Parenthetical.net

One last piece of dystopiana: Research Reveals That Apocalyptic Stories Changed Dramatically 20 Years Ago.
Chanda Phelan wrote this article based on her thesis, for which she looked at a ton of apocalyptic literature from 1826 to 2007 and charted the nature of the apocalypse. Click the image at the top of the article for a [...]

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Post-apocalyptic and/or dystopian fiction! It’s: a) pretty much all I read as an adolescent, b) what made the hippie I am today, c) ridiculously popular all of a sudden in YA lit, or d) all of the above?
D, obviously. The YA lit world is exploding with talk of dystopias. This article from [...]

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Oof. Just when you think this story has gotten as fucked up as it can possibly get… it gets worse. Over and over. And I do mean that in the best possible way: The Hunger Games is one of the most intense, intelligent books I’ve read in a long time, and I [...]

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Yes, I read a zombie novel! Call it YA science fiction and you can get me to read anything. In this version of the zombiepocalypse, the dead Returned and the world was overrun generations ago. Mary’s village beat back the zombies — the Unconsecrated, as they call them — far enough to [...]

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Sadly, this post isn’t really about the intersection of those things. (Though if you can think of one, I know a few people who’d want to read it!) I’m just smooshing these two links into one post:
Eldritchhobbit at the LJ community YALitLovers has posted a lengthy list of YA dystopias. (I’ve read [...]

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Ok, I sing Dar Williams unironically and can my own produce, and this book was too hippie even for me:

I opened my hand to give away my last gift, the [weaving] shuttle they had made for me two years ago when I came to live with them. It was the last piece of the [...]

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My love of post-apocalyptic science fiction is no secret, so I was all kinds of excited to check out In the Small: a mysterious blue light covers Earth, reducing human beings to the size of… well, iPods, to judge by one of the panels. Collapse of civilization! Humanity stretched to the limit! [...]

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During the school year, I mostly read for work: how will I know what to give my kids if I don’t tear through as many YA novels as possible? Consequently, I almost never read sequels; I got enough of a taste with the first book, so I feel guilty if I linger. This [...]

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Grown-up book! I picked this one up because the back reads, and I quote, “The rich and the privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways — farming, barter, herb lore.” Near-future SF and self-sufficient urban community? [...]

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I wrote recently about the fact that my mental picture of “apocalypse” is stuck in the Cold War — instantaneous disaster, as opposed to the currently more likely slow(-ish) environmental collapse. I mused about what current YA readers of science fiction will picture, which made me wonder: other than Uglies, what’s being written in [...]

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