For those of you who missed our Science Fiction book talks, here they are in no particular order:
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary PearsonIn the not-too-distant future, biotechnological advances have made synthetic bodies and brains possible, although total replacement is illegal. Jenna, seriously injured in an accident at age 17, awakens from a coma and needs to relearn about herself. In the process, she discovers a startling secret. How much of a person can be synthetic before he or she is no longer human? And how does that affect society?
Skinned by Robin WassermanLia Kahn was perfect, rich, beautiful and popular until an accident nearly killed her. Now her mind has been downloaded into a new body that only looks human. She will never feel pain, she will never age, and she will never really live or die. She is rejected as a freak by her friends, betrayed by her boyfriend, and makes her family uncomfortable. People hate and fear what she has become. She has only one human friend, an outcast she would never have looked at before. Can she live a human life, with human friends, or should she give it all up and stay with others of her kind, using her new capabilities?
Epic by Conor KostickNew Earth is a colony world based on a video role-playing game. Your status in the game determines your status in the world. Fourteen-year-old Erik persuades his friends to aid him in some unusual game strategies to save Erik's father from exile and safeguard the futures of each of their families.
Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande VeldeFourteen-year-old Giannine is playing a total immersion virtual reality when demonstrators damage the equipment she is connected to. She must defeat the game, or be hurt or suffer probable damage herself.
Mortal Engines by Philip ReeveIn this first in the Hungry City Chronicles, we learn of a post-apocalyptic future where wheeled cities travel the earth battling and cannibalizing each other for slaves, materials and spare parts. London is now a huge 7-tiered city where Tom, an apprentice historian, saves a famous man’s life only to be left for dead in the mud of an earth he has never touched before.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne CollinsIn a future North America, there are only 12 districts. In retribution for a long-ago war by the districts again them, the ruling city of Panem stages the annual Hunger Games where 2 children from each district are selected by lottery to compete in a fight to the death. The event is televised nationally – both participation and watching are compulsory. The terrain and rules change as decreed by the rulers to keep the game interesting.
Time’s Chariot by Ben JeapesIn an overcrowded future, Earth’s surplus population lives on colony worlds. The Home World lives in the Home Time, a place in space and time that is thought to be coming to an end in about 40 years. People travel back in forth in time, as students and as tourists. Field Operatives try to keep everything in order. Field Operative Rico Garron’s difficulties start when a Commissioner’s supposedly accidental death looks like murder to him. It’s possible that not everyone is following the Home Time Rules and Regulations.
Feed by M.T. Anderson"We went to the moon to have fun, but it turned out to really suck…" is the first line of this book set in the future. A trip to the moon usually meant a party in low gravity. But some crazy hacker made the implants in the teens' brains malfunction, sending all of them to the hospital to have their feeds repaired. Without the feeds, their heads were empty, with no info on the latest trends.
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott CardEnder is only 6 when he is sent to battle school on a space ship. He grows up playing simulated battle games, and at 11 is the youngest in command school. He is the one selected as the earth’s best hope to overcome the alien buggers and save the human race.
The Silver Ship and the Sea by Brenda CooperThe colony planet Fremont has grass that can cut people to ribbons and predators bigger than anything humans ever dealt with on earth. The colony has existed for 200years. Then a new group arrives, genetically enhanced to deal with the environment. A war between the two groups drives off the newcomers, but six genetically enhanced children are orphaned and left behind. The winners want no part of genetic modification, and as the children grow, so does their mistrust of both the youngsters and their powers. As teens, the abandoned children need to either find a way to live with people who hate them, or find a way to use the abandoned spaceship to take them away.
Unwind by Neal ShustermanIn the future, following a war between Pro-Choice and Pro-Life armies, termination of pregnancy is illegal. But the “Bill of Life” allows parents to send their teens to be “unwound” – they can be taken apart and their parts used for transplants. Unruly teens, unwanted teens and religious offerings are all sent to the same fate. Some escape, and seek a way to survive in a world that wants them gone.
Larklight by Philip ReeveIn an alternative Victorian England, a young brother and sister are separated from their parents and leave their home in space, called Larklight, and travel through the universe after discovering a plot to destroy the solar system.
House of the Scorpion by Nancy FarmerIn this vision of the future, humans hate clones, who are created as laborers and have their intelligence destroyed at birth. But in his home, Matt enjoys special status as the hidden clone of a rich and powerful man, not realizing that his destiny is to provide spare parts for the old man as necessary.
Little Brother by Cory DoctorowSeventeen-year-old Marcus and his friends are arressted and held secretly after a terrorist attack in San Francisco. Marcus decides to use his technical expertise to get back at a Department of Homeland Security that has virtually taken control of the city.
