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Samuelson taught science-fiction texts and courses for almost 30 years. He discusses the various short stories and novels he has used to teach science fiction to college students.

Like other popular artforms, science fiction is \"formulaic,\" but its formulas, ranging from myth to mathematics, cannot be determined simply by era, setting, type of plot, or conventional values. As a form of fantasy, SF uses exaggeration, inversion, and extension as points of relevance to readers focused on the here and now. Unlike other fantasy, SF relies on science for content and rhetoric, best exemplified today in the subgenre of \"hard SF.\" More so than other SF, hard SF is undergirded by the scientific principles of empiricism, determinism, and relativism, with their pragmatic applications of prediction and control. Exaggeration and inversion still have their place as rhetorical ploys, along with satire and allegory, but hard SF is based more on extension. Of the three subdivisions of extension, hard SF relies more on extrapolation than it does on speculation or transformation. Hard SF writers use extrapolation mainly for world-building and forecasting, following variant methodologies. Both rely on the same hard sciences, but forecasting relies more on soft and pseudo-scientific bases. In the creation of characters and forecasts of their behavior, extrapolation has significance on conventional literary levels as well.

Samuelson reviews \"Frankenstein's Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture\" by Jon Turney and \"Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture\" by David J. Skal.