SF Reading List For Adolescents

[Simon_Jester]

Suppose you were compiling a reading list of science fiction and/or fantasy novels for an adolescent at an urban high school, roughly sixteen, one who is fairly intelligent and has decent reading skills, but may not be familiar with the full range of what exists.

What would you recommend?

[Lord Revan]

Well it depends, how patient you think this person is, could he read stuff where very little obvious happens for pages or even chapters or would he get bored and skip to the action?

oh this thing isn't gender specific, but I used masculine pronouns since I had to use something.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't actually know. They're capable of being very impatient, but also very focused once they get into something. Perhaps the best thing would be to look at both 'cerebral' options (i.e. the Foundation novels) and 'flashy' options (nothing comes immediately to mind).

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

This is for a class, of varying individual abilities, so a spectrum of choice would be best, right? How jaded and cybered up is the palate we're looking at here- there's no point going Golden Age if they're already practically living William Gibson.

Also it needs to be something that you can actually get your hands on, in print or e-available without breaking the budget, and without inspiring nervous heart attacks in the PTA- no Delany, no late Heinlein, certainly no damn' Carlton Mellick. (NB; not serious.) Harry Harrison would probably give them too many ideas.

Young Adult, ecch. Someone who knows and cares can flobble their way through that slum.

How many titles do you need on this list? You need some comfort food equivalent- Asimov is always good for that, he lacks the obfuscations of elegance- some absorbing, this probably is exactly the right age to start those bloody endless multivolume sagas (Eddings, Jordan et al) I never had the patience for, as it is the first age at which they have the attention span and the last age at which they still have the plasticity to repair the damage done.

You need some bad stylists just to show them what it was like, and yes, that probably is Asimov. And Clarke. Get the book version of 2001 in there, it'll make them amoing the worryingly few people who know what was going on there.

Some things that are a little bit challenging, glimpses of nonhuman minds and strange corners of the universe- Baxter, Benford, McDevitt, McAuley, Banks, Brunner. John Brunner in particular. Oh, and the Martian Chronicles has to be in there. (I'd use Bradbury's description of time as a sig block if it would fit.)

Probably a couple of histories and pop- physics things, the likes of Trillion Year Spree, How to Teach Quantum Physics to your Dog, that sort of thing; just to ground it all.

Avoid franchise works, they might be good gateway drugs but that's not the aim here really, is it. And there are damn' few that are good literature in their own right. (How Much for Just the Planet, the star trek musical comedy, may be an exception.)

Just a tiny fringe of things- no more than a couple- that are way out in the land of the bizarre to remind them that they haven't read it all yet, there's more out there, there's more to aim for- some of Aldiss' wierder work, Michael Marshall Smith, Somtow Sucharitkul, David Zindell, Michael Swanwick. Philip K. Dick is tricky, because he's actually much less mainstream than the film industry likes to think. Read 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' to see what I mean. In fact get them to read it, it will correct much of what they think of Hollywood.

Anthologies may also be your friend. Collections of short stories with many authors on show are good for the old tour d' horizon.

Not an exhaustive list, I know, but who can keep up these days?

[Simon_Jester]

Interesting point about the big dumb sagas- I did take on Eddings at that age. Most of the Jordan that had been published up to 2003 or so too, but I lost interest when I realized I had completely lost track of the plot and was only reading it for the characters, who really weren't that interesting. At least Eddings didn't hop back and forth between viewpoint characters so much that you could misplace a protagonist in the shuffle.

Also Weber's Honor Harrington novels; I'd probably get sick of them if I tried to read them all in rapid succession nowadays, especially the later and shoddier ones.

Honestly, Eddings' prose doesn't make my head hurt that much, and it doesn't seem excruciatingly long. Probably because he wrote both his five-novel series before Word Processor Syndrome caused an increasing number of mass-market books to balloon into the range of 150-200 thousand words.

Eddings probably represents something close to the lower bound on what I'll read for entertainment, though.

[Flagg]

The Giver

[Batman]

For entertaining reading 'Shadowrun' and 'Battletech' come to mind (especially as the latter offers lots of opportunity to analyze how and why their technology doesn't make sense).
Also, ERB's 'Barsoom' novels, for pretty much the same reason-decent read, but the physics are 'you gotta be fucking kidding me', at least by current standards (the first book was written in 1912).

[Simon_Jester]

The Giver

Good idea, but honestly I'd say that's pitched more at the middle school market.

Sixteen is old enough that reading books meant for grownups is probably the better bet.

[Batman]

Back when I was that age (roughly about the time dinosaurs roamed the Earth according to some people) I was rather fond of the 'Captain Future' novels by Edmund Hamilton. I have no idea if those are still in print, and once again the universe depicted in them deviates quite significantly from the one we know and hate (I'm reasonably certain if Jupiter actually were a jungle planet with breathable air and the Great Red Spot was just one big lava lake, we'd have noticed), but they were fun.

[Flagg]

The Giver

Good idea, but honestly I'd say that's pitched more at the middle school market.

Sixteen is old enough that reading books meant for grownups is probably the better bet.

Oh, 16? Shit that's a harder one. I'd go with 'the Chocolate War'.

[Ralin]

Do the four Doom novelizations count? Because I remember liking those as a teenager.

[Simon_Jester]

Good idea, but was that because they were good novels, or because you were a teenager at a time when people actually played Doom?

[DesertFly]

Early Heinlein (Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers, Have Space Suit--Will Travel), William Gibson (Neuromancer), Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash).

Also, of course, Asimov (Foundation Trilogy), Niven (Ringworld), Banks (The Player of Games, Matter).

Those are a selection of things I read when I was an adolescent (although technically Matter was published after my teenage years, it is still one I could easily see myself reading as an impressionable youngster.)

[Ralin]

Good idea, but was that because they were good novels, or because you were a teenager at a time when people actually played Doom?

They were surprisingly good, considering what they were. Got kinda weird with the last two books.

Also I don't think I played Doom more than a few times as a teenager.

[Sinewmire]

I know I always pitch this one, but Rendezvous With Rama is good. Maybe not action-packed, but there's a real feeling of discovery in it.

[TOSDOC]

Frederick Pohl (Gateway), early Heinlein (see above, and Red Planet too), Niven (Footfall, The Mote in God's Eye), Gerrold's The War Against the Chtorr (good luck finding it though). The early Harringtons were far better, I agree. Alan Dean Foster was fun when I was that age too, I enjoyed the Icerigger series and Glory Lane. Frank Schatzing's The Swarm is a little more contemporary choice too. And the one in my sig, though I bet you would have the class laughing out loud at the equipment and dialogue in there.

Oh, and The Final Reflection by John M. Ford.

[Simon_Jester]

For the record, this is for a specific individual, not for a whole English class.

It's more like "I'm recommending books for a friend, who happens to be a teenager."

[TOSDOC]

Got it. Does he like law? Illegal Alien by Robert Sawyer was interesting.

[Crazedwraith]

Discworld's City Watch Series By Terry Pratchett starting with 'Guards!Guards!'

Also at that age, I was reading way too many Star Trek/Star Wars novels. Song of Ice And Fire and Robin Hobb's fantasy novels. The Farseer/Liveship Traders/Tawny Man trilogys (one verse) and the Soldier Son trilogy,

[PKRudeBoy]

For flashy fantasy, nothing beats the Dresden Files. How do you top riding a zombie T-Rex through the streets of Chicago to stop the ascension of a dark god? For flashy scifi I'd go with the Vorkosigan Saga, where Miles manages to make Tyrion Lannister look dim in comparison.

[FaxModem1]

The dystopia novels Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, if they aren't already on the reading list.

[StarSword]

My prof for English 104 this past semester wanted us to read Ender's Game but the department apparently vetoed it. I first read it when I was about twelve.

For more recent stuff, Tanya Huff's Confederation of Valor series, the Cassandra Kresnov books by Joel Shepard, and maybe Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax books.

If licensed fiction is okay, Ciaphas Cain, The Thrawn Trilogy, the X-Wing novels (Aaron Allston's work in particular), and Star Trek: Federation by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.

For fantasy, The Hobbit and LOTR are definitely on my must-read list. I wouldn't recommend anything set outside the Third Era, though: I tried to read The Silmarillion in high school, got bogged down in chapter one, and haven't picked it up since.

[Jub]

The dystopia novels Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World, if they aren't already on the reading list.

I'd add 1984 to the list as well. The only issue with reading these early is that you might not want to read them again when they come around for required study in high school.

[DesertFly]

The Silmarillion is going to be really hit or miss in my experience. I've read it once all the way through, and then bits and pieces of it a second time. Really it depends on the individual being a big fan of the Tolkien legendarium, plus the ability to read Bible-like passages. It can be quite, for the lack of a better term, boring, even if you like the subject matter.

[Ahriman238]

Come on, Simon, you should know better that this. By 16 your young friend should be able to read and understand all or most of sci-fi. The question is what will interest him and we're unlikely to get that without some more information on what he likes or what you'd like to show him. Are you looking for thoughtful high-concept stories? Mindless action or old-school adventure? Cheesy raygun gothic, depressing dystopia, alternate history, time-travel etc. Will his interest sustain through a long book or is shorter better?