Rachel Bach's upcoming: 'Fortune's Pawn'.

I've been thinking, after my post on Orson Scott Card, that I need to get into some new science fiction. Different science fiction. Science fiction written by people I very much enjoy talking to.

For a little while now, I've been aware of yet another upcoming book that I'm not able to read yet. This one comes out in November and, with this review, the book has jumped up several spaces on my 'Priority Reads for 2013 TM'.

I am sure the author had in mind a crazy-action-fulled love story.  Yes, I said it. This is in part (at least 33.33%) a love story.  It at first took me by surprise. 

Here was a main character I loved.  Devi is smart, feisty, forthright and skilled.  She is basically a female child of Boba Fett and Han Solo.  At least.  She is great to read and choice to write in first-person made this all the better. (read more)

Sci-fi with interesting characters, you say? With a romantic plot line? With a focus on something other than cool weird science gadgets that I am not quite geek enough to be able to imagine? What is this amazing venture?

It is none other than Rachel Aaron's (writing as Rachel Bach) new novel Fortune's Pawn.

From what I understand, the upcoming Fortune's Pawn tells the story of Devi, a mercenary, who gets a job on a particularly troublesome trade ship. Things go wrong. The ship itself seems to be the cause, or the reason, or... But Devi has a Plan (yes, with a capital 'P'), and this particular ship seems to be our heroine's way of getting onto Step 2 of this Plan.

Okay, okay, I'm really no good with summarising or describing science fiction novels. Did I not already mention that I'm not particularly well read in this genre?

No matter; Fortune's Pawn has grabbed my interest as potentially being something other than the standard sci-fi novel and, for that alone, I am looking forward to my chance at picking this one up.

Intolerance, Orson Scott Card and 'Ender's Game'.

I write a lot of things on this blog about tolerance, gay characters, bi characters, and my excitement in the way these things are so often being tackled in the environment of young adult literature.

I've even mentioned Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game as part of a post about the broad spectrum that young adult writing is showing to our teens today.

After what I've read today, I imagine that the last thing that Scott Card would have wanted was to be grouped in with the bunch of writers and titles I listed there.

At www.avclub.com, Scott Card has been quoted as wanting to ask that his own long standing and loud intolerances and homophobia not to adversely effect the upcoming sales for his movie based on Ender's Game. This has come after numerous gay and lesbian groups have made the decision to boycott a book-to-movie release by a man who has previously stated that homosexuality is often the product of rape or abuse.

..........

From the article in The A. V. Club: "Card has issued a statement to Entertainment Weekly repudiating the boycott, saying, “Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984.” After thus establishing that gay rights did not exist in 1984—gay people not having been invented until that one episode of thirtysomething—Card similarly invoked the way time inevitably gives way to change, and how we must all learn to publicly give the impression of accepting that change with bitter resignation, if we are to continue making money." (read more)

I honestly don't know what to say here.

A lot has already been said. As soon as I reposted it up on Twitter, it caught a couple more retweets and spurted a conversation that had absolutely nothing to say in favour of Scott Card as a human being. Of course. I myself am a bi-sexual woman and a number of my friends are bi or outright gay. Nobody wants to hear their lifestyle being called a "tragic genetic mix-up".

Still, I find myself having a bit of trouble stooping down to his level and waxing lyrical against his chosen lifestyle beliefs. It seems like a great waste of time of my breath and efforts. So I'm going to say that maybe Scott Card might have been able to get away with the statements he's made up to 30 years ago, but it's becoming pretty clear that it won't fly now.

And that's good.

If you can't say anything nice, Scott Card, maybe consider shutting your mouth.

Talking about YA fiction.

When I was young, the television shows I watched would be about saving the planet (Captain Planet, Widget the World Watcher) and young adult fiction was either about the finding a real life threat inside your video games (Space Demons, Skymaze), running off into some wonderful fantasy world where young women could be heroes with a sword too (Songs of the Lioness, The Blue Sword) or finding romance (The Vampire Diaries).

There's still a lot of interest in the latter, as evidenced by the television show The Vampire Diaries. You might even recognise this handsome man as the visual inspiration for one of my own characters. :)

There has also been the popularity of such series' as Cassie Clare's The Mortal Instruments, which I believe they are making into a series of movies due to come out later this year. I've also been a long time fan of Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely series, which I've made no bones about loving and having almost a whole shelf dedicated to in my bedroom.



There's also the retold fairy tale genre which is really big at the moment, and includes novelists like Sarah Cross, Alex Flinn, Robin McKinley, Juliet Marillier, Francesca Lia Block and Malinda Lo.

However, there's another kind of genre within the young adult umbrella that has been pushing itself forward. We saw it in The Hunger Games novels (and movie). Marie Lu's novel Legend was another good example of it. Instead of the worries about the environment that categorised the 90s, the media aimed at young adults seems to hold a message that is: don't be so complacent that the government can rule you. Sort of a 1984 for kids, just like Space Demons might have been a good early read for people who would go on to love Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.


Two months ago, I read a book called Delirium by Lauren Oliver and read the follow up sequel Pandemonium this month. Lauren's main character, Lena, lives in a world where love has been labelled a disease for which a cure has been found. (For the full review, click here.) What I thought was amazing was how little the love angle would have mattered at all if not for the backing plot of the story. The same scenario was offered in The Hunger Games; Katniss simply couldn't spend any real number of pages simply falling in love with either of the guys. She was too busy fighting just to stay alive.

I love coming back again and again to the books in this genre. It feels as though there is so much more in YA to read today than there was 10 or even 15 years ago. Subjects like loneliness and alienation are still being tackled, but are now widening to include stories told about interracial and gay, lesbian or bisexual minorities. I read this really interesting interview by two of my favourite young adult writers recently that made me feel really proud to be reading this genre I love so much.

"Both Holly and Sarah are not shy about discussing the difficulties of promoting diversity in Young Adult literature. And they were willing to discuss their experiences in crafting their own works as a way of offering advice to other authors who are seeking to do the opposite of what has been the advice offered time after time to write what they know rather than what they may imagine." (read more)

This interview opens with questions like what advice they would give for writers who want to write outside of their own experiences with gender, race and sexual orientation and goes on through some interesting observations on the way race is depicted both on screen and by readers of these novels, including a quick look at Katniss' depiction in the recent movie The Hunger Games.