Although now out of reach save for the wealthy (and those willing to embrace lifetimes of crushing debt), there was a time not so long ago that average people without even a billion dollars to their name found university attendance well within their means. Legions flocked to universities. Those days are gone for good, but thanks to authors who’ve incorporated campus settings into their fiction, fictional universities are but a quick purchase away.
Consider these five works set in academe…
The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher (1942)
Undergrad Gloria Garton was happy to embrace Professor Wolfe Wolf’s enthusiastic mentoring. Now a movie star, Gloria Garton has better options than “Professor Woof-Woof” and no interest in taking up where the two of them left off. A heartbroken Wolfe does what so many melancholy academics and scholars have done before him. He heads to the nearest bar to drown his sorrows. The consequences are unexpected.
Magician and fellow barfly Ozymandias draws the astonished Wolfe’s attention to a fact previously unknown to Wolfe: Wolfe is a werewolf; he needs only a magic word (which Ozymandias supplies) to transform into an impressive wolf. Armed with his magic word, Wolfe sets off to win the girl of his dreams. Abject failure, academic disgrace, and a well-armed Nazi spy ring await!
Readers may wonder that the book accepts day-drinking and mash notes to undergrads as perfectly acceptable professorial behaviour. Wolfe would have been fired for such things in these enlightened days. However, he does manage to get fired, tenure notwithstanding. Classroom nudity plays a role, as does, very curiously, classroom sobriety. This is a zany comedy, so readers may be assured that it all works out in the end.
Worlds by Joe Haldeman (1981)
One of the half million who call the orbiting habitats (the Worlds) home, Marianne O’Hara’s academic ambitions draw her down from New New York to its namesake on Earth. A fourth-generation child of the Worlds, O’Hara looks forward to an enriching education on Earth. Pity that so much of it will be intensely unpleasant.
New York is a violent, crime-ridden city. While the Second Revolution brought an unstable peace to the United States, stark divisions remain, wanting only a spark to flare into civil war. Likewise, while the world took a lesson from the cataclysmic South American nuclear war, across the planet vast nuclear arsenals remain, awaiting only the right spark to be unleashed. O’Hara may be that spark.
Worlds is a compact exploration of late-1970s, early 1980s American enthusiasms and anxieties: space cities on the plus side of the ledger, and urban decay, political strife, and nuclear doom on the minus. There are other contemporary works that draw from the same well of inspiration, but Haldeman’s was one of the better written books.
Starfarers by Vonda N. McIntyre (1989)
Rather than leave academia behind, the academics who staffed Starfarer convinced a consortium of nations to provide them with a space-going university. Propelled by solar sails, the diverse and brilliant crew will hook on a passing cosmic string, leap past the gulfs of space, and begin the age of human interstellar exploration. That’s the plan.
America provided the lion’s share of Starfarer’s funding. President Distler believes this makes Starfarer American property. America has no particular need for interstellar exploration. A heavily armed orbiting battle-station, on the other, could secure American safety in a divided world. The only thing between Distler and his bold plan to repurpose Starfarer is a collection of unarmed idealists. What are they going to do, steal an entire starship?
Stealing entire starships is such a common development in science fiction that there are good reasons for funding agencies to invest in better locks and keep ignition keys in trustworthy pockets. Starfarers is notable for a dramatis personae unusually diverse for its era, and for having its genesis in a series of convention joke panels about the non-existent Starfarers TV show.
They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded by James Alan Gardner (2018)
Long before the lab accident that imbued Jools and her chums with superpowers, Julietta “Jools” Walsh was prone to intense self-loathing. She is painfully conscious of her failing grades, rampant promiscuity, and borderline alcoholism. Gaining genuine superhuman abilities has only added to Jools’ list of worries. Jools is, for good reason, concerned that she may be a Mad Scientist. And that would be bad.
No fool, Jools keeps her superhero identity carefully sequestered from her Jools life. This does not prevent an ambitious Darkling from recruiting her in a bid to recover a gun from the very same laboratory where Jools gained her power. Nor does her superhero status protect her from the Merry Men, ostensibly heroic super-thieves who also want the gun. Caught in the crossfire, Jools could easily end up mind-wiped. Or dead. And that would be worse.
Firmly in the grand old tradition of flawed super-humans doing their best to overcome their personal foibles, Gun explores the ramifications of the rules established in Gardner’s earlier book, 2017’s All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault. Which, as anyone who has read superhero comics might suspect, are pretty disturbing. The Light that powers superheroes reshapes them to suit their role. Jules’ enhanced intellect cannot protect her from this, but it does let her appreciate the process.
Haunted Heroine by Sarah Kuhn (2020)
Seeking distraction from the pressures of impending motherhood, pyrokinetic superhero Evie Tanaka returns to Morgan College. Once a lowly grad student, now Evie is a consultant, posing as a teaching assistant long enough to discover why the ghosts of the notoriously haunted Morgan College have suddenly changed their ways.
Fire-wielding Evie has avoided Morgan College since some unknown person (ahem) accidentally burned down the library with powers they had yet to master. Embarrassment about power misused isn’t Evie’s only reason for avoiding Morgan: her odious ex is a Morgan College tenured professor. Evie has spent years avoiding the predatory prof. Now she gets to work alongside him.
What are the odds that two stories set on campus would feature professors given to macking on students? However, society has moved on since the era of Boucher’s story. Kuhn’s tale of old shames and personal empowerment provides an entirely different perspective on the idea.
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Academia features prominently in many science fiction and fantasy novels. I didn’t even touch on all the magical colleges. Some of you may have your own favourites. If so, comments are, as ever, below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a four-time finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, and is surprisingly flammable.
