Recommended for Gifted Readers - Science Fiction
(Originally Presented at Spring 2004 Beyond IQ conference for gifted students)

(M) - Mature Readers; long book, may have sex, drinking, or drug use

Places to start - there's more where this came from!
  • Anderson, M.T.: FEED - What happens when commercials and SPAM are transmitted straight into your brain?
  • Asimov, Isaac: I, ROBOT; THE CAVES OF STEEL - You've made intelligent robots, but that's just the start of your troubles. What happens when people lose jobs because robots are cheaper and don't need to sleep? What happens when the robots start thinking for themselves? (Forget that recent movie starring Will Smith, which is one of Hollywood's more egregious examples of "dumbing down" a theme until it means the opposite of what the author intended it to. - Tim, Your Admin)    
  • Bradbury, Ray:
    • THE ILLUSTRATED MAN - A collection of stories from a great science fiction writer, each of which is a living tattoo on a man who meets a traveler on the road.
    • FAHRENHEIT 451 - In this future firemen burn books; they don't put out fires, and everyone lives by watching TV. One fireman, Montag, wants to know why some readers sacrifice themselves in the same fires that burn their books, and tries to find out as he learns to read.
  • Bujold, Lois McMaster: THE WARRIOR'S APPRENTICE - In a warrior culture where genetic misfits are killed at birth, Miles Vorkosigan is allowed to live, because his birth defects were caused by his mother's exposure to gas before he was born. But now he's shorter and more fragile than any other person on his planet, which only makes him more determined to succeed as a warrior. When he finally gets the chance to prove what he can do, he lands himself in a universe of trouble.
  • Carmody, Isabelle: OBERNEWTYN - Long after a nuclear war poisoned large parts of the war, Elspeth is discovered to have mutations and is sent to live with other outcasts. After hiding her talents for years, she now has to work with them to sort out what's really going on in her new life, because it's much bigger than anyone realizes.
  • Coville, Bruce:
    • I LEFT MY SNEAKERS IN DIMENSION X (& others)
    • STRANGE WORLDS (anthology)
    • MY TEACHER IS AN ALIEN (& others)
    • ALIEN VISITORS (anthology)
    • UFOs (anthology)

    This is science fiction for fun, with aliens, strange space drives, and everyday kids coming together to figure out what exactly is going on in the universe. The anthologies introduce readers to many of the best writers out there through short stories.

  • Danziger, Paula: THIS PLACE HAS NO ATMOSPHERE - Another funny one, about a cool teenager whose family moves from Earth, which is overcrowded to the max, to the Moon.
  • Dickinson, Peter: EVA - In a future where society and the biosphere are falling apart due to overpopulation, a human girl whose mind has been downloaded into that of a chimp may be the only hope for the survival of intelligent life.
  • Doyle, Deborah & MacDonald, James: GROOGLEMAN - It's the colonial past, where people live in log cabins and make everything they own, and live in fear of the Groogleman, the faceless creature who takes children away after plague kills their families. Or is it the past? Where do the Grooglemen come from? And why do they only take those who survive disease?
  • Farmer, Nancy:
    • THE EYE, THE EAR AND THE ARM - Not exactly fantasy or science fiction. It's Africa in the near future, and a general hires the detective firm of the Eye, the Ear, and the Arm to find his kidnapped children. While they search for the kids in places like immense garbage piles that extremely poor people mine for the most precious substance in the world, plastic, they are figures from African mythology, and African gods deal with things at last. The three kids are exposed to how those who are not wealthy live.
    • THE HOUSE OF THE SCORPION - Matt learns he is not a person, but a thing, a clone of the man he calls "El Patrón," who has decreed that his memory not be wiped like that of other clones. When he learns his fate--to be El Patrón's new body when his old one is too sick, Matt runs away to the drug country that now exists between Mexico and the United States. The reader has to think about a number of things, including the right and wrong of cloning if it is perfected, and the long term results of the so-called "War on Drugs."
  • Goodman, Alison: SINGING THE DOGSTAR BLUES - Joss wants to graduate from the time travelers' academy and journey to the past, but she's not good at obeying the headmaster's rules. He'd love to get rid of her, but the first aliens to want to deal with the human race say they will do so only on two conditions: that they are allowed to develop time travel technology of their own, and that the academy pairs one of their kind with a human. And there's a hitch. The aliens are born as pairs, and stay together all their lives. By rights when one of a pair dies, the other should, too, but Mavkel, whose partner is dead, discovers he can connect with Joss. They form an unlikely alliance against everyone who wants to see them fail.
  • Haddix, Marguerite:
    • TURNABOUT - Genetic manipulation has reached a point where some scientists run an experiment on the very old occupants of a nursing home, one which not only stops ageing, but reverses it. There's one problem: they didn't build in a way to stop people from getting younger. How will they manage, both in getting younger, and in forgetting the years of their adult lives?
    • AMONG THE HIDDEN (& sequels) - In the future, parents are only allowed two children. What happens if they have a third child? They have to keep them hidden, at great risks to themselves and to the children. What is it like to live this way, and what happens when you discover other third children are out there?
  • Heinlein, Robert:
    • SPACE CADET
    • RED PLANET
    • HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL (also available from Full Cast Audio)
    • THE STAR BEAST
    • TUNNEL IN THE SKY

    Robert Heinlein wrote a number of books for teenagers in the 1940s and 1950s, books in which the heroes meet aliens, deal with overpopulation, slavery, revolution between planets, and the rights of the "people" who already live there. The technology is dated--they didn't have computers--and Heinlein's not so great on girl characters (though PeeWee, the genius 12-year-old in HAVE SPACE SUIT is one of my all-time favorite girl heroes), but they're great stories; he makes you think, and he shows what the future might be.

  • Hoover, H. M.: THE WINDS OF MARS - Annalyn, daughter of the president of Mars, discovers that things aren't as wonderful as she's been told as she ventures out among the people and finds they are living hard lives while her father and his friends get rich.
  • Hughes, Monica:
    • KEEPER OF THE ISIS LIGHT - In order to survive on a colony world where conditions everywhere aren't ideal for human life, Olwen, the girl who keeps the beacon going, has been genetically changed so she can safely live on the surface. When colonists from Earth arrive at last, she discovers that they think she is a monster. Who would befriend her? Who can set aside prejudice to see the person beyond?
    • INVITATION TO THE GAME - In 2154 Earth is over-crowded. There are no jobs. After school kids are placed in areas where they are fed and looked after, but treated as beggars. Lisse and her friends discover a new Virtual Reality game that takes them through different levels, where they must survive on a new world or die. At each level when they make a mistake so bad it's fatal they wake up at home--until the last level, when they learn what the game is really about.
  • Klause, Annette Curtis ALIEN SECRETS. Kicked out of school, Puck befriends an alien ex-slave on the ship home, to discover he has found a priceless artifact of his people, one taken from him by their former masters, who will stop at nothing to keep it. Friendship happens between the most unlikely beings in science fiction, and this is a good one.
  • Kress, Nancy:
    • MAXIMUM LIGHT. In the future, there are fewer and fewer kids. As people age, they search for meaning in pets that have been illegally altered to have human characteristics. (M)
    • BEGGARS IN SPAIN. What kind of people result if they have been genetically altered not to require sleep? What kind of artists are they, and how can they relate to human beings who do require sleep? How do the people who must sleep deal with them? (M)
  • L'Engle, Madeleine: A WRINKLE IN TIME - Part religious fantasy (there are angels) and part science fiction. Meg's father disappeared when he and their mother were working on a new way to travel through space. Now he's in trouble, and the three very strange old ladies who live nearby have come to show the very young, very gifted Charles Wallace, his hostile (to outsiders) big sister Meg, and their friend Calvin what life is like on other worlds, and how they can bring Mr. Murry home.
  • Marsden, John: TOMORROW, WHEN THE WAR BEGAN - Kids away on a camping trip come back to find their home has been conquered by an unnamed enemy. What will they do, and where will they go? What happened to their families? And will they fight back against the invaders?
  • Nix, Garth: SHADE'S CHILDREN - Kids struggling to survive in a world ravaged by alien invaders are taken up by an artificial intelligence named Shade, who cares for them and makes them his soldiers in the fight against the aliens. But is Shade helping the humans, or is he just helping himself?
  • O'Brien, Robert C. Z IS FOR ZACHARIAH. A survivor of nuclear war has to adapt, not hide, when other humans enter her life, including an abusive adult.
  • Orwell, George: 1984 - One of the first great books about the future. Obviously we weren't in this shape when 1984 happened, but what about the future? Will we be watched constantly by the government, told lies about why we fight wars, and ordered to obey and not ask questions?
  • Philbrick, Rodman: THE LAST BOOK IN THE UNIVERSE - Spaz, who's epileptic, can't zone out on games like everyone else in his dirty, poor, polluted town. Instead he listens to a crazy man named Ryter, who introduces him both to books and to the possibility that the golden people who live far above their home have cures for the disease that is killing his sister. Can Spaz bring her to them? Will they help her, or turn them away as members of the despised poor?
  • Sleator, William:
    • INTERSTELLAR PIG (& sequel)
    • HOUSE OF STAIRS SINGULARITY (and many others)

    William Sleator writes most of the science fiction on the Intermediate shelves these days, about every subject from alien invasions to cruel government experiments on its own citizens. His biggest success was INTERSTELLAR PIG, about aliens playing a game where the effects are felt on real worlds in space.

  • Stevermer, Carol RIVER RATS. In the future water and food are scarce, and unwanted kids are forced into a poisoned world to survive somehow. The River Rats escape their orphanage and steal an old-time steamboat that is now tied up on the poisonous waters of the Mississippi. Now they must learn to trust and who not to trust, and find a way to make a living their own way.
  • Tolan, Stephanie:
    • WELCOME TO THE ARK
    • THE FLIGHT OF THE RAVEN

    Do y'all even need me to tell you about these two books?!

  • Verne, Jules:
    • FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON
    • 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA
  • Wells, H. G.:
    • THE TIME MACHINE
    • THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

    These two writers who created the groundwork for science fiction back in the Victorian age. What they wrote doesn't bear much resemblance to science now, but the books are still great, adventuresome reads.

  • Willis, Connie: THE DOOMSDAY BOOK - In a future when an epidemic has reduced our population drastically, they have time travel. One young scholar is sent to Oxford, England, 30 years before the black death arrived--except that the technician who sends her there makes a mistake. She comes to Oxford in the year the Black Death arrived. Worse, because the technician has a new kind of flu, the labs have been isolated, with no one allowed in. There is no one to bring her back to safety as people around her begin to die. (M), but brilliant.
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