The Green Futures of Tycho
Page 11
Orvis
by H. M. Hoover
Prince Ombra
by Roderick MacLeish
Pinocchio
by Carlo Collodi
Another Heaven, Another Earth
by H. M. Hoover
The Wonder Clock
by Howard Pyle
The Shadow Guests
by Joan Aiken
Song in the Silence
by Elizabeth Kerner
Putting Up Roots
by Charles Sheffield
In the Land of the Lawn Weenies
by David Lubar
To the Blight
The Eye of the World: Part Two
by Robert Jordan
The Cockatrice Boys
by Joan Aiken
The Whispering Mountain
by Joan Aiken
The Garden Behind the Moon
by Howard Pyle
The Dark Side of Nowhere
by Neal Shusterman
The Magician’s Ward
by Patricia C. Wrede
Deep Secret
by Diana Wynne Jones
Hidden Talents
by David Lubar
Obernewtyn
by Isobelle Carmody
This Time of Darkness
by H. M. Hoover
Red Unicorn
by Tanith Lee
The Billion Dollar Boy
by Charles Sheffield
The Farseekers
by Isobelle Carmody
FUTURE SHOCK!
The older Tycho spun around, his hand twitching inside his pocket. For a moment Tycho stared into his grown-up face, hard and cold and afraid, with hooded, red-rimmed eyes and deep lines already etched into the forehead. It was definitely his own face.
Then the face started toward him, shouting something. But Tycho wasn’t listening. He was leaping up the stairs, two at a time, adjusting the dials as he went. Don’t panic. Think about what you’re doing. Calculate. He pounded across the upstairs hall. In his room, his hands shook as he checked the dials, trying to ignore the footsteps on the stairs, the footsteps in the hallway.
His older self burst into the room. He was waving something in his hand, but before Tycho had a chance to get a good look at it, he pressed down on the jeweled end and felt faint. And returned to his familiar bedroom.
TOR BOOKS Reader’s Guide
THE GREEN FUTURES OF TYCHO
WILLIAM SLEATOR
ABOUT THIS GUIDE
The information, activities and discussion questions which follow are intended to enhance your reading of The Green Futures of Tycho. Please feel free to adapt these materials to suit your needs and interests.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Sleator, the eldest child of a pediatrician mother and a scientist father, was born in Maryland and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He began writing stories and composing music at the age of six, enjoying the first performance of one of his compositions during an assembly at his high school. In 1967, he received bachelor’s degrees in music and English from Harvard University. He spent the following year in England, studying musical composition and working as pianist at the Royal Ballet School. After nine years working as a rehearsal pianist for the Boston Ballet—during which time he composed music for three ballets—Sleator turned to writing full-time. Many of his award-winning science fiction books and stories explore real scientific phenomena in imaginary settings.
Sleator currently divides his time between Bangkok, Thailand, and Boston, Massachusetts. On his website biography, the author comments about his profession: “I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to make a living as a writer. I shouldn’t ever run out of ideas—knock on wood—since the universe is full of great things like strange attractors and the Mandelbrot set. I still can’t get over the fact that time slows down in the presence of a gravitational field. It really does, you know. That’s not science fiction. It’s a fact.”
WRITING AND RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
I. Literary Time Travel
A. In The Green Futures of Tycho, the main character finds a device that enables him to travel through time. Time travel is a classic motif in science fiction and fantasy literature. Go to the library or online to make a list of stories in which characters travel through time or question the value of seeing into other times. Classics to consider include Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbit, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain and The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. Use a computer publishing program, incorporate a decorative border and interesting fonts, and employ other graphic elements to make an illustrated “Time Travel Reading List” page or booklet.
B. Read one or more books from your reading list of exercise LA, above. Create a chart comparing the time travel elements from The Green Futures of Tycho with the other book(s) you have read. Include the following areas of observation on your chart: “Devices” used for time travel; “Sensations or Feelings” during travel (such as Tycho’s “vague nausea”); “Locations” at which characters depart and arrive; and “Risks and Results.”
C. Write a short story in which you, or a character similar to yourself, discover a time travel device. Include a detailed description of the device, your first reaction to it, and what happens the first time you use the device.
D. Do you believe in time travel? Write a paragraph explaining why you believe, or do not believe, in such a phenomenon. If desired, collect similar paragraphs from friends or classmates. Add drawings, newspaper articles, and other material to create a display entitled “Can You Travel Through Time?”
II. What’s in a Name?
A. Tycho and his siblings are all named after gifted artists and thinkers from the past. Go to the library or online to learn more about Ludwig von Beethoven, Tamara Karsavina, Leonardo da Vinci, or Tycho Brahe. Create an informative poster based on your research. Or, costumed as one of the individuals above, give a short oral presentation to friends or classmates, describing your life and accomplishments and offering advice to future namesakes.
B. Go to the library or online to find out more about the ancient Greek mythological character Tithonus. Write a paragraph explaining why you think the author chose this last name for the fictional family in his novel.
C. Are Bobby and Judy’s naming ideas really so unusual? Create a “names survey” to be completed by friends or classmates. Consider asking some or all of the following questions in your survey: Were you named after a relative or famous person, or was your name chosen in another way? What is the origin of your middle name? Do you know the history, or geographic origin, of your last name? Add other questions as desired. Compile the results of your survey in a short report.
D. Do some library or online research to answer the following question: If you could be named after anyone from the past—and grow up to have a career in the same field as this individual—who would you choose? Prepare a short presentation recounting the life and accomplishments of this individual and describing how you imagine your future working in the same field, and with the same name.
III. Chances Are …
A. The notion of chance is an important motif in The Green Futures of Tycho. How might you define chance? How is chance defined by scientists, mathematicians, artists or others? Create a collage of words and images of “chance” in our world and understanding.
B. The novel suggests that each choice Tycho makes affects the course of his life. Have you ever been in a situation in which afterward you wished you had made a different choice about your words or actions? Write a short memoir-style essay or a fictionalized account of the situation in which you describe what happened, the result, what you wish you had done, and what you imagine might have happened as a result. Entitle your essay or story “If Only …”
C. Pretend you are an English teacher. Prepare a lesson about the title of this novel in which you consider the reason the author used the phrase “Green Futures.” You may want to go to the librar
y or online to find definitions of each term, or to do additional research. Give a short lecture teaching your lesson to classmates or friends.
D. As Tycho continues to use the egg, the object itself seems to change. Draw a cartoon-style series of panels depicting the evolving egg. You may choose to draw the egg alone, or in scenes with Tycho and other characters from the novel.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Do you think the Tithonus parents were wise or misguided in attempting to prescribe their children’s futures with special names and classes? Do you think such a plan could work? Why or why not?
2. In the final line of Chapter 3, the author observes that Tycho’s “parents, and his brothers and sister, had never liked him very much.” Do you think this is true? In what ways does Tycho seem different, or set apart, from his family in the opening chapters of the novel?
3. Why is Tycho. gardening in the first place? What does this action show readers about Tycho’s personality?
4. Why and how does Tycho take his first time journey with the egg?
5. In what ways does Tycho’s ability to time travel change his relationships with his brothers and sister? What power does the egg five him?
6. Why do Tycho’s siblings seem so interested in what at first seems little more than a piece of buried metallic trash? Why is Tycho so protective of the egg even before he knows it true power? If you discovered such an object, would you keep it a secret? Why or why not?
7. Do Bobby and Judy seem like “normal” parents? Compare and contrast the relationship of the children with Bobby and Judy to your own parental relationships.
8. Reread Chapter 7, in which Tycho returns to the past to turn the tables on his elder siblings’ prank. What does Tycho wonder after he has scared his past-siblings? What present changes occur before the chapter’s end?
9. Can you recall a past event you would enjoy redoing to your advantage? If you could go back and change this event, would you? Why or why not?
10. What strategies does Tycho develop to enable him to time travel in safety and secrecy? What do you think might have happened had his siblings discovered the secret of the egg?
11. Describe the various ways the Tithonus house changes as Tycho visits it at various moments in time. Do you imagine futuristic homes will look the way they do in the author’s descriptions? How do the home descriptions reflect the characters and relationships of their occupants?
12. Compare the Lunar Entertainments Tycho of Chapter 9 with the ogre businessman of twenty minutes later in Chapter 11. What has happened?
13. How has Leonardo changed when Tycho returns from the future in Chapter 10? What other changes have occurred? What trick does Tycho play on Leo to prevent him from learning about the egg? How does this help readers to understand how the future Tycho visits has come into being?
14. How does Tamara’s comment about chance in Chapter 12 make the novel bigger than the story of one boy’s fantastic adventure?
15. How does the egg multiply in the next-to-the-last chapter of the novel? What happens when Tycho encounters his older self? What crimes has this character committed against his family? Against his own future?
16. How does young Tycho escape the clutches of adult Tycho? What does he ultimately decide to do with the egg and why? How does he put his decision into action?
17. Who are the green creatures from the prehistoric past? Where did Tycho see an image of this creature before? What are your impressions of these creatures?
18. What is significant about Tamara’s final comment that “[t]he summer will go by soon enough”? How has this novel affected your conception of time?
19. Is the “present” that exists at the end of the novel the same “present” in which the story began? Why does Tycho feel suddenly happy as the story draws to a close?
20. Do you think chance or choice will play a more significant role in your own future? Explain your answer.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE GREEN FUTURES OF TYCHO
Copyright © 1981 by William Sleator
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Previously published in 1981 by Elsevier-Dutton
A Starscape Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.starscapebooks.com
eISBN 9781466827431
First eBook Edition : July 2012
ISBN 0-765-35238-9
EAN 978-0-765-35238-5
First Starscape edition: October 2005