What I Include In Reviews

Very brief biography of author.

Summary and review of major works they have done, with a focus on the ones I have read and what I think is interesting about them.

I will identify what ages I think the books are appropriate for and what I think parents might want to watch out for, which often varies significantly among the author’s books.

Readalikes and related media.

Brief Criteria For Reviews

I have to have read at least one book by the author.  

Either I or a large number of other people think the author is good, for instance by getting ahugo award nomination.(an annual award given by professional science fiction writers)

It has to be science fiction, but I will include occasional fantasy writers, particularly fantasy writers who also write scifi.  A brief definition is fiction that is focused around a theoretical scientific concept or where the author has created a new fictional technology or other alternate universe where things work differently than they do in the real world  The author incorporates those differences and their consequences into the themes or plot of the story. Often it is set in the future or a different world.  

The common breakdown is hard science fiction, which has a strong focus on the real world or potential real world science and technology and soft science fiction, where the science exists mainly to propel the story.  Fantasy is similar, but is often set in the past and uses whatever magic rules the author wants to use to effect their story.

Mission of this Blog

Mission: To give science fiction book recommendations to parents who want to get their teenagers to read more on their own.

The Problem: Most parents want their children to read more books and to impart a love of reading, but often don’t know to what to get their kids to read that is both high quality and that they will actually enjoy reading.

I read a lot of books as a teen on my own and still read about one book a week, but most of my classmates did not read books voluntarily for pleasure.  And the titles we read in school were either what the teacher wanted to read or what the district assigned.  They were usually not that interesting to my fellow students and even if they were fun to read, the lesson plans often managed to drain the pleasure out of reading.  Sometimes they were books more appropriate for adults or were high quality, but not of much interest to teens.  So by the end of high school the majority of my peers had almost no interest in reading good books on their own despite being force fed a steady diet of what educated adults considered good “classics”.

One of the genres that I, and many of my male friends in particular, liked was science fiction.  Those books often had tie ins with movies or other media; they had plenty of action and complex plots; they had themes and characters we could identify with; and most important they had interesting new ideas, settings, and science to immerse us into their worlds and stories.  Many of the well educated adult men I am friends with  now still stick with science fiction, and its cousin fantasy, for most of their pleasure reading.

Unfortunately, there is more chaff than wheat when it comes to books and a much of the science fiction out there is not worth reading.  On top of it many of the well written books have material many parents won’t want their minor children reading, at least until they are older.  I post reviews based around individual authors and try to cover a variety of their work when possible.  This includes authors from the late nineteenth century to current authors.  

I hope this is particularly helpful to parents who may be homeschooling or who otherwise want their kids to read on their own, but don’t know where to start. Adults will hopefully like most of what I recommend as well.