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Sci-Fi Books For Pre-Teens?

Posted by kdawson on from the needle-definitely-oh-and-mission-of-gravity dept.

o2binbuzios writes "I have two pre-teen boys who are avid readers, and I am going through my mental catalog for great sci-fi & fantasy books for them. What are some of the classics (and maybe new additions to the classics) that would be great for them to read? I am asking because some of the 'straight-up' classics I remember actually seem kind of dark & cynical for younger readers. Starship Troopers and some of the other Heinlein are definitely darker and more political than I remember... Foundation Trilogy and psycho-history maybe too dry. Road-trip reading season is upon us — what are the good reads for the kids in the back seat?"

3 of 1,419 comments (clear)

  1. As I remember it ... by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    A field guide to birds. Come on, it's got to be fiction ... little creatures that go around waving their arms to defy gravity? Surely those things only exist in cgi "nature" documentaries.

    (that's it, I've officially gone all old and grumpy, thinking that there's so much fiction and fantasy in the world that we've stopped looking at the reality out the window)

  2. Re:Try these by mrbluze · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    erm.. I saw you mentioned him already, about 20 milliseconds after I clicked submit. oops

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  3. Re:Enders Game by Dun+Malg · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Re:Enders Game (Score:1, Troll)

    Ender's Game ...

    Cripes, what's with people's fascination with this book? It's a great little short story badly padded out to book length.

    See? Offer a valid logic-based criticism of Ender's Game, and get modded "Troll". Why is Ender's Game such a sacred cow among nerds? Seriously, the short story was decent even with the age silliness, and the book was an interesting enough expansion on the combat tactics and space battle strategy aspects, despite the tedious, superfluous flummery with his siblings' hoo-hawing in irrelevant politics and the tiresome "dream game" thing with Ender--- this stuff's all the more obvious as filler if you've read the short story.

    So really, what is it? Why are so many nerds intolerant of criticism of what is only a fair-to-middling book?

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