If your baby brother's a devil and you see nothing but darkness in the adults around you, you're probably just imagining things. But then, what do grown-ups know?
Not much, at least when it comes to conjuring fantasy and science-fiction stories pitched to teens. It ought to be a natural fit: Teens have an outsized number of dragons to slay, metaphorically speaking, including dating to underage drinking, and don't yet know they're not invincible. As they hit that proverbial awkward age, their imaginations are also bridging the gap between the benign fluff of fairy tales and the ambiguities and antiheroes of their parents' worlds.
These teen terrors ought to be rich veins for enterprising writers to mine, but youthful fans have been "hopping from children's books right into adult books, without training wheels," writes Jane Yolen, herself a formidable and prolific writer of books for children and young adults.
But nothing could suck the coolness out of a pastime faster than sharing it with potbellied Aragorns with plastic swords or tricked-out housewives in Klingon masks. Once you've outgrown Harry Potter, where's there to go?
Into this black hole step Yolen and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, a senior editor at science fiction and fantasy publisher Tor, with a slim but worthy addition to the "Year's Best" shelf-busters beloved by science fiction, fantasy and horror readers.
With 11 entries, however, "The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens" is a fraction of the size of its grown-up counterparts, which says volumes about what's not out there, even with an "honor roll" of runners-up listed on a back page.
What's worse, the stories were culled from magazines, websites and anthologies written for adults, and there's even a golden oldie from Rudyard Kipling. The stories feature youthful protagonists or at least have kids in the background, as in "Sergeant Chip," narrated by an attack dog with enhanced intelligence (courtesy of the U.S. Army) whose dying captain utters a final order to guard a refugee family at all costs.
Never mind that talking-dog stories would be a groan-inducing cliche in any other genre. Fairies wouldn't be welcome in most serious-minded young adult books either, but that's someone else's loss. Forget gossamer wings and stardust, however. In Kelly Link's "The Faerie Handbag," pixies live in a dog-skin purse, along with an unhappy dog, and frantic Genevieve works against time and long odds as she roots through thrift-store bins to find them.
