ABSTRACT
As far as is known, the first college SF course was taught by Sam Moskowitz at the City College of New York in 1953. 1 The first to have any impact in educational circles was Mark R. Hillegas’ course, which began at Colgate in 1962. Five years later, Hillegas, who was now at Southern Illinois University, published an article reflecting somewhat dispiritedly on his experiences as an SF teacher. Despite a predominantly ‘mainstream’ list of texts, including Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Lord of the Flies, and several Wells titles, Hillegas reported growing opposition from his faculty colleagues. Given the conservatism of literary intellectuals and the anti-scientific bias of English departments, he concluded, there was ‘no future for a course in science fiction’. 2
