Parenthetical

A group of bad-ass teen criminals get kicked off Earth to be the lead team of colonizers of the planet Klydor. If they die, eh, no harm done. If they survive, ColSec — Colonization Section, part of the massive government that runs Earth — shows up to claim a nicely broken-in planet. There are giant [...]

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All Amy knows is the endless corridors and grimy roach-infested apartments of the city. She’s marked as a possible troublemaker because she knows how to read, but if she keeps her head down and makes enough deliberate mistakes on the school vids, maybe they’ll send her to a training dorm to learn a trade. Until [...]

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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 [...]

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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 Publishers Weekly [...]

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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 liked Catching Fire [...]

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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 build a fence, [...]

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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 a scary [...]

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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! New pre-industrial communities! [...]

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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 summer’s reading [...]

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