Science Fiction Stories for Teenage Girls?

Sooner Boomer asks: "Not having met 'Mrs. Boomer' yet, I'm buying Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews. Whether genetics or just good luck, almost all of the young 'uns are girls. I've been slowly introducing them to the classics of science fiction: Heinlein ('Podkayne of Mars', _'Starship Troopers', etc.), Asimov short stories, Ann McAffrey (the Dragonrider books), Alan Dean Foster (the Flynx books and others), Douglas Adams and Terry Prachett, some Neil Gaiman (Stardust, Good Omens), as well as the mandatory Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. This is just a partial list, but what would Slashdot consider to be good (or even essential) science fiction for teen and pre-teen girls?"

Comments

Mercedes Lackey and Lois McMaster Bujold

[danaris]

Lackey, who wrote the Heralds of Valdemar series, is about as perfect as you can get for a teenage girl--for one thing, three of the first books, Arrows of the Queen, Arrow's Flight, and Arrow's Fall have a teenage girl as the main character. All of them are fun to read, and most of them are at least pretty good books. Light fantasy.

Bujold is the author of the Miles Vorkosigan series, which has something of everything, as well as the Chalion series and a few other books. They're also excellent. The former are usually termed "space opera" (I'd call them "light SF"), and the latter are rather deep fantasy.

Dan Aris

William Sleator

[ParticleGirl]

When I was a preteen girl I loved books by William Sleator. It was only years later that I realized how technologically/scientifically advanced they were-- at the time I just loved the stories. My favorites were The Boy Who Reversed Himself (which to this day shapes how I think about 4+ dimensional geometry) and House of Stairs (which I forgot about completely until I was in Psych 101 and then had to track it down and reread it), though they were all good; great plots and characters and cool SciFi. I can't vouch for anything written after about 1990.

The Deed of Paksenarrion

[dreamer-of-rules]

The Deed of Paksenarrion - by Elizabeth Moon

It is in the Tolkein genre, but more personal, less "grand armies crashing". It's more accessible than Tolkein, but still grand. The hero is an -ine, which makes it a little more appropriate for the nieces. Everyone I have introduced to the book has loved it, including my in-the-Marines brother. And all of my sisters.

If they are in the Christian-way, I can also recommend the Stephan R Lawhead books: The Dragon King trilogy and the Empyrion saga.

My other favorites are more mainstream, and have probably already been mentioned.

One more book to consider is The Count of Monte Cristo. Long, but oh so good. I first read it when I was in sixth grade with a five-day flu, and it has been on my top 5 list ever since.