Jo Walton's Among Others

[3rdragon]

Interlibrary loans are a wonder of the world and a glory of civilization.

Libraries really are wonderful. They're better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.

I like this book.

From things I'd heard before reading it, I expected grief to be a larger theme, but it's not, at least not in the first third of the book.

Even though it does the same thing that Pamela Dean's Tam Lin or Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary do, where they make you feel uncultured for not having read all the books the protagonist has (more sci-fi and less classic literature, though). I at least recognize most of the names she drops, even if I haven't read all of them. I think two of the big factors are that it's set in 1979 (I think), so there was less genre fiction, and less quality children/YA genre fiction, and she had to make the jump to adult sooner than I did. And (while admittedly, even though she explained what form she's in, I still have no clue how old she is), I started getting busy in high school and continued the trend in college, and have had less time to read.

I also guess that I've historically trended towards fantasy rather than sci-fi, although I enjoy both something like equally. And I never really did properly make the jump to adult fiction, although I wade in the shallows with equanimity. (Hypothesis: There is less quality sci-fi aimed at younger readers? Almost all of the big-name, genre, children's and YA authors that I'm coming up with do fantasy, or fantasy verging into the weird edges of sci-fi, or stuff like Artemis Fowl that's both. And when I think of sci-fi I was exposed to in childhood, I come up with Star Trek and Doctor Who and that's about it, even though my father is a sci-fi buff and read to us every morning and evening. Pern, I guess. But that's in the psuedo-fantasy sci-fi camp.)

And the marvelous thing about the Dean-esque "reading above your level" feeling is the incredible smugness you can get when you do recognize something. Like when she makes an offhand comment that The Communist Manifesto would be like living on Antarres, but hey, it would be better than school, or mentions Sylvia Engdahl (Even if the two books on my floor are not the ones she mentions, nor are the two that should be on my shelf but aren't (Speaking of, have I lent any of you an ex-library hardcover of Enchantress from the Stars or a new-ish hardcover of The Far Side of Evil? Because I used to have them and can't find them. I suspect Beth or Emily or possibly Dee, but it's worth asking)). But best of all is when I know that Tiptree is a woman and she doesn't (or at least, not yet).

Comments

[relique.livejournal.com]

L'Engle's Chronos books are solidly in sci-fi rather than fantasy, off the top of my head.

[3rdragon]

That's true. I read a lot of L'Engle.

[harp-of-israfel.livejournal.com]

I will have to acquire it.

On the topic of sci-fi for kids, I do remember a lot of science fiction I adored, but now that I'm trying to parse it out, it was mostly either BY Bruce Coville or something I found through him, especially from the anthologies he put together. Which are also where I learned that short stories are a legitimate form in and of themselves, not just novels that haven't hatched from their eggs yet, which is kind of neither here nor there. Aside from that most of the sci-fi I read was well-aged and inherited from my Dad.

It's also worth noting that the divisions between sci-fi and fantasy used to be a lot less strict than they are. I just got Tales of the Dying Earth for Christmas, and then had to go back and actually read The Dying Earth. Those books are pure fantasy. Swords and sorcery fantasy. Yet they're billed as "science fiction classics." The wall wandered about a lot more back in the day, I think.

[3rdragon]

Okay, yeah, Coville's all over the map.

That's a really interesting anecdote. I wonder when the split happened. (And if it coincides w/ the impression I have that if it was written by a woman, the world tries to argue that it's not "real" sci-fi. Whatever that means.)

[animangel.livejournal.com]

I think part of the problem with at least hard sci-fi for YA is that most YA readers haven't yet been introduced to a lot of the concepts hard scifi is based on. (I mean, most of us don't have entry-level physics courses until maybe junior year of high school, right?)

This isn't to say good hard sci-fi can't be written for YA, I just think perhaps it makes it more difficult to A) do well and B) gain enough of an active audience to be able to make it profitable

[3rdragon]

I had physics in ninth grade, but that is a point. I do think it could be done more than it is (where "it is" is based on the list of sci-fi for children that I've been compiling since last night, which is still dreadfully short).