Using the panel discussions of the most
recent World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, August 2015, I will jump
off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION
given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This is event #3297. The link is
provided below…
Hard SF for Teens
Hard science fiction isn’t just for adults.
Kids today are more tech savvy than ever and fiction featuring real (or at
least possible) science for teens is gaining steam. However, how hard should a
hard SF novel get for young adults? What hard SF is getting it right? Who
should we be reading? How can teens effectively pick through those old SF
classics that they would find compelling today?
Steven Gould (m), Jennifer Brozek, Fonda
Lee, Marissa Meyer, William Campbell Powell
Except for the
moderator, I didn’t recognize any of the names on this list, so my first
question is “What are these people doing here?”
Your first
question should be, “So what if you don’t recognize any of the names? You’re
almost sixty years old! What would you know about hard SF for teens?”
I’ll look into
the answer to the first in a second. The second I’ll answer right now: I’ve
been a middle school and high school teacher for 34 years. I know what kids are
reading because I SEE what they’re reading. I talk to them about what they’re
reading. I teach summer school classes to the gifted and talented – THEY are
the true future of hard SF – and I see and talk to them about what they’re
reading. I’d be willing to bet that I have a pretty dang good idea of what they
are and are not reading. I worked at Barnes & Noble a couple of years ago,
tried to order a set of the Heinlein classics and put them in the Teen section…and
they were repeatedly moved back to the “regular” science fiction section
because the brick and mortar giant DIDN’T RECOGNIZE THEM AS BEING FOR TEENS, a
cursory skim through the twenty-six pages of “hard science fiction for teens”
on Amazon didn’t net a single Heinlein book.
So who are these
people and what are they doing here?
Steven Gould is
described by Booklist as writing “novel[s] straddle the line between YA and
adult fiction; its lead character is a teen, but the story has many
adult-themed elements”. He also has a couple of the YA “beasts” of his own. Perfect!
Jennifer Brozek
seems to be well-experienced short stories and anthologies – but I’ll say right
up front, that is not where and how most teens read. As an author of several
RPGs as well as a BattleMech YA novel, she absolutely has the experience. But…not
so much with the “beast” itself. And short stories isn’t the usual direction
teens take in their reading. The ones I know want to be immersed in story; they
want to escape the harsh reality of the here-and-now.
Fonda Lee has a
novel, though nothing else published (Internet Speculative Fiction Database).
Marissa Meyers
is the author of the best-selling LUNAR CHRONICLES (which consistently remained
in the top three spots when my book came out last summer.)
William Campbell
Powell is the author of a YA novel.
So all of them
are more-or-less qualified to comment on YA hard science fiction.
However, I didn’t
see that any of them are intimately involved with their target audience. I didn’t
note that they TALK to young adults – though Mr. Campbell Powell and Mr. Gould
each have two teens, and Ms. Meyers and Ms. Lee are still very much young
adults themselves. However, this is not an absolute qualifier. I have two beasts
of my own and they are notoriously opinionated – in my favor.
I would have
loved to be there for the discussion and I’ve added books by all of them to my
list of “to-reads”. However, the fact remains that I have not SEEN their books
on the check-out lists of the high school I work in, and that, in the long run,
is where we have to win middle and high school students over to the science
fiction camp.
As for the
Heinlein books – I love them and collect them, but the loving is more in the
memory than in the re-reading. I find their prose clumsy and (also) very privileged
“white folk”. Sorry, there’s no other way to write that; which in my own
personal book disqualifies them as having any relevance for teenagers today.
They live in a diverse world in which HALF of all Americans will speak Spanish
as a main language by the year 2050, and it’s nearly impossible to advise kids
what to take in school and college to prepare for their future career – because
that career may not exist yet.
Maybe that’s
what we need to do as SF writers for YA – imagine careers (and games, which is
what Fonda Lee has did in her novel) that might be there when they arrive.
That’s my
mission. I wonder what the mission is for these others. Tell me if I did OK;
read my hard SF novel for YA – a link to it is posted on your right.
(DANG! I need to
get to one of these World Cons…someday!)
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