't permit that sort of messa man meeting himself. When such occasions threaten, Time steps aside. Like an airplane hitting an air pocket. You felt the Machine jump just before we stopped? That was us passing ourselves on the way back to the Future. We saw nothing. There's no way of telling if this expedition was a success, if we got our monster, or whether all of us meaning you, Mr. Eckels got out alive." Eckels smiled palely. "Cut that," said Travis sharply. "Everyone on his feet!" They were ready to leave the Machine. The jungle was high and the jungle was broad and the jungle was the entire world forever and forever. Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled the sky, and those were pterodactyls soaring with cavernous gray wings, gigantic bats of delirium and night fever. Eckels, balanced on the narrow Path, aimed his rifle playfully. "Stop that!" said Travis. "Don't even aim for fun, blast you! If your guns should go off " Eckels flushed. "Where's our Tyrannosaurus?" Lesperance checked his wristwatch. "Up ahead, We'll bisect his trail in sixty seconds. Look for the red paint! Don't shoot till we give the word. Stay on the Path. Stay on the Path!" They moved forward in the wind of morning. "Strange," murmured Eckels. "Up ahead, sixty million years, Election Day over. Keith made President. Everyone celebrating. And here we are, a million years lost, and they don't exist. The things we worried about for months, a lifetime, not even born or thought of yet." "Safety catches off, everyone!" ordered Travis. "You, first shot, Eckels. Second, Billings, Third, Kramer." "I've hunted tiger, wild boar, buffalo, elephant, but now, this is it," said Eckels. "I'm shaking like a kid." "Ah," said Travis. Everyone stopped. Travis raised his hand. "Ahead," he whispered. "In the mist. There he is. There's His Royal Majesty now." The jungle was wide and full of twitterings, rustlings, murmurs, and sighs. Suddenly it all ceased, as if someone had shut a door. Silence. A sound of thunder. Out of the mist, one hundred yards away, came Tyrannosaurus Rex. "It," whispered Eckels. "It...... "Sh!" It came on great oiled, resilient, striding legs. It towered thirty feet above half of the trees, a great evil god, folding its delicate watchmaker's claws close to its oily reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston, a thousand pounds of white bone, sunk in thick ropes of muscle, sheathed over in a gleam of pebbled skin like the mail of a terrible warrior. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory, and steel mesh. And from the great breathing cage of the upper body those two delicate arms dangled out front, arms with hands which might pick up and examine men like toys, while the snake neck coiled. And the head itself, a ton of sculptured stone, lifted easily upon the sky. Its mouth gaped, exposing a fence of teeth like daggers. Its eyes rolled, ostrich eggs, empty of all expression save hunger. It closed its mouth in a death grin. It ran, its pelvic bones crushing aside trees and bushes, its taloned feet clawing damp earth, leaving prints six inches deep wherever it settled its weight. It ran with a gliding ballet step, far too poised and balanced for its ten tons. It moved into a sunlit area warily, its beautifully reptilian hands feeling the air. "Why, why," Eckels twitched his mouth. "It could reach up and grab the moon." "Sh!" Travis jerked angrily. "He hasn't seen us yet." "It can't be killed," Eckels pronounced this verdict quietly, as if there could be no argument. He had weighed the evidence and this was his considered opinion. The rifle in his hands seemed a cap gun. "We were fools to come. This is impossible." "Shut up!" hissed Travis. "Nightmare." "Turn around," commanded Travis. "Walk quietly to the Machine. We'll remit half your fee." "I didn't realize it would be this big," said Eckels. "I miscalculated, that's all. And now I want out." "It sees us!" "There's the red paint on its chest!" The Tyrant Lizard raised itself. Its armoured flesh glittered like a thousand green coins. The coins, crusted with slime, steamed. In the slime, tiny insects wriggled, so that the entire body seemed to twitch and undulate, even while the monster itself did not move. It exhaled. The stink of raw flesh blew down the wilderness. "Get me out of here," said Eckels. "It was never like this before. I was always sure I'd come through alive. I had good guides, good safaris, and safety. This time, I figured wrong. I've met my match and admit it. This is too much for me to get hold of." "Don't run," said Lesperance. "Turn around. Hide in the Machine." "Yes." Eckels seemed to be numb. He looked at his feet as if trying to make them move. He gave a grunt of helplessness. "Eckels!" He took a few steps, blinking, shuffling. "Not that way!" The Monster, at the first motion, lunged forward with a terrible scream. It covered one hundred yards in six seconds. The rifles jerked up and blazed fire. A windstorm from the beast's mouth engulfed them in the stench of slime and old blood. The Monster roared, teeth glittering with sun. The rifles cracked again, Their sound was lost in shriek and lizard thunder. The great level of the reptile's tail swung up, lashed sideways. Trees exploded in clouds of leaf and branch. The Monster twitched its jeweller's hands down to fondle at the men, to twist them in half, to crush them like berries, to cram them into its teeth and its screaming throat. Its boulder stone eyes levelled with the men. They saw themselves mirrored. They fired at the metallic eyelids and the blazing black iris, Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell. Thundering, it clutched trees, pulled them with it. It wrenched and tore the metal Path. The men flung themselves back and away. The body hit, ten tons of cold flesh and stone. The guns fired. The Monster lashed its armoured tail, twitched its snake jaws, and lay still. A fount of blood spurted from its throat. Somewhere inside, a sac of fluids burst. Sickening gushes drenched the hunters. They stood, red and glistening. The thunder faded. The jungle was silent. After the avalanche, a green peace. After the nightmare, morning. Billings and Kramer sat on the pathway and threw up. Travis and Lesperance stood with smoking rifles, cursing steadily. In the Time Machine, on his face, Eckels lay shivering. He had found his way back to the Path, climbed into the Machine. Travis came walking, glanced at Eckels, took cotton gauze from a metal box, and returned to the others, who were sitting on the Path. "Clean up." They wiped the blood from their helmets. They began to curse too. The Monster lay, a hill of solid flesh. Within, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the furthest chambers of it died, the organs malfunctioning, liquids running a final instant from pocket to sac to spleen, everything shutting off, closing up forever. It was like standing by a wrecked locomotive or a steam shovel at quitting time, all valves being released or levered tight. Bones cracked; the tonnage of its own flesh, off balance, dead weight, snapped the delicate forearms, caught underneath. The meat settled, quivering. Another cracking sound. Overhead, a gigantic tree branch broke from its heavy mooring, fell. It crashed upon the dead beast with finality. "There." Lesperance checked his watch. "Right on time. That's the giant tree that was scheduled to fall and kill this animal originally." He glanced at the two hunters. "You want the trophy picture?" "What?" "We can't take a trophy back to the Future. The body has to stay right here where it would have died originally, so the insects, birds, and bacteria can get at it, as they were intended to. Everything in balance. The body stays. But we can take a picture of you standing near it." The two men tried to think, but gave up, shaking their heads. They let themselves be led along the metal Path. They sank wearily into the Machine cushions. They gazed back at the ruined Monster, the stagnating mound, where already strange reptilian birds and golden insects were busy at the steaming armour. A sound on the floor of the Time Machine stiffened them. Eckels sat there, shivering. "I'm sorry," he said at last. "Get up!" cried Travis. Eckels got up. "Go out on that Path alone," said Travis. He had his rifle pointed, "You're not coming back in the Machine. We're leaving you here!" Lesperance seized Travis's arm. "Wait" "Stay out of this!" Travis shook his hand away. "This fool nearly killed us. But it isn't that so much, no. It's his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. That ruins us! We'll forfeit! Thousands of dollars of insurance! We guarantee no one leaves the Path. He left it. Oh, the fool! I'll have to report to the government. They might revoke our license to travel. Who knows what he's done to Time, to History!" "Take it easy, all he did was kick up some dirt." "How do we know?" cried Travis. "We don't know anything! It's all a mystery! Get out of here, Eckels!" Eckels fumbled his shirt. "I'll pay anything. A hundred thousand dollars!" Travis glared at Eckels' check book and spat. "Go out there. The Monster's next to the Path. Stick your arms up to your elbows in his mouth. Then you can come back with us." "That's unreasonable!" "The Monster's dead, you idiot. The bullets! The bullets can't be left behind. They don't belong in the Past; they might change anything. Here's my knife. Dig them out!" The jungle was alive again, full of the old tremorings and bird cries. Eckels turned slowly to regard the primeval garbage dump, that hill of nightmares and terror. After a long time, like a sleepwalker he shuffled out along the Path. He returned, shuddering, five minutes later, his arms soaked and red to the elbows. He held out his hands. Each held a number of steel bullets. Then he fell. He lay where he fell, not moving. "You didn't have to make him do that," said Lesperance. "Didn't I? It's too early to tell." Travis nudged the still body. "He'll live. Next time he won't go hunting game like this. Okay." He jerked his thumb wearily at Lesperance. "Switch on. Let's go home." 1492. 1776. 1812. They cleaned their hands and faces. They changed their caking shirts and pants. Eckels was up and around again, not speaking. Travis glared at him for a full ten minutes. "Don't look at me," cried Eckels. "I haven't done anything." "Who can tell?" "Just ran off the Path, that's all, a little mud on my shoes what do you want me to do get down and pray?" "We might need it. I'm warning you, Eckels, I might kill you yet. I've got my gun ready." "I'm innocent. I've done nothing!" 1999.2000.2055. The Machine stopped. "Get out," said Travis. The room was there as they had left it. But not the same as they had left it. The same man sat behind the same desk. But the same man did not quite sit behind the same desk. Travis looked around swiftly. "Everything okay here?" he snapped. "Fine. Welcome home!" Travis did not relax. He seemed to be looking through the one high window. "Okay, Eckels, get out. Don't ever come back." Eckels could not move. "You heard me," said Travis. "What're you staring at?" Eckels stood smelling of the air, and there was a thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight, that only a faint cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was there. The colours, white, grey, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky beyond the window, were . . . were . . . . And there was a feel. His flesh twitched. His hands twitched. He stood drinking the oddness with the pores of his body. Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one of those whistles that only a dog can hear. His body screamed silence in return. Beyond this room, beyond this wall, beyond this man who was not quite the same man seated at this desk that was not quite the same desk . . . lay an entire world of streets and people. What sort of world it was now, there was no telling. He could feel them moving there, beyond the walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind .... But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the office wall, the same sign he had read earlier today on first entering. Somehow, the sign had changed: TYME SEFARI INC. SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST. YU NAIM THE ANIMALL. WEE TAEK YU THAIR. YU SHOOT ITT. Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling, "No, it can't be. Not a little thing like that. No!" Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling, "No, it can't be. Not a little thing like that. No!" Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead. "Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!" cried Eckels. It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It couldn't change things. Killing one butterfly couldn't be that important! Could it? His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking: "Who won the presidential election yesterday?" The man behind the desk laughed. "You joking? You know very well. Deutscher, of course! Who else? Not that fool weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a man with guts!" The official stopped. "What's wrong?" Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking fingers. "Can't we," he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the Machine, "can't we take it back, can't we make it alive again? Can't we start over? Can't we" He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon. There was a sound of thunder. Bonus quiz on 'The Sound of Thunder'

1. How much money does Eckels have on the cheque he's using to pay for the Safari? 2. Which dinosaur does Eckels want to shoot? 3. Who does Travis point out is not born yet, when they arrive in the past? 4. How far back in time have they travelled before President Keith? 5. Why does Travis explain that Eckels should not go off the path or touch anything? 6. How do they know which animals they can shoot? 7.How high does the Tyrannosaurus Rex tower above the trees? 8. What literary devices is being used in this sentence? Metaphor, personification or a simile? 'Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell.' 9. Why can they not take a trophy back to the future? 10. What do they notice about Eckles' shoes? Why are they angry? Bonus quiz on 'The Sound of Thunder'

11. What do they tell Eckels he has to do before they let him back in the Time machine? 12. What does Eckels notice about the smell of the office when he returns to the present? 13. What has changed about the sign on the wall? 14. What does Eckels find dead in the mud from his shoes? 15. When Eckels asks who won the election, what is the man's answer? Why has the present changed?

What do you think Ray Bradbury is trying to tell his readers in this story? What does it tell the readers about time travel? You can watch the film of the story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tm-xh3vPvM Task

Decide whether you want to focus on time travel, or space exploration and write either a story, or a piece of descriptive writing based on one, or both ideas. You might just want to plan a story, or storyboard it, it is up to you. There are some pictures on this slide to help you with some ideas. Week 4 – Alien invasion People have been fascinated with alien invasions for years. There are numerous cases of sightings of UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) and alien abductions, but are these real? Is there life on other planets? If so, what might these other life forms look like? What are your thoughts? Do you think that aliens exist? Use this video to help you. (Please be aware that this video does reference some violent scenes from other films.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNVRMzEft nA TASK – write down your thoughts about aliens and whether you think they exist. TASK - Draw your own picture of what you think an alien might look like. Label your What do picture and you could write a description. Here are some film trailer and clips to help aliens look you. like? E.T. - What if you could become friends with an alien? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYAETtIIC lk Monsters vs Aliens - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76XkslTb kjU Escape from Planet Earth - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1NhAU syslk Men in Black - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYUd7A Ow_lk The War of the Worlds chronicles the events of a Martian invasion as experienced by an unidentified male narrator The War of the and his brother. The story begins a few years before the invasion. On the next slides you can read the story and Worlds by H. G. answer the questions which follow. In this extract, the Wells narrator explains that the Martians have been watching earth from Mars for a long time. He then explains that Mars have tried to attack earth in the past, but people ignored it. The Eve of the War No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most terrestrial men fancied there might be other men upon Mars, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. And early in the twentieth century came the great disillusionment. The planet Mars, I scarcely need remind the reader, revolves about the sun at a mean distance of 140,000,000 miles, and the light and heat it receives from the sun is barely half of that received by this world. It must be, if the nebular hypothesis has any truth, older than our world; and long before this earth ceased to be molten, life upon its surface must have begun its course. The fact that it is scarcely one seventh of the volume of the earth must have accelerated its cooling to the temperature at which life could begin. It has air and water and all that is necessary for the support of animated existence. Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life might have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level. Nor was it generally understood that since Mars is older than our earth, with scarcely a quarter of the superficial area and remoter from the sun, it necessarily follows that it is not only more distantfrom time's beginning but nearer its end. The secular cooling that must someday overtake our planet has already gone far indeed with our neighbour. Its physical condition is still largely a mystery, but we know now that even in its equatorial region the midday temperature barely approaches that of our coldest winter. Its air is much more attenuated than ours, its oceans have shrunk until they cover but a third of its surface, and as its slow seasons change huge snowcaps gather and melt about either pole and periodically inundate its temperate zones. That last stage of exhaustion, which to us is still incredibly remote, has become a present-day problem for the inhabitants of Mars. The immediate pressure of necessity has brightened their intellects, enlarged their powers, and hardened their hearts. And looking across space with instruments, and intelligences such as we have scarcely dreamed of, they see, at its nearest distance only 35,000,000 of miles sunward of them, a morning star of hope, our own warmer planet, green with vegetation and grey with water, with a cloudy atmosphere eloquent of fertility, with glimpses through its drifting cloud wisps of broad stretches of populous country and narrow, navy-crowded seas. And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that, generation after generation, creeps upon them. And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit? The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours— and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-bye, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready. During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2. I am inclined to think that this blaze may have been the casting of the huge gun, in the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions. The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the twelfth; and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, “as flaming gases rushed out of a gun.” A singularly appropriate phrase it proved. Yet the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the red planet. In spite of all that has happened since, I still remember that vigil very distinctly: the black and silent observatory, the shadowed lantern throwing a feeble glow upon the floor in the corner, the steady ticking of the clockwork of the telescope, the little slit in the roof—an oblong profundity with the stardust streaked across it. Ogilvy moved about, invisible but audible. Looking through the telescope, one saw a circle of deep blue and the little round planet swimming in the field. It seemed such a little thing, so bright and small and still, faintly marked with transverse stripes, and slightly flattened from the perfect round. But so little it was, so silvery warm—a pin's-head of light! It was as if it quivered, but really this was the telescope vibrating with the activity of the clockwork that kept the planet in view. As I watched, the planet seemed to grow larger and smaller and to advance and recede, but that was simply that my eye was tired. Forty millions of miles it was from us—more than forty millions of miles of void. Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims. Near it in the field, I remember, were three faint points of light, three telescopic stars infinitely remote, and all around it was the unfathomable darkness of empty space. You know how that blackness looks on a frosty starlight night. In a telescope it seems far profounder. And invisible to me because it was so remote and small, flying swiftly and steadily towards me across that incredible distance, drawing nearer every minute by so many thousands of miles, came the Thing they were sending us, the Thing that was to bring so much struggle and calamity and death to the earth. I never dreamed of it then as I watched; no one on earth dreamed of that unerring missile. That night, too, there was another jetting out of gas from the distant planet. I saw it. A reddish flash at the edge, the slightest projection of the outline just as the chronometer struck midnight; and at that I told Ogilvy and he took my place. The night was warm and I was thirsty, and I went stretching my legs clumsily and feeling my way in the darkness, to the little table where the siphon stood, while Ogilvy exclaimed at the streamer of gas that came out towards us. That night another invisible missile started on its way to the earth from Mars, just a second or so under twenty-four hours after the first one. I remember how I sat on the table there in the blackness, with patches of green and crimson swimming before my eyes. I wished I had a light to smoke by, little suspecting the meaning of the minute gleam I had seen and all that it would presently bring me. Ogilvy watched till one, and then gave it up; and we lit the lantern and walked over to his house. Down below in the darkness were Ottershaw and Chertsey and all their hundreds of people, sleeping in peace. He was full of speculation that night about the condition of Mars, and scoffed at the vulgar idea of its having inhabitants who were signalling us. His idea was that meteorites might be falling in a heavy shower upon the planet, or that a huge volcanic explosion was in progress. He pointed out to me how unlikely it was that organic evolution had taken the same direction in the two adjacent planets. “The chances against anything manlike on Mars are a million to one,” he said. Hundreds of observers saw the flame that night and the night after about midnight, and again the night after; and so for ten nights, a flame each night. Why the shots ceased after the tenth no one on earth has attempted to explain. It may be the gases of the firing caused the Martians inconvenience. Dense clouds of smoke or dust, visible through a powerful telescope on earth as little grey, fluctuating patches, spread through the clearness of the planet's atmosphere and obscured its more familiar features. Even the daily papers woke up to the disturbances at last, and popular notes appeared here, there, and everywhere concerning the volcanoes upon Mars. The seriocomic periodical Punch, I remember, made a happy use of it in the political cartoon. And, all unsuspected, those missiles the Martians had fired at us drew earthward, rushing now at a pace of many miles a second through the empty gulf of space, hour by hour and day by day, nearer and nearer. It seems to me now almost incredibly wonderful that, with that swift fate hanging over us, men could go about their petty concerns as they did. I remember how jubilant Markham was at securing a new photograph of the planet for the illustrated paper he edited in those days. People in these latter times scarcely realise the abundance and enterprise of our nineteenth-century papers. For my own part, I was much occupied in learning to ride the bicycle, and busy upon a series of papers discussing the probable developments of moral ideas as civilisation progressed. One night (the first missile then could scarcely have been 10,000,000 miles away) I went for a walk with my wife. It was starlight and I explained the Signs of the Zodiac to her, and pointed out Mars, a bright dot of light creeping zenithward, towards which so many telescopes were pointed. It was a warm night. Coming home, a party of excursionists from Chertsey or Isleworth passed us singing and playing music. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. From the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance. My wife pointed out to me the brightness of the red, green, and yellow signal lights hanging in a framework against the sky. It seemed so safe and tranquil. Questions on War of the Worlds 1. In the last years of the 19th century, who has been watching the Earth? 2. How far is Mars from the sun? 3. Why had people in the 19th century not thought that there was intelligent life on other planets? 4. As the aliens watch from space, 35,000,000 from earth, why do they think that earth is a better place than Mars? 5. Who does the writer say have 'vanished' because of humans? 6. Is the Martian's mathematical understanding better than humans? 7. When Mars first attacked the earth, did people take much notice? 8. What does Ogilvy think is being showered down upon earth? 9. What did the daily papers focus on when looking at Mars? 10. How does the extract end? The narrator explains he went for a walk, how was he feeling? Safe or unsafe? Film and TV adaptations of 'War of the Worlds'

Because this story has been so popular and is, in so many ways a revolutionary text from the 19th century, there have been numerous adaptations of the text; on TV, film and music. Here are some of these. Please be warned that these videos do include some violence. Please be aware of this before watching these videos.

This is the most recent BBC adaptation of the novel. (The TV show does have a guidance recommendation.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXUFHimIEP4

This is an American adaptation of the novel released in 2005. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxe3yJPfyY

This is a 2019 TV adaptation of the novel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXPiQh06tWY Week 5 – Cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic worlds Let's start by looking at these two terms, as they may appear a little daunting. CYBERPUNK – This refers to a sub-genre of Science Fiction in which the world is lawless and 'low-life. There is usually an oppressive (harsh and overly controlling) government, but everything in this world is high-tech. POST-APOCALYPTIC – This sub-genre of Science Fiction refers to a world after a mass disaster, which has changed the world forever. The apocalypse means the end of the world. Therefore a post- apocalyptic society is a world in which nothing is as we know it. There are different disaster, such as extreme flooding that means we can no longer live on land, nuclear explosions, an invasion etc. Let's first look at some visions of a cyberpunk future.

Cyberpunk – look at these pictures and consider what makes them representative of cyberpunk. Think about the ideas of 'low-life' 'controlling government' 'high-tech'

Tron - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9szn1QQfas Let's first look at some visions of a post-apocalyptic future. Post-apocalyptic – look at these pictures and videos and consider what makes them representative of an apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic society. Think about the ideas of a world after life has ended as we know it.

The Road - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikeUBSrwZQA Dawn of The Planet of the Apes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikeUBSrwZQA The Day of the Triffids - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FtGLdBtwzI The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham – The End Begins

After meteors enter Earth's atmosphere, blinding much of the planet's population in the process, plant like creatures known as Triffids emerge from the craters and begin to take over. Military officer Bill Masen (Howard Keel), one of the few sighted people left alive, meets with other survivors in England and tries to find a haven from the vicious vegetation, as scientist Tom Goodwin (Kieron Moore) desperately seeks a way to defeat the leafy extra-terrestrials. Read the text and complete the tasks at the end. When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started functioning a little more smartly, I became doubtful. After all, the odds were that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else-though I did not see how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt. But presently I had my first bit of objective evidence-a distant clock struck what sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon another clock began, on a hard, decisive note. In a leisurely fashion it gave an indisputable eight. Then I knew things were awry. The way I came to miss the end of the world-well, the end of the world I had known for close on thirty years-was sheer accident: like a lot of survival, when you come to think of it. In the nature of things a good many somebodies are always in hospital, and the law of averages had picked on me to be one of them a week or so before. It might just as easily have been the week before that-in which case I'd not be writing now: I'd not be here at all. But chance played it not only that I should be in hospital at that particular time, but that my eyes, and indeed my whole head, should be wreathed in bandages-and that's why I have to be grateful to whoever orders these averages. At the time, however, I was only peevish, wondering what in thunder went on, for I had been in the place long enough to know that, next to the matron, the clock is the most sacred thing in a hospital. Without a clock the place simply couldn't work. Each second there's someone consulting it on births, deaths, doses, meals, lights, talking, working, sleeping, resting, visiting, dressing, washing-and hitherto it had decreed that someone should begin to wash and tidy me up at exactly three minutes after 7 A.M. That was one of the best reasons I had for appreciating a private room. In a public ward the messy proceeding would have taken place a whole unnecessary hour earlier. But here, today, clocks of varying reliability were continuing to strike eight in all directions-and still nobody had shown up. Much as I disliked the sponging process, and useless as it had been to suggest that the help of a guiding hand as far as the bathroom could eliminate it, its failure to occur was highly disconcerting. Besides, it was normally a close forerunner of breakfast, and I was feeling hungry. Probably I would have been aggrieved about it any morning, but today, this Wednesday, May 8, was an occasion of particular personal importance. I was doubly anxious to get all the fuss and routine over because this was the day they were going to take off my bandages. I groped around a bit to find the bell push and let them have a full five seconds' clatter, just to show what I was thinking of them. While I was waiting for the pretty short-tempered response that such a peal ought to bring, I went on listening The day outside, I realized now, was sounding even more wrong than I had thought. The noises it made, or failed to make, were more like Sunday than Sunday itself-and I'd come round again to being absolutely assured that it was Wednesday, whatever else had happened to it. Why the founders of St. Merryn's Hospital chose to erect their institution at a main-road crossing upon a valuable office site, and thus expose their patients' nerves to constant laceration, is a foible that I never properly understood. But for those fortunate enough to be suffering from complaints unaffected by the wear and tear of continuous traffic, it did have the advantage that one could lie abed and still not be out of touch, so to speak, with the flow of life. Customarily the west-bound busses thundered along trying to beat the lights at the corner; as often as not a pig-squeal of brakes and a salvo of shots from the silencer would tell that they hadn't. Then the released cross traffic would rev and roar as it started up the incline. And every now and then there would be an interlude: a good grinding bump, followed by a general stoppage-exceedingly tantalizing to one in my condition, where the extent of the contretemps had to be judged entirely by the degree of profanity resulting. Certainly, neither by day nor during most of the night, was there any chance of a St. Merryn patient being under the impression that the common round had stopped just because he, personally, was on the shelf for the moment. But this morning was different. Disturbingly, because mysteriously, different. No wheels rumbled, no busses roared, no sound of a car of any kind, in fact, was to be heard; no brakes, no horns, not even the clopping of the few rare horses that still occasionally passed; nor, as there should be at such an hour, the composite tramp of work-bound feet. The more I listened, the queerer it seemed-and the less I cared for it. In what I reckoned to be ten minutes of careful listening I heard five sets of shuffling, hesitating footsteps, three voices bawling unintelligibly in the distance, and the hysterical sobs of a woman. There was not the cooing of a pigeon, not the chirp of a sparrow. Nothing but the humming of wires in the wind. A nasty, empty feeling began to crawl up inside me. It was the same sensation I used to have sometimes as a child when I got to fancying that horrors were lurking in the shadowy corners of the bedroom; when I daren't put a foot out for fear that something should reach from under the bed and grab my ankle; daren't even reach for the switch lest the movement should cause something to leap at me. I had to fight down the feeling, just as I had had to when I was a kid in the dark. And it was no easier. It's surprising how much you don't grow out of when it comes to the test. The elemental fears were still marching along with me, waiting their chance, and pretty nearly getting it-just because my eyes were bandaged and the traffic had stopped. When I had pulled myself together a bit, I tried the reasonable approach. Why does traffic stop? Well, usually because the road is closed for repairs. Perfectly simple. Any time now they'd be along with pneumatic drills as another touch of aural variety for the long-suffering patients. But the trouble with the reasonable line was that it went further. It pointed out that there was not even the distant hum of traffic, not the whistle of a train, not the hoot of a tugboat. Just nothing-until the clocks began chiming a quarter past eight . The temptation to take a peep-not more than a peep, of course; just enough to get some idea of what on earth could be happening-was immense. But I restrained it. For one thing, a peep was a far less simple matter than it sounded. It wasn't just a case of lifting a blindfold: there were a lot of pads and bandages. But, more important, I was scared to try. Over a week's complete blindness can do a lot to frighten you out of taking chances with your sight. It was true that they intended to remove the bandages today, but that would be done in a special dim light, and they would allow them to stay off only if the inspection of my eyes were satisfactory. I did not know whether it would be. It might be that my sight was permanently impaired. Or that I would not be able to see at all. I did not know yet. I swore and laid hold of the bell push again. It helped to relieve my feelings a bit. No one, it seemed, was interested in bells. I began to get as much sore as worried. It's humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it's a still poorer pass to have no one to depend on. My patience was whittling down. Something, I decided, had got to be done about it. If I were to bawl down the passage and generally raise hell, somebody ought to show up if only to tell me what they thought of me. I turned back the sheet and got out of bed. I'd never seen the room I was in, and though I had a fairly good idea by ear of the position of the door, it wasn't all that easy to find. There seemed to be several puzzling and unnecessary obstacles, but I got across at the cost of a stubbed toe and minor damage to my shin. I shoved out into the passage. "Hey!" I shouted. "I want some breakfast. Room forty-eight!" Quiz questions on The day of the Triffids 1. Which day does the narrator feel like Wednesday feels like? 2. What time does the narrator think it is? 3. Where is the narrator when the world ends as he knows it? 4. What is the date the narrator says is of particular personal importance? 5. What does the narrator notice is different about this day? What could he not hear? 6. What part of the narrator's body is bandaged? 7. Why does the narrator say it is hard for him to take a peep at the world? 8. Which room number is the narrator in?

Bonus task – try to find 5 quotations from the text which show that this is a post-apocalyptic setting. Final task

Choose one of the sub- genres or combine a selection of them. Either plan a story for that genre, using whatever medium you would like, or write a descriptive or narrative for the chosen sub-genre. Week 6 – completing your portfolio

Now you have time to complete your protfolio. You can present this in whatever way you want. It could be done as a word document, PowerPoint, hard copy on paper, a book or in a file. You may have even wanted to use a different medium (video, drawing) to present your work. It is up to you how you present your work. Bonus quiz…THE ANSWERS 1. Name one of the novels written by Michael Crichton – Jurassic Park, andromeda strain, Congo, Sphere 2. Name one of the novels written by William Gibson – Neuromancer, johnny mnemonic, Congo, Sphere 3. Who wrote 1984 and Animal farm? – George Orwell 4. Who is most known for 2001 Space Odyssey? Arthur C. Clark 5. Who wrote the Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451? Ray Bradbury 6. Which famous BBC radio comedy was written by Douglas Adams? Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy 7. Name one of the films inspired by Phillip K. Dick’s writing. Blade Runner, Total recall, Minority Report 8. Where does Nemo in Finding Nemo get his name from? Twenty Thousand leagues Under the Sea 9. Who wrote Foundation and Nightfall? Isaac Asimov 10. Who wrote War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The Invisible Man? H.G. Wells ANSWERS We are now going to look at the predictions we might make for the future, based on current technological and scientific developments. First of all, let’s look at how far we have come. Can you name any of these forms of technology from the past? – answers are at the end of the PowerPoint

Mobile phone (Nokia) Original Apple with messaging Floppy disks Cassette tape Fax machine computer capability.

VHS (Video Home Boom box System) Overhead projector Slide projector Games cartridge Answers… 1. According to the novel, how far away is the sun from the earth? roughly ninety-two million miles 2. According to this novel were the people on Earth happy or unhappy? Unhappy 3. What is being referred to in this line? ‘ape-descended life forms’ - humans 4. According to the novel, where should humans not have left? The trees or the oceans. 5. Why could the girl from Rickmansworth not tell anyone about her great idea to make the world a happy place? She didn’t get to the phone in time, before the terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred 6. Had ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’ ever been published on Earth? No 7. Where was the book ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy’ published? Ursa Minor 8. Was the book ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ a successful book? Yes 9. What are the two reasons the ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide tot the Galaxy’ has been popular? It is cheaper than other books and it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. 10. Where does the story begin? With a house Bonus quiz on 'The Sound of Thunder' ANSWERS

1. How much money does Eckels have on the cheque he's using to pay for the Safari? Ten thousand dollars 2. Which dinosaur does Eckels want to shoot? Tyrannosaurus Rex 3. Who does Travis point out is not born yet, when they arrive in the past? Christ 4. How far back in time have they travelled before President Keith? sixty million two thousand and fifty five 5. Why does Travis explain that Eckels should not go off the path or touch anything? Because it might change the future 6. How do they know which animals they can shoot? They are marked with red paint 7.How high does the Tyrannosaurus Rex tower above the trees? thirty feet 8. What literary devices is being used in this sentence? Metaphor, personification or a simile? 'Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell.' Simile 9. Why can they not take a trophy back to the future? Because they need to leave everything as it is, so that it does not change the future. 10. What do they notice about Eckles' shoes? Why are they angry? He has dirt on his shoes which shows that he went off the path. Bonus quiz on 'The Sound of Thunder' ANSWERS 11. What do they tell Eckels he has to do before they let him back in the Time machine? Collect the bullets from the dinosaur. 12. What does Eckels notice about the smell of the office when he returns to the present? There is a chemical smell. 13. What has changed about the sign on the wall? The spelling has changed. 14. What does Eckels find dead in the mud from his shoes? A butterfly 15. When Eckels asks who won the election, what is the man's answer? Why has the present changed? Deutscher has won the election. The present has changed because Eckels stood on a butterfly, which then meant that the natural order of the past changed and thus, so did the future. ANSWERS on War of the Worlds 1. In the last years of the 19th century, who has been watching the Earth? Intelligences greater than man's. 2. How far is Mars from the sun? 140,000,000 miles 3. Why had people in the 19th century not thought that there was intelligent life on other planets? Because they were too vain, blinded by vanity. 4. As the aliens watch from space, 35,000,000 from earth, why do they think that earth is a better place than Mars? It has a warmer climate and is more fertile. 5. Who does the writer say have 'vanished' because of humans? Dodo and Bison 6. Is the Martian's mathematical understanding better than humans? Yes 7. When Mars first attacked the earth, did people take much notice? No 8. What does Ogilvy think is being showered down upon earth? Meteorites 9. What did the daily papers focus on when looking at Mars? The volcanoes on Mars. 10. How does the extract end? The narrator explains he went for a walk, how was he feeling? Safe or unsafe? Safe. Answers on The day of the Triffids 1. Which day does the narrator feel like Wednesday feels like? Sunday 2. What time does the narrotor think it is? 8 O'clock 3. Where is the narrator when the world ends as he knows it? Hospital 4. What is the date the narrator says is of particular personal importance? Wednesday May 8th 5. What does the narrator notice is different about this day? What could he not hear? The buses and usual traffic. 6. What part of the narrator's body is bandaged? His eyes 7. Why does the narrator say it is hard for him to take a peep at the world? Because he has pads and bandages over his eyes and he is too scared to try and remove them. 8. Which room number is the narrator in? Room fourty eight

Bonus task – try to find 5 quotations from the text which show that this is a post apocalyptic setting.