What if the Unicorns were ON a Spaceship? THEN what do you call it?

Hi lovely readers,

I am a sad girl today.  Not only is it a horrible hour of the morning (i.e., before noon) and raining outside, but I just left my poor little dog at the vet for her second TPLO surgery.  Which means she has to stay overnight, and then she’s going to be woeful and recovering for weeks afterwards.  And she was SO petrified!  :-(  Poor muffin.  She started shaking as soon as I picked her up inside the house, and she shivered all the way there in the car, and the worst part is she was totally right.  We were taking her to exactly her worst nightmare: abandonment and suffering!  :-(  I guess it probably didn’t help that I was crying.  She’s going to be scared of the car for the rest of the year.  Aw, sigh.  I am full of sad.

I wouldn’t normally post while I’m this woebegone, but last week’s blog was already short and un-fascinating, so I’ll try to say something wiser than "eeeeeee TV!" this week.  😉

(Although, on the subject of TV, I’m so glad So You Think You Can Dance is on tonight!  That should distract us for a little while, hopefully.)

This week I went to talk to a high school class that’s studying Science Fiction and Fantasy.  How cool is that?  I WISH I could have taken a class like that in high school!  That’s about when I read all the major sci-fi classics, I think, and I loved them.  Now I feel like I should go back and read them again and see if they’re still as great as I remember.

It was interesting because they’re particularly studying the difference between science fiction and fantasy, which for most people comes down to spaceships and robots on one side, wizards and unicorns on the other.  But then, where would you put something like The Hunger Games, or Midnighters, or Lost, or Avatars?  What if there are elements that can be "scientifically explained" (like the experiments of the Dharma Initiative, which might explain the button in the hatch, the polar bears, and the time travel) alongside something more purely magical/fantastical (Christian Shepherd/John Locke coming back to life (or someone using his body?), the mystical power of "the numbers", etc.)?  Then where does it fit?

In publishing, I feel like I remember calling these "supernatural fiction" or "speculative fiction", although you could also say "contemporary fantasy", which means there are quasi-magical inexplicable things happening, but it’s set in the real world (at least to start with).  It does seem like the terms "science fiction" and "fantasy" aren’t particularly useful anymore, especially for people who associate them just with spaceships and unicorns.

That said, there’s still a whole world of books that do qualify as one or the other, and of course I can’t help thinking about what I would want to teach if I were running a class like that (so much fun!).  Of course everyone will have a different list, but these are the ones I remember loving the most, off the top of my head.  I’m leaving out my favorite post-apocalyptic stories, since I’ve listed them elsewhere, but those are all important to read, too!  🙂

Science Fiction

Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card
Not only one of the best science fiction books ever; also one of the greatest books of all time.  It’s about this super-genius kid Ender who’s being trained to fight off an approaching army of dangerous aliens, but that doesn’t really encompass how awesome it is.  He’s, like, eight years old and he’s learning to be the commander of a whole army!  It’s intense and impossible to put down.

 I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
You have to read Asimov if you’re studying science fiction, and it’s tough to choose between this and his Foundation series.  I just remember loving these robot stories because they were fun, complicated mysteries.  As I remember it, the solutions were always surprising, because they involved robots who were constrained by the Three Laws of Robotics, yet found strange logical ways to commit crimes (or not, depending on the story).  This is one I want to read again, since it was a long time ago that I read it, but if the mysteries are half as good as I remember, I hope I’ll still like it!

Childhood’s End, by Arthur C. Clarke 
This is another V. Important Author in science fiction, but I just remember LOVING this story when I read it, which I think was in seventh grade, when I was eleven (this might even be the cover from the version I read).  I should reread it to see if I still love it, but I do remember aliens and spaceships and kids with psychic powers (AWESOME)!

A Sound of Thunder and Other Stories, by Ray Bradbury
I’m one of those people who thinks it’s worth it to read everything Ray Bradbury has ever written, but I might love his short stories most of all.  "A Sound of Thunder" is one of the few things I’ve read that I never forgot.  It involves time travel and is just amazing.

Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
A much more recent science fiction adventure, this one involves a very complicated future Internet and hackers and viruses and flying skateboards and the first hero named Hiro (actually "Hiro Protagonist", which is hilarious).  It’s quite complicated and thoroughly awesome (plus check out this snazzy cover! holy bats, I want it!).     

The House of the Scorpion, by Nancy Farmer
Look at all the awards it’s won!  (The Newbery AND the Printz!)  And yet it’s still a really fun read!  What are the chances?  ;-)  Matt grows up in the mansion of El Patron, a powerful drug lord in the country of Opium (between the US and Mexico).  He gradually comes to realize that he is a clone of the big boss, created to keep the man alive with transplants from his own body.  SUPER CREEPY!  And a fantastic book!