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Why do we see the current flood of YA scifi and fantasy?
Top 10 Teenage Military Leaders:http://listverse.com/2013/06/29/top-1...
Included in the list, a figure I can't believe I forgot, Joan of fucking Arc.
Damnit - Becky beat me to Joan of Arc, and I missed her post. But I'm not removing mine, because Wonka.
Becky wrote: "Agreed, Charles. There's a lot of crap out there (for ALL ages of reader) and one has to sift through it to find the gold. That's always how it goes. I personally abhor the trend of the last coup..."
There would be a lot less of us reading these forums if not for YA. If it keeps kids and future generations reading fiction, then by all means let it ride.
I'm not sure what you mean by "new adult". The grittier, darker fiction?
Sorry... she was the first to come to mind for me! :)
Charles wrote: "I'm not sure what you mean by "new adult". The grittier, darker fiction?"I wish! No, New Adult is the doormat girl has a controlling dickweed fall in love with her (for... reasons, I guess) kind of story, and it's supposed to be "romantic".
Example: Beautiful Disaster
Becky wrote: "Charles wrote: "I'm not sure what you mean by "new adult". The grittier, darker fiction?"I wish! No, New Adult is the doormat girl has a controlling dickweed fall in love with her (for... reasons..."
Ah, the 50 Shades of YA I saw mentioned earlier in the discussion.
Johan wrote: "Unrealistic: The Hunger Games.I haven't read the book, only seen the first movie, so I could be talking out of my behind here, but here we have teenagers who rise up and save the world. While the notion is fine and admirable, I think we can all agree that it's not very realistic. When in the history of the world has it been teenagers who save the day?"
Even if teenagers rising up was unrealistic (despite the examples recently provided to the contrary), you would still be talking out of your “behind” in regard to the Hunger Games because that’s not at all what happened. What purpose could possibly be served by using a story you don’t know or understand as an example? It reduces your credibility and gives people more reasons to argue with you.
Major spoilers for the entire Hunger Games series, and an excessively long post, below:
(view spoiler)
V.W. wrote: "Well you are all lucky. I like SF with heavy S&M and there are almost no books and definitely no films like that. So I can dislike everything :)"I recall Stirling's Islands series has S&M in it.
Becky wrote: "Agreed, Charles. There's a lot of crap out there (for ALL ages of reader) and one has to sift through it to find the gold. That's always how it goes. .."Exactly.
If the OP had said 'unrealistic, simplistic stuff is dominating the industry' I think most of us would support him, no question.
Even to say 'YA stuff is dominating the market, and since it's not my cup of tea, I want more stuff that's marketed to adults' would have been acceptable.
To say YA is not realistic, serious, heavy, challenging, ambiguous, or complex is BS.
(Oh, and guess what. YA is not, generally, my cup of tea. ;)
YouKneeK, I like your assessment and summary of the series better than I liked reading it directly. Thank you for that! :)
Becky wrote: "Charles wrote: "I'm not sure what you mean by "new adult". The grittier, darker fiction?"I wish! No, New Adult is the doormat girl has a controlling dickweed fall in love with her (for... reasons..."
What becky said.
It started as YA Fiction but was changed to "New Adult" because the content was a little...racy and sexual with extremely unhealthy relationships. They (the authors) got a lot of push back and New Adult was born.
It sounds like a great plot complication, but a poor overall plot.
Charles wrote: "It sounds like a great plot complication, but a poor overall plot."Oh it is. It really is. I've heard there are a few gems - but then again 80% of everything is dreck - but for the most part its a hot mess.
This thread went nuts since I was last here, making it almost pointless to reply. So instead I'll say ditto to some of Becky, MrsJoseph and Colleen's posts, while giving a big shout out to YouKneek for the HG breakdown.For what it's worth, I think Johan is, at least for the most part being fair. He's miffed at the current state of things, which happens to most of us when the trends go away from the stuff we like. I will say, Johan, you seem a bit misinformed on the YA front, and that's okay. I'd avoid giant generalizations about things you're less informed in, though.
I, for example do not read romance novels. Just not interested. I won't make assumptions about all those books, the themes, or the characters within because odds are high I don't know what I'm talking about. I'd avoid even more arguing about it with someone(s) who read them regularly because odds are high they're better informed than me.
MrsJoseph wrote: "Becky wrote: "Charles wrote: "I'm not sure what you mean by "new adult". The grittier, darker fiction?"I wish! No, New Adult is the doormat girl has a controlling dickweed fall in love with her (..."
It does also contain the grittier darker side of YA...but mostly it's racy/sexy stuff. Because most of the time it's easier to tone down the violence to something PG-13 while still keeping everything the same.
Basically YA=13+ for target audience, PG-13 rating at most.
NA=16+ for target audience and R rating.
Maybe I've been wrong about YA the whole time.I realize I shouldn't have made my broad generalizations based on the handful of YA books I have read and the boatload of YA movies I've seen (without - shock, horror and rolling of eyes - reading the books first).
But my original point about the media business bombarding us with dumbed down crap is still valid.
I was only hoping we could have an interesting discussion about that, and instead this thread has turned into a "my religion is better than your religion" flame war, and we all know THAT discussion is never going to end.
Yes, I do understand I have fanned that religious fire myself by happily raising to the bait and talking out of my rear end about stuff I shouldn't have mentioned without reading it first, just to illustrate my own, personal, and as it turns out maybe unfounded, gripes with the "genre" of YA.
My own private opinions on the subject remain unchanged though, and I will keep them until someone shows me the YA light. I will just be more careful to keep them private opinions from now on :-)
So, I will now stop whatever YA-bashing I might have done, gracefully ask the forgiveness of all the fanpeople for whatever toes I may have stepped on, and ask for recommendations to where I should start to explore this, for me almost totally unknown group of novels. And preferably SFF stuff.
So shoot, boys and girls. Hit me with the gold!
colleen the contrarian ± (... never stop fighting) ± wrote: "Damnit - Becky beat me to Joan of Arc, and I missed her post. But I'm not removing mine, because Wonka."Oh, I didn't realize this was a competition :-)
Becky wrote: "YouKneeK, I like your assessment and summary of the series better than I liked reading it directly. Thank you for that! :)"Tommy wrote: "while giving a big shout out to YouKneek for the HG breakdown."
Thanks Becky and Tommy. :)
I actually don’t read all that much YA myself. I think the Hunger Games books are the only YA books I’ve knowingly read over the past couple years. I say “knowingly” because checking the books I want to read to make sure they’re free of any YA “stigma” is nowhere on my to-do list. I tried the Hunger Games books because a colleague who hates to read devoured them and I was astonished and curious.
I don’t feel strongly about YA either way and I couldn’t care less whether or not people like it. But seeing a story misunderstood and misrepresented, especially in an attempt to make some sort of a point, bugs me.
Johan wrote: "But my original point about the media business bombarding us with dumbed down crap is still valid." Of course it is. It's just NOT limited only to YA.
Johan, here are three books you could try. Maybe you'll like them, maybe you won't, but they are all multi-award winning novels with a "YA" designation.A Monster Calls
The Book Thief
The Giver
Actually, Giver is little simpler, and a little lower reading level & target audience. It's usually offered in schools to kids about age 11/12. Other books, off the top of my head, that fit under the umbrella of complex SFF that both kids & adults can enjoy are
Tuck Everlasting
Dandelion Wine
But if we narrow the query to 1. current stuff that is 2. labeled YA that gets 3. made into movies that is 4. SFF... well, you know what, I don't want to go there. Too picky. Esp. cuz I'm not getting paid. ;)
But thanks, Johan, for being adult enough to admit you didn't state your case with full clarity and without prejudice.
True - I guess The Giver would be for a slightly younger audience. Though it still fits as far as 1) books which are worth reading and 2) are marketed toward younger readers. And it was recently remade into a movie, so there is that. ;)
Thanks for the book tips, Becky and Cheryl. I will check them out!I guess we all fall victim to our prejudices sometimes :-)
Aaron & Johan, there are some other great groups on Goodreads with less of a pack mentality and more of a will to discuss than berate those of differing opinions. I'm guilty of presenting strong opinions in a seemingly condescending manner but it's not my intention to pick on anyone in particular. Some people here seem to want to pick a fight and enjoy it. You guys are welcome to join us elsewhere if this back-and-forth is not for you. Personally, I find it juvenile and the YA adult-reader defenders are the perfect poster crowd for their ilk. I may present my opinions in a formal manner and this may seem high brow, it isn't. I like to try and be as clear as possible and find precisely the word I want to use because of my difficulty with social situations (Aspergers). Apparently I need to present my opinions in a flippant, dismissive manner sprinkled with combative language if I am to contend in this sandbox.
Just needed to get that out there. I'm done in this thread, since all the replies will just attempt to dissect my words again and find new ways to paint me as a hoity-toity asshole. I'm not.
If I cared enough, I would bring this up with the moderators of this group but that doesn't really seem worth the effort. It's a shame, because this group does offer a slew of interesting discussions - with the occasional bad apple hell-bent on turning discussion into slapping match.
Kenneth wrote: "Aaron & Johan, there are some other great groups on Goodreads with less of a pack mentality and more of a will to discuss than berate those of differing opinions. "
One of my favorite YA novels is Starship Troopers. I know it's older but I seem to prefer a lot of the older SFF works. I highly recommend Starship Troopers. But NOT the movie. The movie is nothing like the book. But the book is awesome.
Kenneth wrote: "Aaron & Johan, there are some other great groups on Goodreads with less of a pack mentality and more of a will to discuss than berate those of differing opinions. I'm guilty of presenting strong ..."
Kenneth, I have a cousin with Aspergers and he knows when he's being deliberately offensive vs when it's something he can't control.
Your intelligence level is obvious - and your use of dismissive language shows that you also know when you're being deliberately offensive vs when it's something you can't control.
So...I'm more than willing to have a conversation with you when you are not being deliberately offensive but when you are...
No need for the kid gloves. I'm not going to treat you like you're stupid. Cause you're not.
So take it this way: I feel you are just like everybody else so you get treated like everybody else.
I remember when YA consisted of challenging reads, (relatively speaking) like Ender's Game. :(I think that's the worst of it, is the lack of material that gets readers ready to take that next step into adult literature.
'Course, OSC has claimed that he wrote Ender's Game for adults. Just throwing that out for fun....
Yeah, he has some personal views that have made his work lose its luster to me as well.
MrsJoseph wrote: "One of my favorite YA novels is Starship Troopers. I know it's older but I seem to prefer a lot of the older SFF works."Well why didn't you say so, Mrs J? :-)
Here we are, biting each other's heads off, and it turns out we've been on the same side all along.
If your definition of YA includes Starship Troopers, then I am already an avid YA reader and fan. ST would otherwise have been one of my prime examples of what I call adult oriented literature.
Just goes to show the danger of discussing genre classifications and preferences in a forum on the Interwebz. One man's black metal is another man's melodic death metal with elements of folk :-)
That being said, out of sheer curiosity and not an insignificant amount of risk to my person, I'm going to suppose that Starship Troopers does not qualify as YA for all readers in this group?
I could be mistaken, of course, in which case no one would be happier than me, because then we would all be one big happy YA family, seated starry eyed around the warming fire that is Robert Heinlein :-)
Charles wrote: "I remember when YA consisted of challenging reads, (relatively speaking) like Ender's Game."Cheryl wrote: "'Course, OSC has claimed that he wrote Ender's Game for adults. Just throwing that out for fun...."
I was just about to ask you guys how you would classify Ender's Game.
I'm not so sure myself where I would put it. It's a great book, but I wouldn't say it's for kids, or even YA, even though the protagonist is a kid. It contains some fairly difficult themes about militarism, child soldiering and the justification of genocide in the name of survival of the human race, so I would probably put that in the adult section if had a scifi bookstore.
But that's just me and my humble definition of adult SFF :-)
Johan wrote: "That being said, out of sheer curiosity and not an insignificant amount of risk to my person, I'm going to suppose that Starship Troopers does not qualify as YA for all readers in this group?I could be mistaken, of course, in which case no one would be happier than me, because then we would all be one big happy YA family, seated starry eyed around the warming fire that is Robert Heinlein :-) "
I've never read it.
I do want to watch the movie again, though, with the full knowledge of its parody status.
Cheryl wrote: "'Course, OSC has claimed that he wrote Ender's Game for adults. Just throwing that out for fun...."I remember a year or so back there was a big stink because people were classifying Warm Bodies as YA and the author was having a snit about it.
I read it and, personally, I saw no problem with the YA moniker for it.
Johan wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "One of my favorite YA novels is Starship Troopers. I know it's older but I seem to prefer a lot of the older SFF works."Well why didn't you say so, Mrs J? :-)
Here..."
It is not adult-orientated. It is YA. It was written for teens and caused quite a bit of controversy.
I think that this is the point that we were trying to make. YA is not a genre, its a marketing segment. And since 80% (or more) of everything is dreck, there will be a lot of bad books. But since there are a lot of bad "adult" books - it makes YA no different than any other marketing segment.
So it is unfair to judge YA books by the bad ones - the same way it is unfair to judge "adult" books by the few bad ones.
MrsJoseph wrote: "And since 80% (or more) of everything is dreck, there will be a lot of bad books. "90%. It's a law.
Johan wrote: "Charles wrote: "I remember when YA consisted of challenging reads, (relatively speaking) like Ender's Game."Cheryl wrote: "'Course, OSC has claimed that he wrote Ender's Game for adults. Just thr..."
I read Ender's game when I was 14 or 15...that's why I classify it as YA. And I don't think they touch on those subjects in ways that a true adult novel would, even though it does do better than most. I think the one thing that really makes it YA is it teaches that things are not always as they appear.
Charles wrote: "Yeah, he has some personal views that have made his work lose its luster to me as well."Yes, OSC has some fairly odd views on a lot of things.
When I realized that, his books lost some of their attraction for me too. That's actually a very strange (but ultimately human, I guess) reaction, since his actual novels didn't change because of him uttering that deluded gunk.
Johan wrote: "Charles wrote: "Yeah, he has some personal views that have made his work lose its luster to me as well."Yes, OSC has some fairly odd views on a lot of things.
When I realized that, his books los..."
I don't know. Some of those scenes, especially the shower scene, took on an different, more sinister twist afterwards.
colleen the contrarian ± (... never stop fighting) ± wrote: "MrsJoseph wrote: "And since 80% (or more) of everything is dreck, there will be a lot of bad books. "90%. It's a law."
True. I was wavering back and forth between 80% & 90%. Should have gone with 90.
Johan wrote: "Yes, OSC has some fairly odd views on a lot of things.When I realized that, his books lost some of their attraction for me too. That's actually a very strange (but ultimately human, I guess) reaction, since his actual novels didn't change because of him uttering that deluded gunk. "
Charles wrote: "I don't know. Some of those scenes, especially the shower scene, took on an different, more sinister twist afterwards. "
I think this is what also happened with MZB. Once it became known that she was a child molester, a lot of the scenes in her books that were "mildly problematic" turned incredibly awful. I gave away my entire MZB collection - I felt like my library was polluted every time I saw the books.
MrsJoseph wrote: "Johan wrote: "Yes, OSC has some fairly odd views on a lot of things.When I realized that, his books lost some of their attraction for me too. That's actually a very strange (but ultimately human, ..."
You'll have to forgive me, I don't know who MZB is. Ok, I educated myself and wow. Just wow.
Yeah. Pretty horrifying.And then when you read one of her scenes where a younger person is forced into a relationship with an adult...it makes you shudder with disgust.
I do use things like that in my writing, but always as a reference, as part of a character, but never as a device or arc itself. I like to explore how people overcome those kind of things, I don't actually like reading or writing about them.Well this has taken a dark turn. How about those Dragonlance novels huh? Those were pretty good YA fluff. :D They were definitely a transition point for me between CS Lewis and Robert Jordan.
MrsJoseph wrote (about Starship Troopers): "It is not adult-orientated. It is YA. It was written for teens and caused quite a bit of controversy."According to Wikipedia we are both right :-)
"A senior editor at Putnam's, Peter Israel, purchased the novel and approved revisions that made it more marketable to adults, and dodged the issue of whether it was aimed at children or adults: "Let's let the readers decide who likes it," he said at a sales conference."
But who cares, it's a darn good book on so many levels!
The fist time I read it I was about fifteen and I loved the military adventure and the war against the bugs. The politics seemed sound to me at that time (at fifteen I also thought capital punishment was a valid thing for a civilized society. *Shudder*), and it was only when I read it again, many years later with more adult eyes that I could see why it has been accused (undeservedly if you ask me) of promoting militarism and fascism.
Just goes to show that a good book can be many different things to different people, and even mean different things to the same person depending on the age when you read them. And that's why we love books.
Charles wrote: How about those Dragonlance novels huh?"Yay, Dragonlance! I loved those books when I was a kid!
Charles wrote: "They were definitely a transition point for me between CS Lewis and Robert Jordan."This sentence boggles my mind. I don't really understand this kind of reading evolution, in terms of how one 'grows up' from book to book to book. My parents let me read whatever I wanted, so I always did. I've read Judy Blume books right after a Stephen King novel. I still read like that. LOL
Becky wrote: "Charles wrote: "They were definitely a transition point for me between CS Lewis and Robert Jordan."This sentence boggles my mind. I don't really understand this kind of reading evolution, in term..."
I read CS Lewis when I was very young, probably 8-10 and before that it was Roald Dahl. Then came Dragonlance when i was 12-14, and Jordan when I was 18-20, and George RR Martin when I was 24. I really don't think I could have read ASoIaF any younger than I did, simply because it was not what I was seeking from literature, and I would not have had the patience. It was all about what I was ready to step up to next. I would go back and read some Blume, Dahl, Cleary, etc now over some of the stuff that is getting cranked out.
It just seemed to be a natural process to me. I was reading Voice of the Night by Koontz when I was 15 and loved it. I read Koontz before King actually.
Oh, and I also read my mother's copy of VC Andrews Flowers in the Attic when I was 13, and she did not stop me or even try to. She seemed shocked when she saw it in my hands though.
I guess I've just never been a genre reader like that. Maybe that's it? I like a lot of everything, so I jump all over the place. There's no logic to my reading habits. LOL
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First of all, way to move the goalposts. (i.e. I counter your point about vapid teenagers, so you backtrack and make it about a different point... )
Secondly, the book isn't about "showing children and young adults that it's OK to kill other children with bow and arrow" - it's actually sort of about the opposite of that.
You could argue that the theme it attempts convey about how the glorification of violence is bad is sort of circumvented by its own style, but to say that the point of the story is to show people "hey, killing children is OK" is to ignore the point entirely.
"- Please, give me ONE single real world example in the whole history of the human race where a teenager has saved the day."
Katniss does not single handled save the day. She is a symbol of inspiration for the rebellion.
Real life, modern day example:
Pakistani teen inspires others to fight for education:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/15/world/i...
The fact that you put Joe Abercrombie and China Mieville on your list of realistic SFF amuses me, personally, but whatevs.
"My gripe is not with the authors who write YA or the readers who read them, but with the darn Industry who bury us in their pile of rubbish knock offs and sequels in order to make a quick buck. Most of those happen to be targeted at a YA audience, because that is where the money is, as so many of you have already stated."
Nah, man. Your gripe is that you can't get published, and you've decided that the recent popularity of YA is to blame. Of course, the fact that people like Joe Abercrombie and China Mieville do get published shows that dark and gritty (and whatever the fuck Mieville is) do get published...