Dear SF writers of the world

[james_davis_nicoll]

I hit my lifetime tolerance for heroic tales of children drafted into draconian, high mortality super-soldier programs justified as required for the greater good sometime around the end of the novel version of Ender's Game. Please adjust your story lines accordingly.

Comments

[michaelgr.livejournal.com]

Aren't these stories meant to be read by the same age group they describe?

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Ender is what, six years old? Card tries to fuzz out the later details of his age, and one could claim that Battle School was a long extended period of several years, like Hogwarts, although I don't think the description of the curriculum supports this. At any rate, he hasn't hit the beginning of puberty yet by the end of the book.

But Ender's Game is an early junior high cult classic. Descriptions literally get passed down through the school generations.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

I think that may be changing somewhat now that the book is required reading in middle school rather than a hand-to-hand classic. My son certainly classed it with all the holocaust fiction he was expected to read: YA is supposed to be depressing.

[ross-teneyck.livejournal.com]

When did Ender's Game start being marketed as YA? As best as I can remember when it first came out, it was just another adult SF book. It wasn't until some years later that I saw it with a different cover being shelved in the YA section, and it struck me as deeply weird.

I mean, it's not like I would forbid a middle-school/junior-high kid under my jurisdiction to read it; but if such a kid were to ask me for suggestions, Ender's Game would not be the first book to come to mind, nor even the 500th book.

[le-trombone.livejournal.com]

It can be marketed as both, I suppose. I saw Life of Pi in both the literature and young adult sections, in very different editions (differing size, cover, and font size).