The local high school is considering redoing their selections for their 9th grade Sci Fi unit and I’m privileged enough to be able to provide suggestions. Currently they have a choice of Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E Pearson, Scythe by Neil Shusterman, and Unwound also by Shusterman.
It doesn’t have to be explicitly YA, but definitely YA accessible, and preferably something that will keep a 9th grader interested and isn’t just a fluffy book but challenges thinking/perceptions like good Sci Fi can. My goal is something near 300-ish pages but if it’s a faster read more is ok.
TiA
I kind of want to suggest Children of Time and the other Adrian Tchaikovsky books in that series. He’s very good at writing non-human intelligences and it stays relatively hard sci fi throughout the series. I just am not sure how much they would appeal to teens, I certainly would have liked them but I was very bookish. I really like the exploration of emergent cultures and technologies and the books all have a hopeful and optimistic turn to them.
Also seconding Andy Weir books, and Murderbot by Martha Wells.
That’s part of the challenge too. It’s hard enough to get some of these kids to read a book, let alone a hard Sci Fi book that is now a required reading. It almost has to fool them into enjoying it first.
Haha yeah. So I think Murderbot and The Martian/Project Hail Mary would be solid choices, because they’re cinematic and entertaining. They have humor and a lot of action. Murderbot hides the vegetables well and brings up a capitalist dystopia, personhood, gender identity and the meaning of freedom in subtle and clever ways. I’d be surprised if a teenager who read All Systems Red didn’t ask for the sequel pretty soon after 😋