An idle thought inspired by the bloodsports over at SFWA

[james_davis_nicoll]

Ten quatloos on Nick Mamatas!

Wait, no. That's not it.

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to say that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of the young adult material that hooked people like me on SF back in the 1970s (and of course, part of the 1970s being the very best decade for getting hooked on SF was that material from as far back as the 1950s was still on library shelves). Yes, there's Tor's Starscape and TOr Teen but that's one publisher, albeit a big one. Could the general lack of young adult material be linked to the, hrm, grognardism seen over at SFWA?

I don't mean cause and effect but symptoms of the same process.

I seem to recall that one of the ideas behind Dozois' Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space was that it might be interesting to create fun material aimed at young adults that wasn't condescending (Now, three of the stories used poverty to drive the plot and two of them used slavery but that just raises the stakes for the protagonists. People still remember Citizen of the Galaxy fondly and Thorby starts off a poor slave). I like the idea behind the anthology but why in the 21st century should that premise be unusual enough to get mentioned in the introduction?


[Added later: For the purposes of this discussion, I would like to exclude fantasy. I freely admit that there are problematic edge cases in classification.]

Comments

[montoya.livejournal.com]

With an implicit step of "... and nobody I know did either," yeah.

I don't know anyone in their early thirties who read Heinlein juvies or whatever as part of their entry into SF.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Asimov, Clarke, L. Neil Smith, Tolkien, Lloyd Alexander, Alas Babylon, Star Trek novels, L'Engle, MacAvoy... that's what I can easily remember and list right now. Only Heinlein was Job in high school. Never knowingly saw a juvie.

More:

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Pern, Psion, DOUGLAS ADAMS how did I forget (not that I know grammar vs. high school), Narnia, Verne, Wells. High school: Juanita Coulson, Leo Frankowski, The Silicon Man, Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys, Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grill (I always linked those two in my head, on account of Cowboy and Apocalypse on acid themes). Majipoor and other Silverberg, Greener than You Think (I think because my sister sent me a box of books she was dumping).

YA SF? Didn't know it, still don't, really. Though Jane Yolen's intergalactic dragon books come to mind, and I think I read those before college. Like Pern the stories may not be that distinguishable from fantasy but I actually read prologues, so I actually noticed the ScF frames like Pern and Yolen got.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I'm in my late thirties, and while I didn't read a lot of Heinlein juvies, I read one--The Rolling Stones--that was a huge influence on me and a major part of my entry into SF. Earlier, I'd greatly enjoyed Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint, which might be considered a step younger than YA. But I did plunge directly into Asimov short story collections not long after.

[tomscud.livejournal.com]

I honestly have no idea what got me into SF - maybe comic boox, Green Lantern and the like - but my dad was an SF reader, so the books were just around - I might very well have gotten started on DUNE, which I believe nobody in the world thinks of as the "great intro for young readers" book.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

My parents weren't, but my maternal grandfather was a science-fiction reader to some extent (as well as a devotee of Erich von Daniken, which gave me some nutty interests that, years later, reversed into a lifelong interest in debunkery). I inherited some books from him at some point when he was decluttering his house.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I went from Jules Verne in Russian to Asimov, Clarke, and KSR in English. I did, admittedly, flirt with Baum's Oz and babysitting-and-menarche books midway through.