Tween Cooties!
May. 5th, 2008 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julieandrewsI have to admit I was Googling again! (Just so you know, I was a Google early adopter. So, y'know, I'm way cooler than the average public who only picked it up in the last five years. In case you were wondering.)
I found this post on Ann Halam's Young Adult SF. It mentions Siberia, which I actually thought of in relation to science fiction for girls. I totally didn't realize (or it didn't stick in my head very long) that Ann Halam is Gwyneth Jones. Duh. And it turns out she has some other YA I now need to check out.
The post references John Scalzi's take on YA. He points out that that's where the best-selling SF/F is, so you'd better not ignore it. He mentions Scott Westerfeld in particular, who I actually hadn't heard of until Clarion. Which is pretty sad and pathetic. I just don't know if it's pathetic of me, or a sad state of affairs that the world was conspiring to make me oblivious.
And that post in turn referenced Cory's BoingBoing post: A Parallel Universe of Little-Regarded Awesomeness. (And, btw, Cory, I would've copied and pasted the entire title, but BoingBoing doesn't let you -- easily -- so I didn't, so I was lazy and didn't type the entire title. BoingBoing also makes my browser slow, but this post isn't about that.) In which he points out that if you're looking for his new book Little Brother, it's probably in the YA section, not the adult SF section.
I'm not an alien to the YA section. There's cool stuff in there. I'll even venture into the children's section and not be embarassed to be seen reading the stuff. I've grabbed manga from the YA room. I've read A Series of Unfortunate Events, a whole bunch of Diana Wynne Jones, most of Diane Duane's Wizardry series, Harry Potter of course, Luna, some Nancy Garden. I've read some of the classics, back when I actually was YA myself and later. I started reading Stephenie Meyer after her book got a(n error-filled) mention on Stephen Colbert. But almost all of those are mainstream or fantasy... though I did call the Wizardry series science fiction in a previous post.
It took actual questioning and searching for me to find the new YA science fiction that might be good. Why is that?
I thought maybe I'd blame Amazon, but when I go to My Recommendations -> Books -> Teens -> Science Fiction and Fantasy -> Science Fiction, it does show me a fair number of them. Though I really have no clue what definition of 'science fiction' they're operating with. They almost all look like fantasy or mythology to me. I'd have to do my own sorting, apparently. So maybe I will blame them after all. It doesn't seem to have that problem so much in the Adult recommendations. (And is pretty insistent today that I read more Connie Willis and Octavia Butler. Which I really should.)
Granted I have not been reading as much science fiction lately as I did as a teenager. Maybe it's just science fiction ignorance rather than YA ignorance. If I get bored at some point, I'll categorize my read lists and figure out how much I've read of what in the last 5+ years. See if I can spot any trends.
In summary, go read all of the YA authors I just mentioned. And please recommend more to me!
I found this post on Ann Halam's Young Adult SF. It mentions Siberia, which I actually thought of in relation to science fiction for girls. I totally didn't realize (or it didn't stick in my head very long) that Ann Halam is Gwyneth Jones. Duh. And it turns out she has some other YA I now need to check out.
The post references John Scalzi's take on YA. He points out that that's where the best-selling SF/F is, so you'd better not ignore it. He mentions Scott Westerfeld in particular, who I actually hadn't heard of until Clarion. Which is pretty sad and pathetic. I just don't know if it's pathetic of me, or a sad state of affairs that the world was conspiring to make me oblivious.
And that post in turn referenced Cory's BoingBoing post: A Parallel Universe of Little-Regarded Awesomeness. (And, btw, Cory, I would've copied and pasted the entire title, but BoingBoing doesn't let you -- easily -- so I didn't, so I was lazy and didn't type the entire title. BoingBoing also makes my browser slow, but this post isn't about that.) In which he points out that if you're looking for his new book Little Brother, it's probably in the YA section, not the adult SF section.
I'm not an alien to the YA section. There's cool stuff in there. I'll even venture into the children's section and not be embarassed to be seen reading the stuff. I've grabbed manga from the YA room. I've read A Series of Unfortunate Events, a whole bunch of Diana Wynne Jones, most of Diane Duane's Wizardry series, Harry Potter of course, Luna, some Nancy Garden. I've read some of the classics, back when I actually was YA myself and later. I started reading Stephenie Meyer after her book got a(n error-filled) mention on Stephen Colbert. But almost all of those are mainstream or fantasy... though I did call the Wizardry series science fiction in a previous post.
It took actual questioning and searching for me to find the new YA science fiction that might be good. Why is that?
I thought maybe I'd blame Amazon, but when I go to My Recommendations -> Books -> Teens -> Science Fiction and Fantasy -> Science Fiction, it does show me a fair number of them. Though I really have no clue what definition of 'science fiction' they're operating with. They almost all look like fantasy or mythology to me. I'd have to do my own sorting, apparently. So maybe I will blame them after all. It doesn't seem to have that problem so much in the Adult recommendations. (And is pretty insistent today that I read more Connie Willis and Octavia Butler. Which I really should.)
Granted I have not been reading as much science fiction lately as I did as a teenager. Maybe it's just science fiction ignorance rather than YA ignorance. If I get bored at some point, I'll categorize my read lists and figure out how much I've read of what in the last 5+ years. See if I can spot any trends.
In summary, go read all of the YA authors I just mentioned. And please recommend more to me!
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Date: 2008-05-06 01:36 pm (UTC)