More on the YA.

I've been busier than usual lately, so I've been (surprise, surprise) missing stuff left and right.

That boingboing post about YA led to a whole bunch more, including one at John Scalzi's blog.  This bit made me cheer:

I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: The most significant SF writer right now is Scott Westerfeld, whom it seems most adult science fiction fans still have not read and indeed barely know exists. In a sane world, Westerfeld would be a hero to adult science fiction readers, because he’s pretty much single-handedly flown the flag for science fiction to teenagers, thus saving the genre’s bacon for another 20 years. But: He’s YA. So he doesn’t count.

It was the bit about Scott Westerfeld saving the genre's bacon that made me cheer, of course, not the bit about him being YA and therefore not counting. 

(via Omnibus, where, at the bottom of the post, you'll find more related links.)

And I've been thinking about the Alexie comments (also mentioned at Omnibus), and I've gotta say, I really don't read them as condescending.

Comments

[cc]

The Alexie thing is weird; it seems so obvious to me that this his comments are just a restatement if Roald Dahl's observation that kids are harder to write for because they don't cut the author any slack.

[Jeanne]

I was glad to see, as the boingboing comments noted, that Card's Ender's Game has been in both SF and YA in the last few years. In addition to Westerfeld's Uglies, Pretties series, other good SF in the YA section are DuPrau's The People of Sparks and J.B. Stephens' The Big Empty series. (The only problem with DuPrau is that her last book didn't come anywhere near to living up to her first one.)