Review of The Search for Wondla by Tony DiTerlizzi

DiTerlizzi, Tony.  The Search for WondLa.  Simon & Schuster, 2010.

I don't know why it took me so long to read this; it wasn't until the audiobook snagged my eye as I trotted through the Children's Literature department last week that I finally gave it a chance.

And I'm glad I did, though the audiobook version is a mixed success.  On the one hand, narrator Teri Hatcher does a fantastic and utterly convincing job with the various voices, from Eva Nine's girlish warble to all different kinds of aliens.  But - someone must have told her to read VERY slowly.  Yes, audiobooks need to be read at a slow enough pace that listeners can savor the words - but to space words out like a funeral march is just too much.  This was the slowest-read audiobook I have ever listened to, and I have listened to hundreds!  And the other disadvantage of this audiobook is that I missed the illustrations - but I must say that the author did a fine job describing all the creatures, and my mind's eye populated Eva Nine's world with no problem.

So - this is science fiction, which is evident right off when we meet Eva Nine, who lives all alone in a very modern underground "sanctuary," cared for by an advanced robot that Eva calls "Muthr."  Soon enough, the sanctuary is destroyed and Eva Nine must flee to the surface, something she has never done - and she finds it entirely different than she has been taught.  Right away she encounters danger, but she also meets friends - alien creatures like the backward-bending-legged Rovender Kitt, who becomes Eva's slightly reluctant but amiable traveling companion, and the incredibly sweet giant pillbug Otto, who communicates via a form of telepathy with Eva Nine.

Eva Nine thought this was Earth - but according to everyone she meets, the planet has a different name. Where is Eva?  What happened to all the other humans?  Why is a hunter trying to track her down?  Nicely balanced between adrenalin-pumping danger and fascinating encounters with the various creatures of this planet, the plot is sprightly enough to keep readers glued (even if they are listening to someone read aloud at a glacial pace...), even as it stays focused on the heart of the story - Eva Nine, her important relationships, and her search for her people.  By the end, a few questions are answered but many more remain for following books to resolve.

Good science fiction for middle-graders is hard to find; this one is heartily recommended for ages 9 to 12.

Review of Living Hell by Catherine Jinks

Jinks, Catherine. Living Hell. Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

It's hard to find YA SF these days that isn't about some hideous dystopian near-future. I like reading about nuclear winter, nasty dictatorships, and hungry zombies as much as the next person, but for me, true SF means outer space. Like most folks hooked at an early age by Heinlein and his ilk, tales of aliens, space travel, and distant planets make my heart beat faster.

Living Hell's cover art, with its swashbuckling space suit-clad teen and waving alien tentacles, promises a riproaring space adventure, and to a certain extent it delivers. This is a nail-biting adventure in the old-fashioned SF tradition with a classic setting - the generation ship, taking colonists on a decades-long trip to find a habitable planet that they can settle. 16-year-old Cheney is one of them, having been born during the voyage. The ship Plexus is the only world he has ever known, and even as he tells us about how life as he knew it changed, his narrative voice is filled with nostalgia for those days of long ship corridors made of metal and plastic.

Change it does, and pretty drastically. After flying through a mysterious force, the ship begins to alter, becoming a living entity. Not in any kind of sterile "Hal" way - that's been done too often. No, the physical ship itself turns from metal and plastic into sinew, muscle, and tissue. Imagine living in someone's guts, a la Fantastic Voyage, except that they don't have a space ship to zoom around in. Instead, they have to venture through the now spongy, slimy, lumpy, stringy pink hallways and corridors on foot. Oh, and as in Fantastic Voyage, there is a rather active immune system that sees the humans as intruders who must be destroyed.

This is not a light-hearted SF romp. The body count is high, the deaths are gruesome, and the outlook is grim. This was somewhat unexpected for me, as Catherine Jinks' previous books, not to mention the corny retro jacket art, led me to believe there would be some kind of tongue-in-cheek levity. And while the idea of everyday objects like shuttles and laundry detergent discs transforming into internal body parts is sort of amusing at first, the reality is quite horrifying.

Cheney, our narrator, describes all this in vivid and visceral terms. The reaction of everyone from children to adults to this terrifying situation is absolutely authentic. Faced with a new hideous sight or discovery, the first reaction is often a panicked wail of "Oh no! Oh NO!" But then folks rally and do what they need to do to survive, successfully or otherwise. No one does anything that seems super-heroish or out of character, so the reader stays fully immersed in the intensity of the action.

Amidst the action, we do learn a lot about the culture aboard a relatively small generation ship. Loyalty and a sense of team spirit are clearly indoctrinated from an early age - Cheney's intense admiration for his "big brother" or mentor is balanced by his fierce and unquestioned need to keep the younger children safe. The fact that his "little brother" is such a wild and unpredictable person disturbs him greatly, as ship life is all about harmony and control - but that disruptive spirit might well be needed to deal with this new situation they all find themselves in.

The denoument is abrupt and somewhat predictable, and the reader will be left with lots of questions. We know from the beginning that Cheney, at least, will survive this encounter - but the details of his existence must be guessed at, as we only get hints. One thing I love about dystopian books is all that gritty detail about daily life under duress, but we don't get that here. How does one ever get clean if one lives in something's slimy guts? Inquiring minds want to know (but would rather not spend to much time imagining - bleah!).

All in all, good scary gooey slimy deadly fun - in outer space! Recommended for ages 13 and up.

Review of Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel by K.A. Holt

Holt, K.A. Mike Stellar: Nerves of Steel. Random House, 2009.

Good science fiction for kids can be hard to find, and those titles all seem to take place on Earth. Sometimes the kid protagonist comes in contact with aliens (Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday or Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind), sometimes the kid IS an alien (Pamela Service's Alien series), sometimes the kid comes in contact with amazing scientific powers or gadgets (Reisman's Simon Bloom: Gravity Keeper), and sometimes time travel is involved (Stead's When You Reach Me). If we venture into YA territory, we find Bechard's Spacer and Rat (gritty space station) and Anderson's Feed (features jaunts to Mars and the moon).

While I enjoy Earth-based SF, there is something about a tiny tin can of a spaceship, packed with the messy lives and relationships of humans, hurtling through infinite, deadly space, that really gets my geek blood humming. How lovely, then, to find a good space-based SF title aimed right at middle-grade readers.

Readers no sooner meet Mike Stellar than they are whisked off with him on a colonizing journey to Mars. His parents work for the Project, which terraforms planets for human habitation, but it's still quite a shock when they tell Mike that they'll be traveling with the upcoming expedition - which leaves the next day. Within a couple days of space travel, Mike knows something peculiar is going on. A beefy "executive assistant" named Mr. Shugabert (Sugar Bear as far as Mike's concerned) shadows the family everywhere, a weird girl named Larc attaches herself to Mike like a leech, and horrifically, Mike's scary teacher from Earth shows up on board. It seems there is a conspiracy - but it takes Mike a while to figure out what it is and who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are.

Who the bad guys are and what they want and how they plan to get it - is the thinnest part of the book, being rather lightly sketched in. Or maybe I was paying so much attention to the book's real attractions, which were Mike's ebullient personality, his penchant for throwing himself headfirst at trouble, and the breezy, slangy, and often extremely funny way he narrates his story, that I missed some crucial plot points. Larc, the tow-headed tall girl with bright blue braces, a hooting laugh and wicked sense of humor, and a knack for off-the-cuff comments that tend to knock Mike off-balance every time, is a heroine after my own heart - even if she is harboring a rather startling secret about her own identity.

Like most good spaceship-based SF, there are long and sterile corridors, doors that whoosh open in unexpected ways, airlocks, and a pervasive tone of subversive humor. In short, everything an SF fan could wish for. It may well convert a few norms, as well. Highly recommended for ages 9 to 12.

Juicy Science Fiction for Teens

I’ve been an avid reader of science fiction since those formative years of age 12 or 13, when the humor, subversion, and limitless imagination of that genre struck a chord in my newly awakening teen soul.

Although I started with what might be dubbed Robert Heinlein’s YA novels, I quickly moved on to Stranger in a Strange Land and then outward into Ray Bradbury, Philip Jose Farmer, and other writers for SF for adults. My huge enjoyment of the genre has continued to this day, as a glance at my GoodReads SF shelf will testify.

As a Children’s Librarian, I have naturally attempted to foster an SF obsession in my young patrons, but with limited results. The reason? There simply aren’t very many books for kids that represent the truly awesome power of SF at its best. There are of course plenty of goofy SF titles, the old chestnut Stinker from Space by Pamela Service being a prime example. Sure, it’s very entertaining, but mostly because of its humor; it’s unlikely that reading Stinker will awaken an urge to read more SF as a result. My Teacher is an Alien and other similar titles by Bruce Coville are other examples of supremely funny books with plenty of child appeal – but little in them to create that SF urge.

While great SF often does contain humor, it must do something more than entertain the reader. The SF that I find most engrossing makes me ponder important issues and intriguing possibilities, poses questions about morality and the role and definition of humankind in a changing world, and takes me on a mind-bending adventure, whether in the far reaches of space or right here on earth.

Luckily, there seems to be a resurgence of SF for kids and teens, and some fabulous books have been published in the past few years that should prove alluring to SF fans and newbies alike. Most are for ages 12 and up – the very complexity of some of the themes makes them a natural for teen readers. Here are some of the most toothsome:

Adlington, L.J The Diary of Pelly D. (Greenwillow, 2005) and Cherry Heaven (Greenwillow, 2008).
Fine examples of a dystopian future, in this case on an earth-colonized planet. Astute readers will recognize parallels with the Holocaust.

Collins, Suzanne. Hunger Games. (Scholastic, 2008)
This got huge buzz (although no awards) in 2008 for a very good reason – a strong female character, plenty of kill-or-be-killed action, and powerful, thought-provoking social commentary. Another dystopian civilization of the future.

Doctorow, Cory. Little Brother. (Tor Teen, 2008)
This dystopian future – a highly invasive police state in San Francisco – could happen next month or next year if we aren’t careful. A bunch of teen hackers rebel against a nasty over-protective government that doesn’t hesitate to step on any rights necessary to “protect” its citizens.

Farmer, Nancy. The House of the Scorpion. (Atheneum, 2002)
This is intense stuff. What will happen when cloning humans is a reality? Even if strict laws are put in place, what is to stop very rich and immoral people from growing their own clones in order to provide them with perfectly matched livers and such? And are those clones people or things?

Pearson, Mary E. The Adoration of Jenna Fox. (Holt, 2008).
If a teenaged girl is composed of an uploaded personality and a lab-grown body, is she a person? Does she have a soul? And what about down-loaded personalities that no longer have a body – are they still human? Do they have rights?

Pfeffer, Susan Beth. Life As We Knew It (Harcourt, 2006) and The Dead and the Gone (Harcourt, 2008).
Survival after an astronomical event creates severe and worldwide climate havoc. Life will never be the same…

Reeve, Philip. “The Hungry City Chronicles” (Eos)
All four of these books, about a future when huge cities have become mobile and go zooming around on enormous treads finding and “eating” other cities (a process called “municipal Darwinism”), are complex and engrossing – a terrific example of the Steampunk genre at its finest.

Rex, Adam. The True Meaning of Smekday. (Hyperion, 2007).
By far the lightest title on my list, the humor and whimsy of this tale of an alien invasion (and the subsequent reluctant and problem-fraught friendship between a girl and an alien) make it a favorite of mine.

This is a ridiculously incomplete list, as any SF fan will immediately protest. Consider Scott Westerfeld’s series that begins with Uglies to belong on this list, as well as Kate Thompson’s trilogy that begins with Fourth World and Waugh’s trilogy about aliens on Earth that begins with Space Race.

With SF this chewy, entertaining, and thought-provoking finally hitting the YA shelves, I have high hopes that a new generation of SF fangirls and fanboys is being created and nurtured.

Live Long and Prosper!