How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Prescribed Elective.

With all due apologies to Kubrick’s brilliant work, the module I’m taking this semester has all the elements of a possible distinction.

1) Brilliant lecturer.
2) Brilliant subject content.
3) Brilliant use of media.
4) Not very brilliant competition.

Of course, there’s the possibility I might be underestimating my fellow coursemates, but the module in question: Engineering Fiction: Science and Technology in Literature, may just be my ticket out of probation hell. Asst. Prof Tamara Wagner has come up with an amazing line-up of media for our “texts”: Shelly’s Frankenstein, Wells’ Time Machine, the 2000 BBC production Pandaemonium among others.

In particular, the above-mentioned film (which features The Mummy’s John Hannah, Minority Report’s Samantha Morton and Andy Serkis, better known as Gollum, also stars Linus Roache, whom we shall soon see as Bruce Wayne’s father in Batman Begins) is a brilliant take on the origins of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge (Roache) is joined by William Wordsworth (Hannah) in a small countryside village (I couldn’t catch where - probably the Lake District area). Together, the two aim to revolutionise the world through their poetry, but as with all dramas, the reality is far from the dream.

The two poets are initially unproductive, with a bored Coleridge even going so far as to tease an affair with Dorothy, the younger sister of Wordsworth. However, one night Coleridge decides to pen a collaborative effort with Wordsworth, but after taking some opium (to soothe a toothache) he begins to furiously create the opening parts of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”. The now inspired Coleridge, with encouragement from Dorothy, soon completes one part after another, to the great indignation of Wordsworth.

That’s as far as we watched today, however. However, from Net spoilers, it would seem that Wordsworth becomes the film’s villian, fueled by his envy of Coleridge’s genius.

Hmmm… well, no one said it was historically accurate. =P

How brilliant is this? We have a bunch of engineering undergrads who are mostly here because they can’t get any of the other modules offered by the new school of Humanities and Social Sciences. Even better, we have a good majority of them who do not speak English as a first language. In other words, this should be a breeze.

I hope.