The focus of this unit is the structures and features of fictional narratives, focussing especially on the conventions and stylistic features of short stories. You will become familiar with the structures of particular and various genres of story narratives and experiment with and improve your writing skills. You will look at how narratives from the science fiction/ speculative fiction genre can be used to reflect society’s fears, concerns and aspirations. You will learn to analyse, recognise and explain allegorical representations in stories, and read, listen to, analyse and discuss many different examples of this genre. You will investigate the developments and discoveries in science (and the issues they raised) which have inspired writers and artists to produce works which extrapolate on these.