YA sf = Dystopia?

[rachelmanija]

I found a fascinating blog entry by Rahul Kanakia, the guy who wrote the bedbugs-and-squatters story, with a gay teenage Indian hero (yay!), for Diverse Energies. (I see elsewhere on the site that "I'm currently shopping a gay-themed YA novel -- set in a dystopian Washington, D.C. -- to agents." I hope it sells. Depressing or not, I would read it

Comments

[thecityofdis]

I see some circularity going on here, not merely regarding this particular anthology, but perhaps in YA as a whole. All science fiction is labeled "dystopia," whether it is or not. Actual dystopian fiction is popular. Writers begin to assume that "science fiction" means "dystopia," so when they get a request for science fiction, they write a dystopia. Non-dystopian stories are harder to sell, and so don't make as many appearances.

My experience, of course, is anecdotal, but confirms this to a frustrating extent.

[rachelmanija]

Would love to hear more of your anecdotal experience if you want to email me.

[thecityofdis]

I'm okay posting it here. It's nothing too salacious, I don't think. Just that every bit of YA-SF out there gets stamped with the 'dystopian' label, regardless of accuracy

[rachelmanija]

Arrrrrrrgh. It's so frustrating! I totally sympathize.

And yet, somehow I suspect that three years from now, there will still be just as many dystopias and paranormals. SOME of them will be sold.

One lucky thing about Stranger is that if dystopias are still desirable by the publication date, it could easily be marketed as one. It's not depressing, nobody's being ground underfoot (okay, some people are being discriminated against, but no one's a slave in the salt mines), and the government doesn't control the color of your underwear. But it's post-apocalyptic, so close enough. And, of course, if dystopias are no longer hot, it doesn't have to be marketed that way.

[tavella]

I generally find dystopia stories so *dull*, at least when the point is the dystopia and the hopelessness. Even when they are believable, and so many of them aren't. If you have to posit that somehow people entirely forget about wind, water, and solar energy while building super-springs and genetically engineered mega-elephants, I'm just going to roll my eyes, not be impressed.

I keep comparing to Ursula LeGuin, who can write a pretty depressing situation and yet have it seem believable, with characters who feel like real people and with real people's abilities to find enjoyment even in grim situations.

[oneminutemonkey]

I've long had a hankering to do a YA SF that has actual spaceships and aliens and adventure and optimism and handwavium-style science...

[mrissa]

Dooooo eeeeeet. You know you want to. You would if you loved me.

Wait. You don't even know me. Maybe cheap teenage peer pressure will be completely ineffective.

Still. Audience of one!

[rachelmanija]

I'd read it.

[rikibeth]

Another reader here!

[fadethecat]

My favorite dystopias--okay, the only dystopias I really enjoy at all--are the ones where you can see both sides of the issue. Sucks for some people, works for other people, in a way that it makes sense that this would be the way a given society works. "Everything is miserable for just about everyone" just...isn't any fun to read about, and goes straight into negative fun if the story isn't about fixing that. One of my favorite dystopias is the one from the Uglies series, because honestly, it's not a dystopia for the vast majority of the people in the setting; they're absolutely happy and fine with the way things are. (Heck, the final companion novel even makes it clear that once the Terrible Secret is revealed to everyone, some people still think it's worth it to continue that level of life satisfaction.) It still needs to be changed, but it's interesting and complex rather than...well, miserable

[rachelmanija]

Scott Westerfeld is an exception to everything. He's also managing to write very successful cheery mecha-biotech steampunk adventure - sadly without setting any trends that I've noticed.

[fadethecat]

Yes! I've loved everything of his that he's read, the vampire story aside. He thinks about things slantwise from other folks, in a way that makes them more fun instead of just weirder.

[asakiyume]

As far as my own personal tastes go, the future of my YA sf reading looks dystopian indeed.

Hahaha!

You crack me up.

Give it time. Something different will somehow break through, sell like hotcakes, and then the trends will shift. Plus, I think you're right to trawl the ebooks and self-published things--probably more variety there.

[rachelmanija]

Here's something else I found interesting: when I thought that the anthology's mandate really had been dystopian from the get-go, I tried to figure out how in the world Le Guin's "Solitude" could be considered a dystopia. Then I realized that the mother did think the alien culture was dystopian.

...and so I got a genuine insight based on a completely wrong premise. The anthology hadn't been intended to be dystopian at all, and "Solitude" was most likely selected because it was directly about diversity in the sense of culture clashes.

[asakiyume]

Interesting--kind of like religious scholars struggling to explain a passage that ends up being an interpolation or a mistranslation or whatever, and ending up with great insight into something about life, let's say. The insight is still true even if the passage is bogus.

You were challenged to find something, so you looked, and you did find something . . . which makes it sound like self-delusion, but it's not; it's something that was there that you wouldn't have been prompted to look for if you didn't have the push of an incorrect assumption.