Young Adult Science Fiction
Cathryn Perazzo | This story began with a couple of different ideas that I rubbed together to see what would happen. These included: my daughter thinking it unfair to animals that we eat them and asking “how would you like it?”; and a separate question I’d thought of, “What would it be like if I…
Rebecca Johnston | She Was a Beauty in a Cage responds to the prompt of ‘gender issues in science fiction for children and young adults’. I wrote it in response to a real life experience that gave me cause to reflect on pervasive gender issues in our society which also exist in the media we consume…
Lenise Prater | Andrew Milner has recently argued that fantasy and science fiction (and utopia) are ‘cognate’ genres: “above all, because they are each tales of wonder” (44). He adds that this is an argument for analysing fantasy ‘in addition to and alongside’ science fiction (198). It is precisely the element of ‘wonder’, the ‘non-realistic’…
Lara Hedberg | What happens when you find out that not only have you been dating an alien, but that you are now part-human, part-alien? Malinda Lo’s Adaptation (2012), the first in a two novel series, deals with the highs and lows of being a teenager who has been unknowingly implanted with alien DNA. The…
Rebecca Hutton, Alyson Miller, Elizabeth Braithwaite | Technology, the environment, and the young adult figure often exist in an uneasy yet inextricable relationship in many young adult fictions dealing with dystopian futures. Nature and the artificial are frequently constructed as binaries that the young person must negotiate or resist in order to survive and preserve…
Roslyn Weaver | Although science fiction is maligned in some quarters as escapism, two recent, popular young adult dystopian series offer themes that parallel realities of contemporary teenage life, primarily around identity in a world where internet and social media have dissolved the boundaries between private and public spheres. The following discussion focuses on these…
In 2004, Farah Mendlesohn posed the provocative question “Is there any such thing as children’s science fiction?” Mendlesohn answered that question in 2009 with the claim “Yes, but nowhere near enough” (2009: 4). This Episode of Deletion takes up the issues implicit in Mendlesohn’s question-and-answer in the context of science fiction for young adults, celebrating…