Great post, Colleen. My impression from talking to editors who really are looking for this stuff is that they see very little SF for teens coming in over the transom. Perhaps this is created by the lack of it, and the labeling issue--writers aren't going there because they don't see a market for it themselves? I don't know.

The SF field for adults is sort of stagnant at the moment as well, so maybe this just isn't an SF "time." (That said, of course there is lots of wonderful stuff.)

One YA title I highly recommend is Margaret Bechard's Spacer and Rat -- this is good, entry-level, non-depressing SF for teens that does a great job with the science. And I don't know that they could have marketed it as anything but SF. That said, I never saw this one until I was reading for VC, and it came out within the last couple of years.

OK, Colleen I'll hold you to that promise!

And BTW, there's a good deal of romance in my SF novel, and dead parents too...
(About the Big brother element I'm keeping mum.)

Of course there are dead parents Lee - there are dead parents in everything! ha!

It might very well just be a flat time for SF writing Gwenda - maybe the genre is subconsciously waiting for its JK Rowling to appear and change everything. It sounds like something that the new and improved (?) SFWA could get to work on though. Writers are always looking for a market to break in on, if SF is desperate for stories, then why not get on it?

I will look for the Bechard book - this is the first I've heard of it. I'm very attracted to the "non-depressing" angle. That was part of what made the Willis book so much fun for me and why I know that teens would love it to (I'm reviewing it in my column in June) - it was very funny and cool and easy to relate to. That's what the genre really needs right now and I hope that some folks read this and get cracking. (I'm two books away from it or I swear I would be plotting right now!!)

Just left a LONG ramble at your previous SF post. :)

Do you consider vampires sci-fi? There's another huge wave of vampy juv/teen fiction this year. Two books even have the same title. (!!!)

Let me know if you want me to recommend you some goodies, backlist, new, or forthcoming!

All long rambles very much appreciated Little Willow :)

I think vamps are horror - Frankenstein kind of walks a different path as he is reanimated via the use of science (that's why there is always a big discussion in some circles as to whether Mary Shelley was the first SF writer or not....one of those discussions with no feasible ending!)

I'm leaning more towards wondering about books in future settings or those with rocket ships, interplanetary travel etc. And as I said above, when you do find them (like Larklight) it just seems odd that they aren't commonly known as SF - but always fall in "action/adventure" categories or labels instead.

In other words, do you tell customers, "we have some great new YA SF you might like"? Or do you sell the books by element - "we have a great action/adventure that is set in space"?

It's a tiny differnce, but I think it goes towards making them accept SF as a label, and thus themselves as SF fans.

Sure send a list - the more science techno the better!

I keep coming back to the re-packaging of Ender's Game when I think about YA SF. I didn't read anything by Orson Scott Card until I was in college, but I remember the boys who went to middle school with me being incredibly enamored of him. He lives only an hour or so away from here, but when he came to the mall to do a signing it was A Big Deal. He never intended Ender's Game as a YA/kids' book, but it appealed to young men especially and was very successful in that market. Until Ender's Shadow, though, the other books in the series did not have that same YA SF/Action feel to them, but were more about religion. They were still Sci Fi but didn't have any features to make them appeal to the YA market.

As a teen, I got most of my sci fi from Piers Anthony, and then as a college student/grad student/young professional started to pursue the classics - Aldiss, Verne, etc. I honestly can't recall ever reading a YA SF book. So it seems like this isn't a recent problem. But I do recall that as a 12 and 13 year old fan of Star Trek, Star Wars, Piers Anthony, etc, I wrote my own YA SF all the time - always starring a 13 yo girl in some alternate future where public humiliation was the order of the day.

I've had a Sci Fi brewing in my head for a while now that was markedly not YA but both that and my various vampire novels are shifting in my brain so that the main character is now not a 20-something lost adult trying to find herself, but instead a 13 - 17 year old girl finding a way of dealing with alienation.

You review, I'll write. It's a deal. (I just have no time frame for how long it'll take me to hold up my end of the bargain.)

I do remember when Card's work was repackaged for YA - he moves in and out of popularity with that age group I think.

One thing that I think was different 25 years ago when I was 13, is that comic book reading for YAs was way more common and that might have lead to more SF reading when we got older. I also remember all the Star Wars books coming out - but then again I was a member of the Star Wars generation who actually saw the movie in the theater, so loving SF wasn't hard for us!

Go ahead and write - I'm waiting!

Frankenstein's monster is definitely sci-fi.

Speaking of Shelley: Have you read the book Angelmonster?

Agreed that aliens, life on (or humans living on) other planets, and space exploration tend to be sci-fi.

For me, someone like Indiana Jones is the poster boy for action/adventure. I only call a book _solely_ action/adventure if there's no sci-fi/fantasy element. (I use lots of descriptors and like multi-genre stories. For example, the Prowlers quartet of novels by Christopher Golden are horror novels about humans vs. shapeshifters that have a lot of violence and action but also have good, meaty characters and their relationships. There's a lovely ghost element top.

I try tell customers about the book's plot before I show them the book itself - That way they are interested in the story before seeing the cover and before seeing the length of the book.

Remind me to write up a yummy sci-fi list.

I'm very much looking forward to Little Willow's list. Her lists always let me know what I need to read before I really sit down to write!

Are comic books like the X-Men, which most people think of as squarely in the superhero genre, Sci Fi? I tend to think they are, as they rely so heavily on science concepts (however inaccurate to real life those concepts may be). There are always new Star Wars novels. Do they end up in YA often? This makes me want to go examine my Barnes and Noble and see if I can find anything in the YA section that looks like SF to me.

Yep, I read and loved Angelmonster - it was in that "revisiting the classics" feature I did last fall at Bookslut. (Not really a revisit of the classic technically, but since it looked at where the book came from I thought it fit good enough with everything else.)

Yes - Indy is the action/adventure man (and I don't care how old Harrison Ford is, I'm thrilled to hear they are going to film another movie). Things do get odd with the blending of categories though - The Death Collector is billed as action adventure but its very much a Frankensteinish story, so it seems more SF to me.

Get on the list! ha!

X-Men is kind of all over the place lectitans - I read Astonishing X-Men and they are fighting for their lives on another planet right now. So what do you call that? Heck, Superman spends half his time fighting aliens (plus he is an alien) but I doubt he would be considered SF by most folks (same goes for Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, etc.) (I'm such a geek!)

I think all the Star Wars stuff goes right to the SFF section, not YA. But you're right - we all need to examine our bookstore shelves closely and see what is going on.

Astonishing is very representative of X-Men as a whole, because Joss is a fanboy above anything else and so stays very true to the spirit of the source material. (It's impossible to stay true to the letter of comics! They're always changing canon.) The more I think about it, the more comics - especially Marvel - seem to fall tidily into Sci Fi. There's aliens and space travel all over the place.

Google has an exciting feature where it looks up definitions of things on the web. The science fiction results were enlightening:

http://tinyurl.com/26fmsr

Wikipedia has a list of features and also details subgenres. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

More and more I look forward to LW's list as I rack my brain for any examples of YA SF I've read. I've got nothing! Horror and fantasy abound.

Thanks for the definitions - always weird to see what is and isn't SF (or fantasy).

The minute Joss brought Colossus back from the dead he had my love forever. Now if he kills him off again I will have serious issues, but for now I'm thrilled to be jetting through space with the X-crew.

LW always has the best lists!

Uglies trilogy by Scott Westerfeld
- Uglies
- Pretties
- Specials
* Forthcoming companion: Extras (which I cannot wait to read!)

Peeps by Scott Westerfeld
(Far more technical than its sequel The Last Days)

Fingerprints by Melinda Metz
#1. Gifted Touch
#2. Haunted
#3. Trust Me
#4. Secrets
#5. Betrayed
#6. Revelations
#7. Payback

The Secret Under My Skin by Janet McNaughton

Turnabout by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Double Identity by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Escape from Memory by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Feed by M.T. Anderson

I Was a Teenage Popsicle by Bev Katz Rosenbaum
* Forthcoming sequel: Beyond Cool

If you want some more, ask :)

Thanks LW - I'll bump this up in my entry tonight!