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

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

Yes we have YA SF but it is not marketed SF and there is not much of it.

SF manga seems even scarcer, Planetes and Ghost in the Shell and then what?

[affreca.livejournal.com]

I would include most of the mecha series as SF Manga. Then you get to include things like Full Metal Panic. Several of the shojo series I've read has a sci-fi element, like Ceres.

Crest/Banner of the Stars is space opera SF.

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of mecha but it is a very specialized form of SF.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Chobits. Angelic Layer too, I think. Nausicaa.

I could name a lot more SF anime, since I watch more than I read.

[cyrusdaku.livejournal.com]

I don't know that SF manga is all that scarce. SF unmixed with Fantasy, or at least unmixed with supernatural elements is pretty much nonexistent. There's a continuity between "real" experience and "subjective/spiritual" experience in manga that is qualitatively like some stuff from the "magic realism" genre.