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A couple of days ago, the esteemed Charlie Jane Anders looked at the dearth of new, sustaining pop culture heroes and villains. That, with the exception of Harry Potter, we haven't seen a new character with the perceived permanence of a James Bond or a Captain Kirk or Spider-Man — and she blamed it on a lack of a pulp media. Ah, but she was looking in the wrong place. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5879653&view=rss&microfeed=true Science fiction and fantasy are officially ruling young-adult books — so it's no surprise that lots of science fiction publishers have been expanding into the YA niche, with often terrific results. The latest addition: Angry Robot Books is launching a YA imprint, Strange Chemistry, headed up by Amanda Rutter. They'll launch next September, with five books by the end of 2012, and one book a month thereafter. Can't wait! [Tor.com] More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5861010&view=rss&microfeed=true Canadian SF/fantasy authors, you have a new chance to get recognized for your children's and young-adult novels. The Monica Hughes Award, named after the late author of 40 young-adult novels, will give $5,000 each year to the author of the best science fiction or fantasy novel for children. The prize is funded by HarperCollins Canada, but administered by the Canadian Children's Book Centre. [Quill and Quire] More »
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With the Hunger Games premiere date just around the corner, Lionsgate is already searching for the next big teen blockbuster. And they've chosen Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking trilogy. But will this dystopian society rival the blood splattered world of Katniss and friends? More »
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After the apocalypse, the scariest thing could be one gay teenager. At least, that's what one prominent agent who represents successful young-adult novelists seems to believe. This unnamed agent asked authors Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith to remove a gay character from their post-apocalyptic YA novel — or just make him straight. More »
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The current boom in dystopian fiction for young-adult readers owes a lot to William Sleator, who passed away in Thailand a couple of days ago. His books were creepy, scary, and also filled with a relatable sort of dread. More »
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Kelly Link's latest short story sneaks up on you — at first you think it's just a concentrated dose of weirdness, a jarring head-trip like being suspended by your ankles over the ocean. But then her strange world-building starts to make sense, and you think the whole thing is becoming a demented thought experiment. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5820722&view=rss&microfeed=true With Falling Skies still doing well in the ratings, is a post-alien invasion world going to become our new favorite post-apocalyptic scenario? Let's hope so, since it's our best hope of getting a Tripods movie. More »
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When the continental United States becomes uninhabitable, the last survivors of America have to move to an island, in Anna North's bleak, beautiful America Pacifica. Here's an exclusive excerpt, in which some street performers reenact the end of our world. More »
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If you loved the post-apocalyptic prison saga of Incarceron, then you'll be excited to know Catherine Fisher has a new series, publishing monthly. We've got an exclusive excerpt for you: the first six chapters of Fisher's Relic Master Book One. More »
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I Am Number Four didn't exactly light the box office on fire, but that hasn't stopped Hollywood believing in the power of young adult science fiction adaptations. Now in development: Through To You, a parallel-universe love story. More »
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Our teens are living in horrible oppressive conditions — in their imaginations, at least. Dystopian fiction, which has never been more than a minor sub-genre in the past, has become a runaway success in young-adult publishing. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5753537&view=rss&microfeed=true We're just guessing that the bioengineered paradise where a teenage girl and her clone fight over the same guy will turn out to be less than perfect once the truth is revealed, in the new young adult novel Beta by Rachel Cohn. Beta, coming Fall 2012 from Disney-Hyperion, will be the first of four books in a new series from Cohn, who's moving into YA fiction after having written several successful children's books, including the Cyd Charisse books. Here's how the press release describes the new series that starts with Beta: More »
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Prose books could become a lot more like comic books, if a new experiment from the author of Incarceron achieves success. Catherine Fisher's next series, Relic Master, is coming out monthly starting in May. More »
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Marti Noxon was a producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now she's coming back to superpowered teenagers with the movie I Am Number Four, coming next month. She talked to us about aliens, super-violence, and dealing with internet haters. More »
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Think the dystopian young-adult novel craze has died down? Guess again. A post-apocalyptic dystopian trilogy just scored over half a million dollars from a major publisher, plus a movie deal. We talked to author Julianna Baggott about her PURE trilogy. More »
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Science fiction and fantasy books for younger audiences are booming — but they still mostly feature white heroes and are aimed at white audiences. So Stacy Whitman is launching Tu Books, a new publisher of multicultural children's and young-adult SF. More »
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Now that the Hunger Games trilogy is over, what's the next dystopian saga for teens (and loads of adults) to sink into? One title that's being mentioned is Ally Condie's Matched. Here's your exclusive first look at the book trailer. More »
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In John Dickinson's WE, everybody's connected to the World Ear, a tiny communications device that connects your brain to the internet — except Paul Munro, cut off from humanity at the fringes of the solar system. It's a thrilling premise. More »
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I don't know what's more exciting: The fact that the third Hunger Games book comes out in a month, or the fact that a science-fictional young adult series is generating Twilight-style excitement. In either case, here's a new book trailer! More »
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There's an absolutely fantastic profile of Patrick Ness, author of The Knife Of Never Letting Go, over at Publishers Weekly. Find out how he sold Knife based on just a 40-page excerpt, and how he's finishing another author's book. More »
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Can posting your unpublished novels online for free still lead to a nice book deal, now that the web is saturated with free fiction? It worked for author Marta Acosta, whose young-adult vampire novel will come out from Tor Books. More »
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Now that Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan has won a Locus Award, we're even more excited to read the next chapter in the alternate-universe World War I saga. Here's your exclusive first look at the cover of book two, Behemoth. Spoilers below. More »
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British author Catherine Fisher's young-adult dystopian novel Incarceron has only been out a few weeks, and already the rights have spurred a studio feeding freenzy. The big winner: Fox. Get ready for a future prison-world on the big screen. More »
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Nowadays, "young-adult fiction" includes every type of story, including post-apocalyptic and fantasy, says Forest Of Hands And Teeth author Carrie Ryan. And then readers reach adulthood and we suddenly expect them to choose their genres. More »
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Confused about why young-adult science fiction and fantasy are growing so much faster than their adult counterparts? YA authors will answer your questions in New York this evening. They're even prepared to discuss the popularity of Twilight. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5397967&view=rss&microfeed=true "[In] the Golden Age... there was an emphasis on writing for young people, to essentially hook them and get them excited about the genre, so they would become lifelong science fiction readers. And in those works, juveniles written by people like Heinlein and Asimov and Andre Norton and such, there was this sense that technology was good. Part of this was because many of these authors were trained as scientists themselves, engineers [or] physicists. There was the idea — a sense of wonder — that young people could grow up in to this new technological world and really change it and make it their own. And so even the ones that seemed negative in some ways — for example Robert Heinlein's Starman Jones was a story that had a very negative view of the way the Earth was developing, people couldn't get into jobs they wanted unless they were essentially born into a family that held one of those jobs. There was little advancement... but because space was out there, a young man could go out there — and in this case, most of the time it was a young man — and make his way. And that negative view of how things might turn out was in fact just the spark the heroic character needed to light a fire under him and motivate him to go out and make his own way. And actually, in the end, change the world. More »
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The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins was one of our favorite books last year, and the sequel, Catching Fire, looks even more insane. A new book trailer promises ramped up political intrigue, and an audio excerpt provides a major downpayment. More »
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Has the young-adult science fiction genre finally moved past future dystopias? A panel of three leading YA authors at BEA suggests the new frontier for YA fiction is alternate histories, including Darwin's genetic engineering and the Prohibition era targeting magic. More »
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Brittany and Brianna Winner (aged 13) thought they were stupid because they had dyslexia. So their dad challenged them to prove otherwise — by writing a science fiction novel. More »
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I've read a lot of young-adult science fiction books lately, but The Lab by Jack Heath is the first one to feel fully science fictional. Instead of taking place in a beautifully described post-apocalyptic world, or a present-day setting where weird things happen, The Lab is full of widescreen craziness. The main character is a genetically engineered superspy, who fights robots. Stuff blows up on every page. It's not a literary masterpiece, but it's the perfect book to get a smart tween hooked on science fiction. More »
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The biggest young-adult science fiction novel of the fall is probably The Hunger Games - and it's one of the best new science fiction books out there, period. Former Nickelodeon writer Suzanne Collins has written a sharp book about televised death-sports in a post-apocalyptic future. Her story pits a resourceful young hero against a media machine that doesn't just want to watch her die - it also wants to devour every bit of her emotional life. I'm sick of "reality TV" parodies, but the Hunger Games goes one better by making the audience the villains. More »
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The biggest growth in science fiction publishing these days, hands down, is happening in the young adult market, and that's great news. While the "real" science fiction publishers are chasing a shrinking - and graying - readership, tweens and teens are discovering SF for themselves, thanks to books from a diverse range of writers. Best of all, YA science fiction isn't aimed at a subculture, but at everybody of a particular age. More »
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Whenever I hear that a favorite author of mine is working on a young adult novel, my heart sinks. "Oh, that won't be for me," I say to myself, "I am not a young adult." Sure, I know adults can read YA fiction: I read the His Dark Materials trilogy and the Harry Potter books along with the rest of the universe. But I object to the idea that young people need their own special, segregated genre of books, as if their minds are so dramatically different from adult minds that they require their own category of fantasy. Once a person has reached adolescence, relegating their reading material to its own gated subgenre seems at best condescending and at worst censorious. More »
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They've published books, linked to and even interviewed each other, but now authors Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi are collectively wondering whether anyone is paying attention to their most recent books, and just what is the most under-appreciated genre of literature: Young Adult or Regular Science Fiction? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=386990&view=rss&microfeed=true Over the weekend, NY Times science fiction columnist David Itzkoff wondered "how any self-respecting author of speculative fiction can find fulfillment in writing novels for young readers." This didn't sit well with the Boston Globe's Brainiac blogger Joshua Glenn, who writes: "I attempted to disprove . . . Itzkoff's thesis that people who write speculative fiction are slumming when they write juvenile lit... by providing a hastily annotated list of over three dozen terrific examples of post-apocalyptic/dystopian juvenile fictions, from John Christopher's Tripod trilogy to Jack Kirby's Kamandi series to Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome." Both Itzkoff's column and Glenn's response are a great read. [Brainiac] More »
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