My niece is in 8th grade, and is looking for some good reads in the scifi genre.
It's not my strength.
She did not like The Hunger Games. She liked The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.
I haven't read either.
UPDATE: Thanks for all the recommendations. I'll follow up on which she chooses, and her thoughts on the book(s).
A member of Hubski for over 200 days and this is your first comment, glad to see your "face," rusty, that's awesome. As someone that was considering doing a podcast all about how films can change people's lives, I'm curious, how would you say a Wrinkle in Time changed yours?
Perhaps I should save this comment so I can come back when rusty57 replies 200 days from now.
Not entirely sci fi, but what about the His Dark Materials trilogy? Maybe more fantasy. Got some sci-fi-ish elements, though, esp. later on in the series. Perfect age for those books, anyhow. Is she familiar w/ sci fi at all, or is this her first rodeo? Think I read Dune for the first time around eighth grade, but if she's unfamiliar with the genre, maybe not a good place to start.
A Wrinkle in Time [bonus female protagonist]. Hitchhiker's Guide and Foundation. She'll thank you later, though if she really likes scifi she's possibly already read them. Clarke's 2001 series. Ender's etc. Do Androids Dream. Bradbury and Wells. Really by the 8th grade, pretty much all scifi is within a kid's grasp. Goodreads has very specific user-voted best of lists, including, I'm positive, YA scifi. Check there maybe. EDIT: I gotta say, by the age of 13 there's no point restricting yourself to the normal YA crap. Get her to understand that 50 years ago there was real literature written for people her age. They didn't need a whole other genre.
I loved this trilogy as a kid. (Read it in Farsi, though.)
Pretty sure I read it around that age. I didn't do any of the sequels to Ender's Game, since I thought they'd be over my head, but I enjoyed Ender's Shadow as well (described by the author as a parallax). Would Neuromancer be appropriate here as well? I didn't read it until I was much older (I joined Hubski before I'd even heard of the book)
I found the structure or pacing or something quite challenging. It was a struggle to read, kept wanting to put it down. Not the prose, obviously, although Gibson's penchant for teaching you the lingo as you go would surprise your average young adult reader in 2014, I think. Neuromancer is something you build up to. Read a PKD first, maybe.
So 8th grade is old enough to appreciate most adult sci fi. The only reason not to would be the sexy stuff but I read some seriously pervy shit in 4th grade and it weren't no thing. So it's not like she can go horribly wrong... but a lot of the stuff she's going to run across is going to be chauvinist and wooden. This is the part where I espouse my previously-undisclosed love for Lois McMaster Bujold. Strong characters, excellently written women, real social problems, and fifteen years before Tyrion Lannister she was writing a far-future space-trader universe as explored by a glass-boned errant dwarf in the space navy. The first book written is The Warrior's Apprentice. it's got this cover and it's still incredibly awesome. The first book chronologically is Falling Free, about a space station full of genetically-engineered children with four arms and zero legs created by a corporation as a space-faring race and what they have to do when some putz invents antigravity. Buy her Warrior's Apprentice. If she likes it, there's 21 more books (I've probably read 6 of them). If she doesn't, that's 21 books she doesn't have to read.
Just re-read Curse of Chalion for the third(?) time. Bujold is a doozy. Guess that one's not sci fi, though. You ever read any Gene Wolfe?
Ooh ooh ooh. Tell her to read Brave Story. I remember liking Artemis Fowl as well.
Every book by Eoin Colfer features the exact same characters. But they are all enjoyable
animorphs? i haven't read them in years, but i remember getting lots of joy out of them. they're probably a bit dated now.
They're more fantasy-ish than scifi-ish really, but I really enjoyed the Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander in middle school... Also, A Wrinkle in Time is absolutely amazing
Restaurant at the Start of the Universe? or The Life Cycle of Software Objects. It's not my genre, but I dug those two reads.
I didn't really do sci fi as a tween, but based on those preferences and what my friends were into back when they were tweens, my top two would be the Discworld series and anything by Neil Gaiman. Of course I haven't actually read either, but I've heard good things about both.
Discworld was my shit, son. REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."