After accumulating websites that I visited over the course of the semester here are two visuals that I created using Voyant. I broke up the visuals based on the first half and the second half of the semester. I not only did this because Voyant couldn’t handle the number of websites I input, but I it is interesting to compare the two halves of the semester and see which key words were highlighted.

First 1/2:

The first half of the semester started with research into popular science fiction, sports in Sci-Fi, robots, cyborgs, nanotech, and sci-fi movies. Besides some of the more obvious terms, one of the terms that stands out to me is “human”. A common element of sci-fi that I was interested in this semester was the connection between the genre and what is can say and show about humans. Seeing this word stand out in the visualization, even through I wasn’t actively researching it, reminded me of how much sci-fi is able to, and talks about, the human condition and where we may be headed in the future. Another word that stood out was “time”. I think one thing that we have emphasized with every short story that we have read this semester is understanding the setting, and particularly when the story was written and in what time period it is based. I think that more than any other literary genre, time is emphasized more in Sci-Fi because sci-fi has the ability to reimagine the past or imagine the future.

2nd 1/2:

The second half of the semester I explored themes like nuclear war, dystopias, how seasons are shown in sci-fi, the Hugo Awards, and a few others. This visualization highlights a few terms that stand out to me. The first one that stands out is “winter”. In researching seasons in Sci-Fi, winter was commonly talked about, and my assumption is due to its connection to nuclear winter. One of the most interesting parts of that research was the illustrations, as most of them showed these dystopic cold atmospheres. Another word that stands out is “soviet”. Russian sci-fi wasn’t mentioned too much in my research however, my assumption is that the word soviet was in connection with my nuclear war research. Most cases of nuclear war in Sci-Fi, involved some kind of conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. Overall, interesting exercise that gave me a good overview of the things that I have learned this semester and the topics that I have covered personally!