One of the reasons why I enjoyed Tanith Lee's Indigara and Connie Willis's D.A. so much was that they both presented versions of the future that weren't gut wrenchingly depressing. It seems that YA SF has lately been hit with some major pessimism and while I'm not averse to the occasional good peek at a dystopian future, being buried in it is enough to make you get under your desk and wait to hear the nuclear alarm that you know is soon to come. (Although maybe now we are more likely to hear tsunami warnings.) Here's what I'm talking about:

In The Secret Under My Skin, the world has suffered a "technocaust" and the heroine lives in a orphanage and spends her days digging through the dump looking for useful items. I thought it was a good book, but man - not a happy one.

Life As We Knew It the moon gets whacked by a meteor pushing it out of orbit and gravely affecting the earth's climate. Another good book, but not so much on the happy happy joy joy. (The whole potential starvation and freezing to death stuff kinda keeps it from being too positive.) (Lots of folks loved this book and it has gotten a ton of positive reviews.)

Siberia (by Ann Halam) takes place in a gulag where people who don't tow the government line are sent (okay that's not so hard to believe). Our heroine is taken from her scientist mother (dad was killed of course) and sent off to a school full of other miserable children. She must battle her way to mom and the happy warm people while protecting vital DNA strands for pretty much every living creature on the planet. This one also has fur farms where all furry creatures are raised for - well, you know what they're raised for. I think this was a very good book but my God - gulags, brutal state sponsored schools, no science and fur farms. Not happy.

The Declaration - This time children are taken away from their families because you aren't allowed to reproduce unless you agree to die. (We have a space problem). Shades of Logan's Run but with the additional uplifting fun of beating children.

EPIC - "Generations ago violence was banned on New Earth. Society is governed and conflicts are resolved in the arena of a fantasy computer game. Everyone plays, from teenagers to senior citizens. If you win, you have the chance to go to university, get more supplies for your community, and fulfill your dreams. if you lose your life both in and out of the game is worth nothing." Games are bad - very very bad.

And due out in March: The Sky Inside. This would be perpetual suburban life under a dome where every morning the people "vote for for a matter of national importance - today, the color of the president's drapes." Our hero is Martin who one day must leave the dome because a strange man has arrived and taken children away, including Martin's sister. I can't help but wonder if they are going to a state sponsored school somewhere...

This is not about the books being poorly written or not having good stories; they could very well all be fantastic. (I've read and reviewed some and will likely have read and reviewed them all in the next couple of months). The problem is that they are all dark and depressing and present very poor views of the future. YA Science fiction (whatever that means) seems to be pointing itself away from the space operas and rocket ship adventures of my youth (oh for Eleanor Cameron when we need her!) and into a picture of life that is hard and unforgiving and dominated by cruelty and control. I can't help but see similarities to novels and stories from the 1950s - during the height of the Cold War - and I assume that the fears raised by life in the War on Terror (whatever that hell that is exactly) are bleeding over into the books and stories we write (and thus read).

That whole global warming climate crisis isn't exactly uplifting either.

I'm not saying the future should reflect utopia merely because it's the future, but part of why I enjoyed D.A. and Indigara so much was because they were funny and thoughtful and the technology was interesting. They were enjoyable to read. In other words - these were SF books that DID NOT SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF ME. Novel thought don't you think?

SF has always been a genre much enjoyed by teenagers - especially boys. Maybe part of why Johnny isn't reading so much lately is because the genre he reaches for is telling him (over and over and over again) that he has no reason to hope for the future. He might as well hang it all up and bury himself in Cheetos because only bad things are on the horizon. Laugh all you want at Star Trek, but they were out there having an adventure every week - cool stuff was going on. Would it be so bad for teenagers to have space ships and interplanetary travel to look forward to?

Are we all so jaded by the problems in the world that we can only see more in the decades and centuries to come? If that's true then we really do have reason to be depressed. Science fiction used to be about the hope of the future; forgive me if I'm thinking that genre (when it comes to YA anyway) could use some serious overhauling.

[Post pic of Blade Runner - one of the greatest dystopian future movies of all time.]