Infinite possibilities: top five SciFi YA books by Meaghan McIssac

As a reader, I don't limit myself to one genre. But if I did, it would probably be SciFi. Why? I think it boils down to possibilities. Every great SciFi story, no matter how outlandish, how wild, how improbable, is made extra exciting by the idea that it could, maybe, just maybe, happen. Luke Skywalker could have become a Jedi a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Elliot could have found an alien in his backyard who needed to phone home. Maybe we could bring dinos back to life using fossilized tree sap. The universe is infinite! What's inspiring about stories under the SciFi umbrella is they make you feel like anything — for better or worse — is possible. And when anything is possible, the adventures have no limits.

So, in order to celebrate all things SciFi, I thought I'd share my top five favourite SciFi YA.

1. The Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness

I'd pick the whole glorious trilogy. But if I have to pick one of the three books for the purposes of this list, it would have to be The Knife of Never Letting Go. Todd Hewitt lives in a world occupied by men, and only men. He hears their Noise and they can hear his — every thought at all hours of the day. And not just the thoughts of men, but animals, even dogs. It's a loud life. Relentless. Until Todd discovers a lone patch of silence and his world changes forever. Spaceships. Aliens. Telepathy. Todd's world is one I love to visit over and over. Not least of all because Todd's voice is so unique, so honest, you trust him completely to navigate you through.

2. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

This is the book, guys. My childhood fave that started my love of all things SciFi. In a post apocalyptic world, mutations are considered blasphemies against God and must be destroyed. So when David discovers that he and a small group of other teens have telepathic abilities, they are forced to keep it secret. But like any good secret, it can't stay that way, and it's not long before David and his friends are on the run. This is one I'm desperate to see on the big screen — but I don't know how any movie could pull off the awesome "thought shape" parts and do it proper justice. If you haven't read it, go now, and together we can all come up with the best way to translate The Chrysalids to film, I just know it.

3. Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan

I love, love, LOVE Glow. Mostly because if there were a mission to populate another planet in another galaxy, I like to think I'd have the guts to go. But anyway, fifteen-year-old Waverly was born aboard the Empyrean, a ship with just such a mission. It's one of two ships sent to populate a distant planet. And teenage life aboard the Empyrean is just about as normal as life back home — chores, parents, boyfriends. But then their sister ship, the New Horizon sends out a distress call. Something is wrong. And its up to the Empyrean to save them. But Waverly and her shipmates don't know, is that the crew aboard the New Horizon is anything but friendly. The setting of Glow—trapped on a ship in deep space—and the threat that lurks inside, makes for one claustrophobic read. I read it in one sitting.

4. The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancey

Two words: alien invasion. I shouldn't have to explain. But I will. Cassie Sullivan has survived the first four waves of attacks from the aliens that have invaded earth. Everyone else on the planet hasn't been so lucky. And the few survivors that are left can't be trusted. Anybody could be one of them in disguise. And somewhere out there is Cassie's little brother Sam. And it's up to her to get him back. This action-
packed alien adventure is a major motion picture, and it's no wonder.

5. Red Rising by Pierce Brown

If SciFi is all about possibility, then let's do all we can to avoid the possibility of a future like the one sixteen-year-old Darrow was born to. Society is divided by a colour-coded caste system, with Golds at the top, and Reds, like Darrow, at the bottom. When a family tragedy forces Darrow to reject the system, he'll have to become the very thing he hates in order to bring it down. Brutal, dark and dangerous, Darrow's world is both exciting and terrifying. And it's just the first in the series.

So there you have just a few of my favourite SciFi YA offerings. It's time to get reading! And even if you think SciFi isn't for you, I have to insist that you're wrong — the endless possibilities means there's something in this genre for everyone. You can't not find a great story here. It's impossible! (See what I did there?) What are some of your favourite SciFi reads?

Tweet Meaghan your favourite SciFI reads

Find out more about Movers
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About Meaghan:

Meaghan writes middle grade and young adult books. She loves to read them too. She used to draw a bit. When she was nine, she drew comics about a bird family who had a fuzzy orange caterpillar for a dog. They never ate him. After that, she gave a lot of embarrassing performances in her high school's musicals. She gave up on acting and decided to stick to telling stories. Meaghan packed up and left for the UK where she completed an MA in Children's Writing at the University of Winchester. Now, she's back in Toronto, reading and writing. Meaghan has one noisy beagle and one lab who doesn't stop eating. Meaghan is the author of an exhilarating, action-packed SciFi series. Movers is the first book in the series and Shadows, the second. Both are available online and from all good bookstores.

Gothic Roots by Danny Weston

It never fails to make me smile.  

'Why?’ ask the concerned parents, ‘do our children have such dark imaginations? What attracts them to such sinister fiction? Is it healthy to be so preoccupied?’ 

 
My retort is invariably the same. I invite the parent to think about the first stories they ever gave to their children, long before they were able to read for themselves; the ones they read to them at bedtime. Little Red Riding Hood: Hansel and Gretel: Snow White. A dark twist of the gothic lies at the heart of all these stories – they are tales of murder and cannibalism and savagery and yet we deem them perfectly suitable for the youngest audiences. The dark seeds are planted early. 

As the children grow older, able to read for themselves, they’ll invariably fall for the stories of Roald Dahl, in which a succession of luckless youngsters are gleefully put through the mill by a series of evil adversaries. Dahl knew better than most authors, the attraction that the grotesque has for young readers. Little wonder that years after his death, his books still figure prominently in the charts.   

By the time the kids are into their teens and start to really look at the world in which they live, they see darkness all around them; in the daily news reports on television and social media, in the actions of corrupt governments that only ever put their own interests first. Here’s a generation of readers that aren’t old enough to vote but who are gleefully invited to massacre hundreds of strangers on their PlayStations and Xboxes whenever they’re in the mood for it.  

 
Little wonder that dark dystopias like The Hunger Games have become the order of the day. Little wonder that cheery escapist fiction is struggling to keep young readers hooked. 

When I came to write Danny Weston’s first novel, The Piper, I was looking to recapture some of the atmosphere that appealed to me as a teenage reader – the unsettling ghost stories of M.R. James, the cold brilliant satires of Saki (H.H. Munro) and the nightmarish qualities found in the writing of the legendary Ray Bradbury. I wanted to write scenes that would make the hairs on the back of a reader’s neck stand to attention… Danny, I decided, would only ever write about unsettling things. He would only ever see the glass half empty. Danny clearly was not going to be invited to many parties. 

Winning the Scottish Children’s Book Award for teen readers felt, somehow, like a vindication. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who liked my fiction dark. A lot of readers clearly agreed with me. 

And you know what? It’s all perfectly healthy for one very important reason. In fiction, we are able to ensure that after a long struggle, the powers of good will eventually triumph over the forces of evil – the sun will rise, vanquishing the darkness – the towers of the wicked will crumble and fall - our young protagonists will survive and will be immeasurably enriched by what they have experienced. I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that real life is rarely like that. On a daily basis, massive companies that defraud millions of people walk away without a stain on their character. Corrupt politicians stab each other in the back before being voted into power. People that cheat, lie, steal, murder, all seem to get away with it.

It’s only in fiction that we can make them pay for their transgressions. And it seems to me, that is the most powerful and compelling reason for me to continue in the same vein.

 

 

About Danny Weston:

Danny Weston is the pen-name for Philip Caveney, author of the international bestselling Sebastian Darke series.  Philip has written two YA novels under the pen-name Danny Weston: The Piper, set during the Second World War and following the story of Peter and his younger sister Daisy and the unearthly music the pair hear...  Danny's second novel is the darkly comedic, Mr Sparks.  Based in Llandudno during the Great War, there is much suspicion in the town.  Danny has a third book due out 1st September, The Haunting of Jessop Rise. 

2016 has been a great year for Danny!  He won the Scottish Children's Book Prize with The Piper and has embarked on a terrific and terrifying tour of schools, talking about his latest book Mr Sparks.  Danny (or Philip) is also a highly experienced tutor in creative writing.  He has been writer in residence with the University of Central Lancashire, Worcester University and Lancaster University.  Philip is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund.

Memories and Myth by Julia Gray

From the nod to the tale of the Minotaur in The Hunger Games to Susan Cooper’s reworking of the Arthurian legend in Over Sea, Under Stone, there is an abundance of myth and fairytale in YA and children’s books. I especially love the British fantasists, such as Penelope Lively and Diana Wynne Jones, who in turn were inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. In my book The Otherlife, Ben finds that he is able to ‘see’ the world of the Norse gods and monsters; it is his way to cope with the pressures of his daily life. One particular tale, the story of the death of Baldr the Beautiful, becomes intertwined with the plot. The process of using one text as part of another is known as ‘intertextuality’ and it has always fascinated me.

I tried to come up with my ten favourite YA novels that feature myths and fairytales in this fashion, but couldn’t - there are simply too many. So instead, I’ve decided to write about one book in particular: Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. A modern fantasy written in 1986, it combines strands of myth and folk-tale in an assured, powerful and complex way.
 
Fire and Hemlock is a book that very much celebrates the love of reading. (Indeed, the word ‘book’ is used twelve times in the opening three pages.) At the start, a nineteen-year-old girl named Polly is preparing to return to university. The book she is reading triggers the sudden discovery that she, like the man in the story she has just encountered, has two sets of memories; as she accesses the long-forgotten ‘hidden’ set, she remembers the strange friendship she once had with a cellist, Tom Lynn, whom she met at a funeral at the age of ten. Suddenly remembering the five years that followed, Polly struggles to uncover the mystery behind Tom’s sudden disappearance from her life. Then she sets out to rescue him from a fate that she manages to piece together from the books Tom has sent her throughout her childhood.

The plot is a puzzle, but so too is the way the book is constructed from other, older stories. Jones used two 16th century Scottish folktales as the basis for the main story: Tam Lin and The Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer. Extracts from both appear at the start of each chapter of Fire and Hemlock. Tam Lin is recast as Tom Lynn, while Polly is his rescuer, Janet. Polly does not realise this until very late in the narrative:

‘Polly’s fingers shook as she opened it to the list of contents. The first two ballads were ‘Thomas the Rhymer’ and ‘Tam Lin’. Of course, when she was twelve, she had not known that Tam was simply a North Country form of the name Tom.’^

In Polly, Jones seeks to create a ‘real female hero’; and casts her in ‘a whole series of heroic roles […] Gerda in The Snow Queen, Snow White, Britomart, St. George, Pierrot, Pandora, Andromache’*. By alluding to so many different literary characters, she is able to build on
the reader’s picture of Polly and her heroic qualities by capitalising on associations the reader may already have. Using these reference points also gives Jones the opportunity to question preconceived notions of gender: she deliberately portrays both Polly’s tomboyish and feminine sides, creating a more rounded picture of what a ‘real female hero’ might be. 

In addition to the Scottish folktales, Jones uses another ancient story in Fire and Hemlock: the story of Odysseus from Greek mythology. Again, it’s reworked delicately and used in different ways. The character of Odysseus is reflected in both Polly and Tom, enabling Jones to continue to explore the notion of a ‘real female hero’. The characters of Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, Telemachus, his son, Calypso, Circe and Polyphemus all appear in some way in Fire and Hemlock. Jones also adopts part of the The Odyssey’s structure, beginning and ending in the present day, and telling a large part of the narrative in the form of flashbacks, as Homer does. 

There are many, many more allusions. The Norwegian folk-tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon is referenced several times. The Three Musketeers plays an important role. Jones also used T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets as a way of organising the whole of the book.

When I first read Fire and Hemlock I never knew any of this, and of course it was not necessary to know what literary ‘underlays’ Jones was using in order to fall in love with it. But it made for a very exciting moment when I did find out. Just as Polly goes on a voyage of literary discovery, rereading stories and books and letters to find clues that will help her to rescue Tom, so can the reader keep coming back to Fire and Hemlock to trace further similarities between it and the myths and folktales that went before it. 

About Julia Gray:

Julia Gray was born in London and still lives there today.  Julia’s two loves are words and music – both separately and together.  As well as having written an impressive debut novel, The Otherlife, Julia is a singer-songwriter – bringing together her two loves! Julia studied Classics at UCL and has a diploma in Children’s Literature and an MA in Creative Writing.

^ Quote taken from Fire and Hemlock. This is to illustrate a point and not used in a way to seek or exploit any monetary value of the work.

* Jones, Diana Wynne, ‘The Heroic Ideal: A Personal Odyssey’ The Lion and The Unicorn, 13 (1989) 129-140.

'We Are All Made of Molecules' review

'We Are All Made of Molecules' by Susan Nielsen

Review by Christopher Moore

 

Summary:

Meet Stewart. He's geeky, gifted and sees things a bit differently to most people. His mum has died and he misses her all the more now he and Dad have moved in with Ashley and her mum. Meet Ashley. She's popular, cool and sees things very differently to her new family. Her dad has come out and moved out - but not far enough. And now she has to live with a freakazoid step-brother. Stewart can't quite fit in at his new school, and Ashley can't quite get used to her totally awkward home, which is now filled with some rather questionable decor. And things are about to get a whole lot more mixed up when these two very different people attract the attention of school hunk Jared...

 

Review:

Stewart, as the geeky step-brother, is weird but refreshing. His theory on molecules, his cat, Schrodinger, and his inability to socialise mark him out as easy to sympathise with. In contrast, Ashley comes across as an absolute brat. Although there is more to her than meets the eye, it's very hard for the reader to disregard her self-centred, often cruel behaviour throughout the novel. Both characters are presented to the reader in a way that has potential to go down the road of becoming caricatures but Nielsen masters character and delivers two protagonists that shatter expectations and reveal multi-faceted people. On a side note, I love that the story is set in Vancouver (such a beautiful city!).

The only downside was Stewart's (13) and Ashley's (14) ages. I mean, yes, it was a great read but the narrative tones for both characters felt much younger than they actually are; Ashley referring to Stewart as "Spewart" and a "freakazoid" (and Jared as a "hunk" too) and the way Stewart goes on in general. If I read the story blind, aside from his abnormal intelligence, I'd place Stewart at about nine-years-old. For me, Ashley never really redeemed herself and the fact that she hung out with someone that repeatedly degraded and disrespected her (Jared) really didn't help this. We Are All Made of Molecules had the potential to be a much grittier, 5* read but it fell short on characterisation. If you're looking for something to read by the pool or the beach, it's a funny, contemporary, summer read.

Rating: 4/5 Stars ★ ★ ★ ★

 

Christopher Moore:

  

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-five year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.

'Movers' by Meaghan McIsaac Review

'Movers' by Meaghan McIsaac

Review by Chris

Summary:

Set in a futuristic world where some are born with the power to move people from another time, this is a thrilling new science fiction series with an original time travel twist from the author of Urgle.

The world is dying, overcrowded and polluted. Storms rage over the immensely tall tower blocks, attracted to Movers.

Movers are connected to people in the future, their Shadows. And moving your Shadow is highly illegal.

Patrick knows all too well what happens if you break the law: his father has been in the Shelves ever since he moved his Shadow. And now Patrick and his family are in danger again.

Following a catastrophic event at their school, Patrick must go on the run. Through filthy, teeming markets, forebrawler matches, a labyrinth of underground tunnels and beyond, he’ll need his wits and courage to escape the forces that want to take everything he loves.

 

Review:

Before I start this review, I should say, I tend to avoid sci-fi when I read. It's nothing against the genre but I find some of the books to be a bit lazy; they rely on elements of the genre without breaking any new ground. Time travel. Cloning. Outer space. Aliens. It's a non-exhaustive list but you get the point. Often, I find the novelty becomes the focus of the story when I want it to be a tool that accelerates the characterisation and the plot development.

 

Movers has converted me though; it's an exciting page-turner that juggles world-building with concept, characterisation with mystery, and compromises nothing. In the future, there are Movers; people who are connected to someone they can move to their time (i.e. a Shadow). It takes a bit of time to get your head  around it but you get there eventually. McIsaac doesn't spoon-feed you. She leaves a breadcrumb trail for you to follow and forces you to actively engage with her world and her characters. The concept of 'Movers' accelerates the character developments of Patrick and Gabriela. It becomes something much more than a novelty. The tension and discrimination between Movers and non-Movers too, is something worth noting. It echoes the racial inequalities of our past and the general fear and panic that sparked ensuing violence.

 

If you're looking for something a bit different for your next read, this might be the book for you. A captivating world, fresh characters and a time twist - this is perfect for male and female readers. A cross between dystopia and sci-fi, Movers has cinematic appeal that fans of Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave and Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games will adore.

 

Rating: 4/5 Stars  ★ ★ ★ ★

 

Christopher Moore:

 

 

Christopher is a co-founder of the YAfictionados blog and is best known as the YAblooker. He is a twenty-five year old book blogger who has previously worked in marketing and consumer insight for various publishing houses and writes in his spare time. He loves to travel and will read anything YA-related and some general fiction and fantasy.