Yay!

I kind of like the idea of Schrodinger's Thread. I expect it would make some very interesting socks, though.

I guess it would and it wouldn't.

Would the socks be in a box, or with a fox?

An epic poem needs to be written about the events of this weekend.

Jon Meltzer @5: But would this epic poem be in LOLcat?

O HAI MAH WEBSITE IZ CHEEZBURGER!

I CAN HAZ COMMENT THREADZ PLZ?

I finished Little Brother this weekend. To be precise, I bought it Saturday, read until my eyes blurred, woke up at 6:00, and read until I was done.

Here's my review.

And here is a story I didn't want to put on my semi-professional-ish blog.

In the spring of 2007, the library where I was working banned MySpace. There had been some gang activity, some graffiti and thefts, related to the fact that MySpace brought into the library some people who would not otherwise voluntarily visit a library. So maybe if we banned MySpace the Undesirables would stop showing up. Never mind that libraries are supposed to be about free speech.

This worked okay at some of the branch libraries, which had security officers. At my branch, though, we didn't have a security officer - and we also had, more than any other branch, the teens who didn't have computers at home. So they weren't just going to shrug and accept the loss of their social network. It took them about 20 seconds to find proxy servers, and more proxy servers. And it fell on me to kick them off.

Eventually I realized that I was on the side of the bad guys. And I wasn't just on the bad side - I was also on the losing side. It's not like you can ever block all the proxy servers there are. But I wasn't high enough on the totem pole to fight, I was barely experienced enough in my career to trust my own judgement, and when we had violent incidents or gang graffiti, I got scared. I started thinking, "If word gets around that this is the library where you can get on MySpace, it'll just get worse."

Eventually I had enough and I quit, and I now work at a library where people surf on MySpace to their hearts' content.

Since then, I never stopped to think about my complicity with a bad system, and what I might have done differently, until I read Little Brother.

All its comment are belong to us.

It are on the way to reconstruction.

You have no chance of loss. Make your time.

Yay! Most-favoritest online hangout is healthy again!

Diatryma @2, I know the perfect designer for Schroedinger's socks: Cat Bordhi. Have you *seen* what she's done to sockitecture?

The comment threads are slowly reappearing, like stars at dusk.

Just finished reading the electronic, creative commons, version of Little Brother. When I started reading it, I figured I would by a copy later in order to repay Cory (and his editor, of course!). Now I want to buy a dozen copies, to leave wherever impressionable high schoolers may be found.

Things that struck me: I have rarely had the experience of enjoying a novel and recognizing it as propaganda at the same time. I'm curious whether this novel could be enjoyed by someone with more authoritarian politics. (It might be possible. For an example in the reverse direction, there's a scene in Xenocide where Valentine is trying to convince the mayor to impose curfews and martial law in order to prevent a riot, and I sympathized with her viewpoint completely.)

Little Brother does a really good job explaining why people who have "nothing" to hide still value their privacy. It also did a nice job showing the kind of mindset that is necessary to protect one's privacy.

The conventions of the children's book allow the author to directly give advice to the reader; I remember C.S. Lewis instructing me on how to clean a sword and whisper effectively. It is neat seeing this sort of interaction being used to give directions on hacking and activism. I think of the voice of this novel as the "corrupting older cousin".

I want to honour this new open thread
and thank Teresa for all that she's done
to get things going; it can't have been much fun
to learn that Making Light had fallen dead
and the whole fluorosphere waited in dread
to hear what happened. It was quite a run
but Abi did her bit, and bits were won
back from the pit to which they had been sped.
So thank you all who pitched in, thanks indeed
for your kind intervention. I'm most glad
since this blog serves to keep me fit and sane.
It's a good thing that you were here at need
or else a lot of us would have gone mad.
And that is not a good thing, you'd concede.

Well, MY comment in this thread is missing!

Oh wait, here it is.

Rereading your famous post about Mary Sue got me thinking: Is there a non-fannish synonym for jossed or canonshafted? For those not into fanfic or fannish speculation, these adjectives mean "it fit the available information at the time, but later episodes/interviews/whatever proved it to be wrong." Some of my favorite fics have ended up jossed, but they're still enjoyable reading.

Woo! Here's something non-disaster related: The top 100 comic book runs.

Hurray and huzzah. Now all we need is a pun.

Hey, there's all the other open threads, too, which I have just restored.

Also: just had a holy-crap moment when Firefox told me it couldn't find you. !! But this time it really was my local network, apparently (unlike the last time.) Having the server up on ssh at the time was very reassuring, of course...

Michael Roberts, you are the best.

It's good to be home. Thank you all.

I had a gradually diminishing case of the shakes for about a day and a half after the "did we just lose two months or seven years of Making Light?" scare was resolved. That's why I was so tired by Sunday afternoon: I could barely sleep on Saturday night.

Abi and I are continuing to catalogue material. There's a lot of it.

I'm still very tired, but it's good to be home. Besides, I got three pounds of mammoth-tooth slices in the mail today, and who wouldn't be cheered up by that?

"who wouldn't be cheered up by that?"

The mammoth?

Mammoth tooth slices, Teresa? I'll bet they'd make excellent spindles... or at least, one of them would...

I think my adrenals were depleted after the OSBP storm, so none left to react to ML's disappearance, but I recognize the can't-sleep shakes.

One of the first tools I turned to when it wouldn't load was something I found through a Sidelight or Particle: Down for everyone, or just me?

I'm very, very glad that it's back. I missed all of you.

Emily H.:

I can sympathize -- it's perfectly reasonable to walk away from a job that's putting you in an untenable and/or dangerous position.

It might well have been possible to do something else -- if you'd been more experienced, better connected, etc. but in any case, such "The Boss Is Wrong" situations are always pretty hazardous (jobwise). You basically can't deal with the nastier ones at all, unless you're already ready to quit if you don't get satisfaction. That kind of undercuts your motivation to fix "their" problem!

linkmeister @#23: haw!

Jon Meltzer @ 13

Sheer poetry, sir, beautiful.

Making Light, et. al.

Welcome back and welcome home. 'Tis good our subjectively-long cyber-national nightmare is over.

And re: Little Brother, I teach English at a high school. I haven't been able to read it yet, but I bought a copy for me, a copy for my classroom free-read bookcase, and purchased and donated a copy to the school's library as well.

The things they need to learn ...

It's so good to see ML back up. Many, many thanks to all the folks who are working to find all the pieces and put it back together again.

I'm about halfway through Little Brother and I already know it's one of the books I'll be booktalking at the local middle school in June. I'd talk it up in the high school too, but the timing's bad, so they never find time to schedule me.

As for myspace, we've got a rather flimsy ban on it - if we notice the kids in the children's room on it we'll ask them to get off, since by myspace's terms of service, if they're old enough to be on it, they should be using the computers in the adult department (the dividing age is 14). Mind you, we're rather lax about getting them off and myspace is the only site we limit in that way.

We're just about to start a renovation which will give us computers in the YA room, and I am very much looking forward to not having that policy to deal with. Thankfully other than that, our library's policy is hands off unless what's on the screen bothers other patrons and no filters on the computers.

I am very glad to see Making Light up again, and thanks to everyone's hard work getting it up. I have this vision of a mammoth that has fallen, and everyone has gathered round to get it on its feet again...

I have my comments from Google, I think. How can I get them to someone to work their magic, or do I need to?

So happy to see ML back. Kudos to everyone who labored to recover the various bits and pieces.

I finished Little Brother over the weekend as well. No review, except to say that I enjoyed it and have a niece who might appreciate it.

I did have this little dialogue with my girlfriend on Sunday as we were walking through the park on one of the first sunny days in quite some time:

Me: I just finished the new Doctorow book. I really enjoyed it. Would you like to borrow it.

long pause
K: Oh, you mean Cory Doctorow. You had me confused because you don't read literary fiction, and I hadn't heard of any new E.L. Doctorow books.

Me: I don't read literary fiction? Have you ever looked at my bookshelves?

K: (clearly sensing that she almost started a fight) Oh. Sorry. I didn't mean it that way - I just meant that you read other things too. Thinking of which, I should make plans for us to have dinner with H... & C... since C said in his Livejournal that he liked some of the same SF authors as you do.

Me (mollified): Yeah, I'd like that.

Xopher (#16): Somewhen I needed to find something with [ctrl f] and set it to match case, so I was thinking my comment in restoration drama was gone.

When I decided to look for abi's comment behind it, I saw mine, and then the ticky-box which said, "match case"

Magenta:
If you saved the page from Google in HTML form, you can email it to Patrick. Those were the last instructions I saw. (If there are newer instructions, e.g. if it should go straight to Michael Weholt, somebody please let us all know.)

I am appealing to the hivemind, to seek the answer to a question seen on flickr.

Does anyone have any idea what sort of beastie this is? I've, sort of, narrowed it down from what morphology is visible, but that's a rough guess (and it turns out I was deceived, and it's not a marine beastie)

Glad here is once again here.
Now if only the day lilies eaten by voles would also reappear.

P.S. to my #34: ... to Michael Roberts, not Weholt. Where is my brain?

Remember the Freezing in Grand Central Station prank?

It was used as a gimmick in an episode of one of the Law & Order shows last week. Robin Williams guest-starred as a charismatic anti-authoritarian creep who staged a freeze-in to cover a kidnapping. (Sort of.)

You brain is probably hanging out with mine. I wish I knew where they were, it's likely fun.

#35 Does anyone have any idea what sort of beastie this is?

It looks like a "red spider", which isn't a spider but a mite. "they were so tiny they looked like freckles..." sounds about right. When we're in North Wales in warm weather, huge numbers can usually be seen random-walking over white walls and window-sills (and other surfaces, but they show up best on white). As described here (scroll down for photo).

Terry Karney @ #35:

It looks like some sort of mite. Yon beastie looks similar to this:

http://www.pbase.com/holopain/image/44496628

but is obviously not the same thing.

Just finished the downloaded html of Little Brother.

It's somewhere between I hope this can't happen here, and I don't think it's likely that it would happen here, both much less strong conditions than I really care for. It feeds that little kernel of paranoia in my head that keeps planning for those excrement vs. air moving implement scenarios.

I have some quibbles, and I was really tempted to skim the tech exposition sections, but then again, I know a lot of that already, at least the bits that are grounded in reality.

The real problem that i have is just that dividing line between what's real and what's plausible, and what's not. Lots of SF has that nice clear dividing line of what the author has changed from our world. This doesn't. Not that that's really a problem with the book, mind you...

Yesterday I saw the free downloads, grabbed the .txt and TeXed it. My LaTeX version (using memoir - for those who have seen it) is up for download at the remix page; and tweaking the layout options in the .tex file will give you really good layouts, and a bit of freedom in exactly what kind of layout you'd like to read.

Also - the resulting PDF from that tex-file will have hyperlinks activated to all the referenced websites.

Now to read the book too - the bits and pieces I read while marking the text up were Very Interesting, but I haven't gotten around to acquiring an easily readable copy yet.

It doesn't look like the red spider mites I'm used to, as it's not flat bodied, and looks a little longer in the body, with more defined sectional structure, which is why I thought; at first, it was a gammaridean amphipod.

I'm wondering (1) if anyone here has had recent experiences with moving a website(2) from an ancient 9-years-old platform to new, World Of Tomorrow technologies containing terms like "Drupal" and "CMS."

If yes, do you have one or two proverbial "what I know know about the process of upgrading I wish I knew at the start" ideas? Because I'm at the start, and I'm not quite sure where to start, from here. i.e. Where do you learn what's the first thing you should learn?

(and if you can point to actual people who know Drupal et. al, email me)

---------
(1) knowing that the Fluorosphere has deep and varied experience which never ceases to amaze me.

(2) site now has articles, a daily newsletter, and a forum. The new version would add video (which can be useful), a small blog, and a wiki.

Terry 35,

You can try popping over to What's That Bug and hunt through archives to see if it has come up there before. They remind of the freshly hatched spiders from under our deck last year.

Jenny Islander #17: Is there a non-fannish synonym for jossed or canonshafted?

Rashomonified? Ok, I got nothin....

Clifton Royston @37-- Where is my brain?

Hopefully not in a Google cache. Tried MSN? ;-)

JESR @36-- eaten by voles? Sounds like a fate to be wished on someone particularly awful.

Terry @35,

I'd also say mite too. Doesn't have the legs and segments to be an amphipod, from what I can squint at that picture--the cephalothorax looks too smooth.

#35 Does anyone have any idea what sort of beastie this is?

It's a moneyspider! I loved those little guys, when I lived in England. They're supposed to bring good fortune if you're sensible enough to not smash them.

As for what it *actually* is...can't help you, I'm afraid.

I just nabbed the HTML file of Little Brother.

Some preliminary thoughts: since it was first mentioned I've been mulling over the fact that if I ever read YA fiction, I have to pretend that it's not talking about me, it's not for me, and it's not meant for me - it's written for an audience of one: That Kid Over There. If I apply any personal relevance to it whatsoever, I loathe it with the kind of hatred adults reserve for semicolons and people who run red lights.

The comments in the earlier thread, plus the cover copy and blurb quotes, didn't help the impression that this would be yet another of Those Books for the same audience of one: That Kid Over There. To be honest, my opinion of it sunk with every glowing review.

Turns out I was right. One paragraph in and the 'realistic teenage voice' that 'real kids will love!' made me want to punch Marcus in the face. Two paragraphs in and I settled for sneering 'you ignorant little snot, you think you're so clever' at the screen. I have never met one of us (even the ones who fell into the same ooh-I'm-so-cool egotrap Marcus firmly occupies) so idiotic that they would exercise the ability to make themselves quite so insufferable so quickly without getting a handle on who they were talking to first. Even in print. Seeing what so many of you think is an awesome teenage voice is so swell I can just feel my rude, arrogant, pretentious little heart bursting for joy.

(Three paragraphs in and I am scoffing. 'sucking chest wound of a human being'? A jailer? Really, Marcus? Your school has three vice-principals when most high schools in the USA now operate with only a principal and maybe a secretary because they can't afford one vice principal, and you're crying foul? Christ on a stick, Marcus, you're an idiot. Think. Use that much-vaunted brain of yours.)

Four paragraphs in and I'd say not to give this to any one of us with any kind of bullshit meter, because this pings mine big time. The title alone>pings it and combined with the first paragraph it's hilarious enough I'd almost file it under comedy if the coverage weren't so earnest. ('w1n5t0n', really?)

Yes, important things to say about the State of the American Nation, yes, I know, important things about security and authorities and scary people with tasers, yes, we know. That's my point here, and every one of us I know will agree with me.

The point here for me is that we live with not being taken seriously, with having our movements tracked and recorded by our parents and friends and schools every class and everywhere we go, we live with being told to shut up because we're not old enough or not wise enough to know what the Adults Are Thinking, we live with being told that we're not allowed to do this or that because it Might Hurt Us even though we know the risks are dammably low, we live with being under constant suspicion and being told to move on if we're doing nothing more than walking down the street, if we're laughing we're accused of plotting arson, if we're on a computer we must be doing something illegal, if we're doing nothing we're useless and if we try to do something we're not old or wise enough and we'll inevitably screw it up anyway so why bother teaching us, and so on. Every teenager I know can reel off a list of scary or creepy crap that's happened or been said to them because they were teenagers without even thinking about it.

The point is, welcome to our world. Welcome. Isn't it great? And here we have an adult writing as a teenager describing an adult world of ARGs and sucking chest wounds masquerading as people, and it just doesn't ring true. He's describing adult surveillance of the adult kind with adult outrage at being treated like a child, like a teenager, without acknowledging the fact that we already live with this crap, we get it from our parents and we get it from our schools and we get it from the cops and random passerby and we get it from each other and he is part of the problem.

The stuff Marcus is so arrogant about circumventing, the hey-look-at-me school of hacking, isn't the stuff we consider newsworthy or worth writing about, because it's what we live with. It's natural to us that we're suspicious of adults, that they aren't to be trusted without a lot of evidence saying we can. We don't go into detail about our roleplaying games in open forums or in public because doing that makes adults think we're doing something creepy and illegal. We don't think about the photo IDs or the cameras because they're always there anyway. We don't like it, sure, but they're there, and why screw with it and make it worse when we don't need to? People always watch us no matter how many or how few cameras there are, and we can't do anything about that. Those aren't anywhere near the list of priorities.

It just doesn't ring true, and it hasn't rung true in any discussion of it, in any review, even the cover copy itself, because it's not how it works for us. Marcus, in his tales of hacked laptops and screwing with gait recognition cams and all that, acts with the impunity of an adult, of the adult writing him. That is why Marcus is not believable, and I'm a few screens in and I already know this.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it. Being able to do something even if you shouldn't do it is an adult freedom, not a teenage one. The way Marcus goes about things in the climate he's living in (which isn't far off from a good proportion of US high schools, and even in my school which was pretty good about it otherwise the teachers took electronic rollcall every class and the school would SMS the parents' mobiles if a student was ever marked absent, plus a whole host of other security measures which didn't warrant even that much of our attention) isn't true to how we think, to the pressures we are actually under, to the rules we are forced to operate by.

All I can see happening is that this book is misunderstood by adults and loved by adults and all that conservative fearmongering backlash I've seen some comments here ask for will end up hurting us and pretty much only us. Hell, Little Brother will hurt us no matter what, whether it's banned or whether it's accepted in schools or whatever else might happen. The best result I think can I think of, in my opinion, would be for it to quietly flop.

Little Brother undermines itself by the fact of being what it is. It's a characteristic feature of YA fiction and it's particularly pernicious and offensive masquerading as something helpful and useful and oh-wow-it-lights-up cool. Given the subject, I don't see much way around that.

Yes, I can see the appeal of why it would seem to be such an awesome idea at root, and I can see why it would be so easy to think that Little Brother is its own answer to any and all objections at a distance. I personally care less about the awesome idea and more about the consequences of its execution, since I and the teenagers I know will be the ones dealing with them. We're still suffering from rules and suspicions left over from the effects of The Anarchist's Cookbook and that was published in the seventies, ffs.

No doubt I'll have more to say once I finish it. Who knows? My opinion might improve.

Did anybody notice that Tor's latest newsletter printed OSC's 'forward' to his latest book? Next, someone will be towing(*) a line at the end of which will be a fish being chased by Schrödinger's Cat being chased by Pavlov's Dog.

(*) Not my best, Ronit, but, hey, it's very early here.

De-lurking (and yay the site is back) to join in the praise for Little Brother.

DavidS @ 14: I was thinking about leaving copies around, too. Maybe BookCrossing?

Lindra @ 51: Maybe at 23 I'm effectively eons away from 17, but Marcus's voice didn't bother me. I heard the same criticisms about Rob Thurman's Nightlife, though, and although there were instances where I thought the voice was a little overdone, it didn't annoy me as much as it apparently annoyed some other readers. So I think your opinion is completely valid, but also that others, possibly even other teenagers, might not agree. I mean, I was a teen when I started watching Buffy, and though I recognized that the way they spoke wasn't the way I spoke, it didn't repel me.

I'm still trying to parse the rest of your comment, though. Is your main criticism (as far as believability goes) that a real teenager would never be able to get away with challenging "the system" the way Marcus does, would recognize that he wouldn't be able to and would never try? I'm open to discussion/debate over the book (if that's agreeable to our hosts, of course), but I want to make sure I understand your argument.

Stefan Jones @ 38: If there is a more evil television franchise than Law and Order, I don't know what it would be. I've come to despise that show.

Lindra @ 51: I hear what you're saying about making things worse, though I don't agree with it. (I say this as someone who spent several hours in jail, illegally and without being charged, when I was seventeen for possessing a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook.) Your point about roll call occurred to me, too, but I could also imagine a system arrogant enough to skip that safeguard.

The infodumping is a bit heavy at times (which, as a technical person, I maybe find more obtrusive than someone to whom it's new, and maybe not). I think a reader otherwise taken with the narrative will apply Roger Penrose's suggestion to the reader's of The Emperor's New Mind to those bothered by the equations: Skip over it and keep going.

There's a point in your argument, though, which pains me to read:

Being able to do something even if you shouldn't do it is an adult freedom, not a teenage one.

Been a teenager (he said, from memories of the seventies) was precisely about taking those freedoms from those unwilling (often with good motivations, sometimes not) to allow them. That conflict is part of the process of maturation, and that you write so well and yet hold that retrograde belief yourself suggests to me that you are (forgive me) still a child, whatever your age.

Lindra -- you may be right that your generation has a lot more crap to deal with, but the lack of civil liberties for teens is hardly a new problem. I'm 41 and it pissed me off, too. What you're describing is real, and today's world is arguably far more pernicious in its technique, but welcome, not just to your world, but to the world. Isn't it great? I've always thought that the real problem there is that many people attain intellectual adulthood early in life -- far earlier than our society is ready to grant them adulthood. In other societies, you can kill your bear and get down to the business of being a man, but not here and now.

As to having the freedom to do what's right even in the face of society's opposition -- no. Nobody has that freedom to do what they want, without society's opposition. Teens feel it more keenly, being more social animals to start with, but there's a reason nobody does jack about stopping the war, for instance, even though 70% of Americans think it was a bad idea. The vast majority of us find it impossible to thwart peer pressure.

In fact, I'd say the prime reason people are kicking up such a fuss about this book is a sense of, "Finally somebody's saying something about this crap." Cory's good at thwarting peer pressure (largely by selecting his peers wisely, which is the best any of us can do.) This book could be the literary equivalent of crayon on toilet paper and people would still recommend it to every teen they know.

I'll agree with your sentiment of Marcus' voice. It doesn't ring true to me, either -- but then, it does sound exactly like other YA fiction I've read. (I'm thinking Diane Duane and that Max Ride thing, and other stuff my daughter, now 13, has greatly enjoyed.) And so it's a good bet that most teens won't find it too off-putting. And if those teens find in it a tale of somebody who bucks the system, and that gets slipped under the radar, that's good for all of us. The more people who realize there's fascism a-brew, but that it's not inevitable, the better.

Cory Doctorow has this effect, I've noted. You either love him or hate him; most people seem to have a visceral reaction one way or the other. It's weird.

By the way, I noticed Marcus makes the dreaded "Things have to get worse before they get better" argument. Knowing what Patrick has said of that argument, then seeing it in a book he edited, written by his friend, a book he says is one of those he's most proud of helping bring into the world, well, that kind of tickled me. It's an easy argument easily abused--here, valid in context.

Goodnight Julia @ 53:

Ack! I was nervous and previewing a zillion times with too many different thoughts going on and apparently wrote all the sense out of it. Sorry about that.

Yeah, I stated the language thing a bit strongly. No doubt there are others my age who wouldn't (and didn't) find his voice irritating; I just haven't heard from them yet, but the possibility is there. I wasn't much affected by Buffy's language either, but I think my objection is more that Marcus' language strikes me as pompous and overconfident. It's so very 'I am awesome so I will namedrop everything awesome so you will understand how awesome it is and how awesome I am for knowing how awesome it is', especially in the beginning, and it was a struggle to read through it.

I'm sort of circling around my main point, here - bear with me, please?

I think Marcus' characterisation is inconsistent with that of a real teenager, and with Doctorow's goal, on several fronts. Marcus is very plainly a vehicle, and while some ideological vehicles can be good reads, I think the way he's set up undermines what he's trying to advocate.

It's a question of relevance. This is a book people want teenagers to read, to get them thinking critically about security and that, but Marcus is never in a position where he is learning any of this. He knows too much and his voice never (for me) stops being cocky to the point its offputting.

He gives advice on how to start learning and gives out springboards to start from on various topics but we don't see him learning anything himself other than getting a few 'oops, I overlooked that' moments (which aren't even internally consistent). He's a static character who is meant to be relevant to teenagers who might not even have a first clue about how to start with that kind of I HAS RIGHTS security beliefs/activism, and Marcus reads as someone who is already very, very indoctrinated into that school of thinking. To be honest, I don't think it reads as cool. It's not appealing. He sounds a little like a fanatic, all 'yeah yeah yeah this is how it is' while not bothering to spell out what it means to think that way. Blah blah Bill of Righs blah blah you can skip school blah blah blah... but what does it mean? Why should I think this way? It's served up as answering its own question and it doesn't at all.

I'm still noodling a little, sorry. I think it's written with characterisation and an ideology that are equally certain and sure and their sureness ends up working against each other. Both the message and the character are written to tell us that this is the better way of things as a matter of course, that we should of course care (and Marcus' interactions with his father are explictly written to show that his father is wrong) and while adults who are familiar with that school of thinking and Boing Boing, etc. are going to love it for falling smack in the middle of what they already know to be true, teenagers who are way too familiar with the powerlessness that comes with being a teenager are going to look at this and think 'no way can I do any of that'. It's a lot to take in when it's so directly at odds with a lot of what we're being told.

And the ones that are smart enough to understand it and not smart enough to understand that trying these things out can and will backfire without due caution are going to cause problems for for the rest, while the ones who already agree with it probably know all of it already and don't need it.

I get that the message is important. I agree that it is important. But as recruitment, it doesn't work. As an ideological manual, it doesn't work.

John A Arkansawyer @ 54:

I don't know. On the one hand, there are places where it's probably not going to get much worse, if at all. On the other hand, I can see well-meaning parents and teachers making a situation worse where they teach it or talk about it, but there's nowhere for the teens in question to test things out and they come up hard against rules and regulations. Some teachers will make that allowance and some won't. I suppose I'll have to trust that there are those who do. I still worry, though.

Michael Roberts @ 55:

That was really arrogant of me to say, wasn't it? I'm sorry about that; I should have clarified to say that the problems of lack of civil liberties are everyone's problem, not just mine, no matter how it feels to me at the time of posting.

You're right about peer pressure.

I agree with the 'someone's finally saying something about it' sentiment, yes. My concern is more 'was Little Brother the wisest and the most useful way to say it'? which is comparative nitpicking, really.

He's a very visceral writer. It's difficult to take an objective standpoint, moreso than with other writers where one can at least scrub off some of the personal bits and think about it at a distance, but Doctorow scribbles his convictions right onto the page and that much belief, on topics which concern a hell of a lot of people and polarise people any way they're presented, packs an emotional wallop. That's my theory, in any case.

Mods - can we have a "thoroughly spoiled" thread for Little Brother so people can discuss it freely?

*pokes the MoveableType architecture*

Is it sealed? Is it safe?

I second Mary Dell's recommendation. Sooner or later, I'm going to want to read _Little Brother_ without already knowing what happens in it....

Mary Dell: good suggestion. Our thoroughly spoiled little brother now has a thread of his own.

Yes. I rot-13'd the stuff I thought might be spoilerish, but temptation always beckons.

(Good temptation. Nice temptation. Good boy. Now behave.)

Lindra @ 57: No problem. I think I mostly understood your original post, I just didn't want to make a wrong assumption and end up arguing a point you weren't actually making. If that makes sense. It's early in the morning.

Actually I agree with much of what you said, even though I liked the book.

And now I'll move over to the new thread before I say more.

Sheesh. I wish as a teenager I could have expressed myself as well as Lindra does.

I wish as a 41-year-old I could express myself as well as Lindra does. Lucky punk.

John #54: I sometimes see bits of (I think) Law and Order in the gym, when the other TVs are showing golf and Larry King interviewing Mercury Militia types or professional wrestlers or whatever[1]. It's a pretty distorting filter in a lot of ways, but then all TV is that, and it's dismaying to see how often people build political rhetoric and ultimately policies and personal decisions on that distorted TV picture. For example, how many people keep a gun in the house to keep themselves safe from crime, but don't bother checking the smoke detector batteries? Or obsess about teaching their kids to stay away from strangers, but don't bother with swimming lessons? We get a lot of our weird risk ideas from TV shows like that one.

And my impression is that a realistic picture of serious crime isn't interesting and exotic, so much as depressing and dismal crap like a gang member killing some bystanders during a shootout over who gets to sell crack on a particular street corner, or some lady's drunken abusive boyfriend finally managing to kill her instead of just beating the hell out of her. But it's not all that much fun to watch obvious lowlifes get paraded around, or to watch clever prosecutors outthink high-school dropout crackheads and trick them into admitting guilt or something.

[1] Was Larry King always basically the TV version of _The National Enquirer_?

Michael #65: These damned kids[1] today, expressing themselves in coherent written form like adults. Why, in my day, you had to spend several years recovering from bad high school instruction in writing before you could write like that.

Lindra #58: Can you think of examples of this kind of book that worked better for you? From your comments, you seem to find most or all YA stuff pretty annoying.

I rather liked Madeline L'Engle's books, including both the YA stuff and the adult stuff. I read most of them as an adult, though, so I'm not sure I'm reacting the way you would. (But I also wasn't looking for Improving Books for Young People, just books I'd enjoy reading.) House Like a Lotus is probably a bit outside the range you'd call YA (it deals with some moderately heavy stuff), but its protagonist is a smart moderately outcast 16 year old girl and it seemed to me to hold together pretty well. I also liked a lot of Heinlein's stuff which was supposedly written for juveniles, but which was actually often him slipping stuff past the prudes[2].

[1] Actually, I think she said she was 17-18, so not a kid, but "these young adults today" just doesn't have the same ring....

[2] IMO, he was a much better writer when narrowly constrained by juvenile book rules than when he could insert gratuitous sex scenes, open marriages, incest, etc., into his books.

Argh.

Why does San Francisco's Castro Theater always show stuff I'd love to see when I'm not visiting? It is a personal affront that, instead of showing The Black Hole and Moonraker the week of July 14, it will do so on May 17. And Tron and Brainstorm will be shown on July 4.

Bummer.

Lindra @ 57: "I have never met one of us (even the ones who fell into the same ooh-I'm-so-cool egotrap Marcus firmly occupies) so idiotic that they would exercise the ability to make themselves quite so insufferable so quickly without getting a handle on who they were talking to first."

I haven't read Little Brother yet, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that, possibly, Marcus might develop a bit over the course of the book. He might be being deliberately set up as overconfident so as to make his inevitable takedown that much more painful, and the lessons learned all the more relevant.

(Also, I must say you clearly have excellent taste in friends, if you think that there are limits to teenage overconfidence and lack of self-awareness. Especially in the privacy of one's own head.)

"...teenagers who are way too familiar with the powerlessness that comes with being a teenager are going to look at this and think 'no way can I do any of that'."

Like how BtVS totally flopped because all the people watching it were like, "What, a cheerleader who fights evil and is superstrong? No way I can do any of that." Superpower fantasies are popular among the powerless precisely because they get to indulge in something outside of their daily experience.

@Lindra #51, 57, 58:
From your comments, it sounds like you have not finished the book yet. Based on the quality and, well, emphaticness of your comments on what you have read to date, I am very much looking forward to your comments after you've finished the book!

@Michael Weholt and Michael Roberts #65-66: Me too, though I'm "only" 32 yet.

Moving over to the Spoiled thread so as not to mess it up for those who haven't finished it yet. (Lucky people they are! I want to read it for the first time again!)

later,
-cajun

@Lindra #51, 57, 58:

Whoops! Sorry, I don't mean to imply that you will be the "Token Young Adult" whom I think "will speak for all YA's". I'm still not all that good at getting my brain to not automatically assign individual people to groups and consider them to be The Representative for their group. I'm recognizing that it happens, though, so hopefully I can learn to nip such things quickly so I can *think* before writing such things...

I still look forward to your commentary when you finish the book though.

Later,
-cajun

Lindra: OK, now you've got me thinking about the narrative voices of various young characters. I'm going to toss out a few books that comes to mind; for those which you've read, can you say which protagonists stack up as "realistic" for you?

Scott Westerfield's Midnighters trilogy. (Or his Uglies series -- I haven't gotten to reading it yet, but plenty others here have.)

Neil Gaiman's Coraline.

James Clemens' Shadowfall and .

John C. Wright's Orphans of Chaos series.

Terry Pratchett's Tiffany

Any of Heinlein's "juvies"

Almost anything by Doris Piserchia.

Bah. the sequel to Shadowfall lost its name to the Naith; the title is Hinterland.

Michael Roberts @55 - I don't hate Cory Doctorow; I just don't think he's a very good writer and I choose to spend my reading time on other things. Of course you don't hear from people who don't either love or hate his books - if people had to talk about all the things they didn't care about, they'd never get to do anything else.

For me, he falls into that category of "scifi authors with grand ideas, but lacking in story/chops". I mean, it's a general failing of the genre, and I know that when I pick up a genre book, but for some reason I find it especially irritating in contemporary authors. Maybe someone will remix "Little Brother" in essay form with the story bits taken out - I'd probably read it then.

Dave@40: And as also seen here, and elsewhere on that site :-)

albatross @ 69:

I don't go looking for Improving Books For Young People either, but it's a popular sub-genre in YA fiction, along with What I Wish I Had Known At Your Age, and they frequently cross over. Neither are subgenres I'd recommend.

There is some good YA out there, though (she says). Off the top of my head, although most of the authors are Australian:

John Marsden's Tomorrow series; Laurie Anderson, Speak in particular; I've always been a fan of Judy Blume and would recommend most of her work; Lois Lowry's Anastasia series; Emily Rodda's Deltora Quest (yes, I know, but I loved it at fifteen); Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl; Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow, my copy of which I have adored to dogeared bits; Elizabeth Honey's 45 + 47 Stella Street and the sequel Fiddleback; Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn, which I hated when I was twelve and loved when I was sixteen, and others; Garth Nix's Abhorsen trilogy, the first (Sabriel) in particular; Andy Griffiths, particularly his Just! series (hilarious when I was ten, still hilarious when I was sixteen), Morris Gleitzman; Paul Jennings; Robin Klein, particularly The Listmaker although her others are good too; Cynthia Voight for Dicey's Song.

My first Heinlein was Sail Beyond The Sunset, and I've never read his juveniles - I seem to tend toward his later work.

heresiarch @ 70:

Yeah, those were my preliminary comments. I'm somewhere between halfway and two-thirds through and quite liking it, actually, even if I disagree on a lot of points. Your limb appears to be the correct one from what I'm reading.

(My friends frequently don't take the wise route. But they at least get a sense of how just how much trouble they're in if they do and start plotting out how to get out of it the moment they decide not to be polite for whichever reason. Their reasons aren't always sensible either. But there's at least a few seconds of thought somewhere in there.)

Superpower fantasies are popular among the powerless precisely because they get to indulge in something outside of their daily experience

Which is true, yes. However, Little Brother has aspects of being a superpower fantasy combined with urban realism. That's problematic when the driving point behind the superpower fantasy in question is 'this could be you'!

There's no way to learn how to be one girl in all the world with the power to stop evil, but there are ways to learn how to do all or a lot of the things Marcus does, which is my point exactly (or one of them, I have too many points): Little Brother is trying to combine a character who has many of the characteristics of a superhero with the idea that you can be a superhero too!, which defeats the idea of a superhero.

Kalamazoooo!

Who's going? Four of us, at least. Will there be another ML gathering?

Susan -- how about the dance panel getting together for lunch Saturday?

David Harmon @ 73:

This is where I put my shameface on and admit I haven't read any of those. (Yet. I'm taking down a list of the books mentioned and will get them from the local library.) Do you mind if I read them in the next few days and get back to you? Hopefully this thread will be active then, if you're still interested.

My favourite voices of any young character I've read so far are a tossup between Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park, Hating Alison Ashley by Robin Klein, and 45 + 47 Stella Street by Elizabeth Honey. All are Australian authors and I recommend them to the skies.

#68 albatross: Why, in my day, you had to spend several years recovering from bad high school instruction in writing before you could write like that.

I don't know when your day was exactly, but it was certainly true in my day and I strongly suspect it's still true in this day.

As part of my graduate fellowship, I taught the equivalent of "Freshman English" for a few years and by far the most difficult part of it was getting many of my students to believe that the effusive praise their high school English teachers had heaped on them for being able to throw around Big Words was pretty horrifically misplaced.

Every once in a while you'd get a student who was either naturally gifted at expressing him-or-herself in a concise, straightforward manner, or who had a teacher who actually could teach writing to the idea instead of the teacher. What a delight that was.

Cat Meadors @ 75... "scifi authors with grand ideas, but lacking in story/chops"

Most if not all of them?
I wouldn't say that.

Dear Hosts-- may we also have a K'zoo thread?

I'm chairing the panel for Susan and Tracie (and a third who I'm sure we'll introduce to the joys of Making Light if she's not already here). Who else will we see?

Lindra #77: I'll have to look for some of those (on the assumption that what you're describing are good books that are often marketed to young adults).

I thought To Sail Beyond the Sunset was very good in its non-SF descriptions the main character's life, the whole historical fiction of being a smart and practical freethinker living in that time and place. I liked it less and less as it incorporated more and more SF-ish elements, and didn't care for the ending at all. I kept thinking he must have started this as something like a memoir of his own upbringing and life, but mangled a bit to fit his previous stories/future history and his own weird worldview. The sense of living in small town Missouri or Kansas City in that time, being so different in your beliefs and worldview than the official, socially acceptable beliefs and worldview, that felt very real to me somehow.

Lindra :

Little Brother is trying to combine a character who has many of the characteristics of a superhero with the idea that you can be a superhero too!, which defeats the idea of a superhero.

Aah. Yeah. Yeah, I see what you're getting at here.

But you don't have to be a Hacker Superhero to achieve something, given that teens are more likely to face the travails that Marcus goes up against in the opening pages (microwaving RFIDs, etc.) than what Marcus goes up against in the rest of the book.

As I related upthread, all it took to bring me down was a series of proxy servers. It took about 20 seconds to get through the block and could've been done by a trained monkey.

It doesn't take a superhero.

*pops her head up, emotionally battered but functional*

Tracie & Sisuile, I just emailed about doing dinner Friday night for the dance panel. I'm coming in Friday afternoon, leaving Sunday morning. All Saturday meals also available, but would rather do the dance panel thing the night before if it works for peoples' schedules. I'll have a car, so we can go off-campus.

Michael #80:

ISTM that the net is wonderful for learning how to write[1] in a readable, effective way, because you have good reasons to write a lot of text, and you get feedback and see the effects of what you wrote. And you can also watch how other people write, and how it works out for them. I think I learned much more about effective writing from a couple years chatting on Relay and irc and arguing politics and space policy and crypto on BITNET lists and Usenet than I did in any number of classes in high school and college.

"Everything I ever needed to know about writing I learned on Usenet. And ISTM U ppl should STFU, coz the lurkers are supportin' me in email."

[1] I'm just going to ignore the fact that in this company, I'm nowhere in the top 100 people to ask about how to learn to write effectively....

Lindra: Well, my own shameface is that I'm pretty weak in non-SF fiction! On the other hand, I need to visit the library anyway... ;-)

Brief orienting notes regarding my samples:

Scott Westerfield is the current Hot Name in YA SF, though Midnighters is more horror/fantasy than science fiction. I was struck by the vulnerability of the protagonists, and that sometimes they do learn the hard way.

Neil Gaiman's Coraline struck me as smart and brave, without being reckless or superhuman.

James Clemens' Shadowfall and Hinterland -- fantasy with some young protagonists, but they've been summarily thrown in the deep end along with the grown-ups.

John C. Wright's Orphans of Chaos series -- Possibly unfair, as the protagonists are manifestly not meant to be ordinary teenagers.

Terry Pratchett: Arguably the greatest living satirist of our time. The "Tiffany" books are a branch of his "Discworld" series, the branch starting with The Wee Free Men. The protagonist is smart and brave, but she's also frequently in over her head!

Heinlein's "juvies": His "can-do" teens became a stereotype, but they have their moments. Podkayne Of Mars breaks from his pattern in some significant ways.

Doris Piserchia: Long out of print, but I've been collecting her juveniles for a while. Her usual setup was an adolescent girl, abandoned or otherwise "wild", with some kind of world-hopping power, and/or an animal companion (sometimes one provides the other), careering through the multiverse like a misguided missile.

#86 albatross: ISTM that the net is wonderful for learning how to write[1] in a readable, effective way...

I think, despite much fretty fretty punditry to the contrary, you are quite right.

Obviously there are a number of bad habits people can pick up (trollishness, e.g.), but I think if you're starting out with a relatively clear thinking mind wanting to express itself in good faith, there are plenty of Learning By Doing opportunities on the web and/or intertubes. Hell, I've certainly become a better writer from the experience. At least in my estimation, which may or may not count for much.

In line with David Harmon #87's list:

Fly by Night by Frances Hardinge -- tough, smart girl avec goose named Saracen.

Good to be home, indeed, Teresa. (The world must be back to rights, because somewhere in the world, there's still Bacon and Egg Soup....

albatross @ 83:

(Yes, they're all good books in themselves, although the quality varies from excellent to worthwhile reading.)

It felt that way to me, too. There was quite a bit of small detail in there that sounded like they'd been taken from memory, or that he'd done some fairly close research. It's one of the strongest character backgrounds I've ever read out of Heinlein, and though I haven't read the juveniles I'd venture a guess those don't come close either. Mangled is about right, as well - it started off so well, good beginning, excellent character intimacy, and somewhere two-thirds in, it dropped into confused weirdness. It was almost as though he realised all of a sudden that it was too true to life and he had to push it away from reality somehow, and what better way to do that than introduce SF? Thing is, I liked Maureen. I really, really liked her. And then he went and wrote things and made it less about Maureen and more about Weirdness. I threw a full spoiled-child fit when I finished it the first time, stomping and all. It was so disappointing.

Emily H @ 84:

It doesn't take a superhero.
I think this is the crux of it: is that the impression people come away with? I'm leaning toward yes, while your stance suggests no.

David Harmon @ 87:

Ah, the wonders of libraries and the librarians who let us borrow their precious books when we ask nicely. Wee Free Men! I've always planned on getting around to reading that, but I end up rereading the City Guard branches instead and planning to become Vimes when I am a grownup.

Out of that lsit Doris Piserchia sounds the most intriguing. I'm curious about her rarity - would she be available at a fairly small library, or would she require the untold magics of interstate loan?

At 17-18 (not very long ago, really), I was only picking up those YA novels from authors I loved in continuing series, and most of them are fantasy. SF/F voices usually don't bother me as condescending and didn't at that point, because I know they are generally writing for an even younger audience who won't catch it and can use the lessons.

I think part of the problem (and I know it's one for me) is that those of us who are bibliophiles and reasonably quick run for the adult sections of the library/bookstore as soon as we can. Thus, we get away from the "improving" YA literature as fast as possible except for in English class. Then when we get something like Little Brother, which is (SF) Literature with a Point from which We as Young Adults are Supposed to Draw Parallels by A Wise and Knowing Adult, it jars us. I got enough of that in English class, thank you, and still have a negative viceral reaction to that sort of Literature.

Little Brother seems to be a book to read because it has a point, not for the pleasure of reading it because the story is engaging, engrossing, and worth the joy. Thatis why I still read so much YA. I like Diane Duane's books because they're stories first and something that expands perspective second - In many ways, those were the first "urban fantasy" I had read and managed to make me think seriously about religion at a point when I needed to. If the book had had a point that it beat me over the head with, I wouldn't have liked them nearly as much, I think. However, I started reading them in 6th grade, and now my re-reads are tinged with the memory of all the other times I read them.

My current "buy if I see it" list has a lot of authors who flip back and forth across the YA/Adult boundary: Robin McKinley, Madeline L'Engle*, Tamora Pierce, Diane Duane, Ursula LeGuin, Diane Wynne Jones, etc. I will say that there are several YA authors that I can't read anymore for exactly the reasons you describe above - I'm technically an adult these days and I hate getting preached at. Though I think growth is something that these authors were striving for even through the preaching - the lessons that many of us learned by reading YA fantasy this generation have great value. The world is bigger than you think. Girls can be heroes, too. Heroism isn't just about beating people up, it's mostly about using your brain. Courage is a priceless comodity and is not the absence of fear. Magic is all very well, but it's what you do with or with out it that matters. Ask for help, stupid. Learn to trust. Love to learn. And something many of those authors pushed with all their hearts - a girl is not insignificant, she can have just as much an effect as any boy. She can be a hero, she can be a queen, a Rider, a Herald, a mercenary, a mage, a Knight, a scientist, a doctor, a vetrinarian, a teacher, a mother, a brain. It's the fruit of the fight - girls who read these books don't accept "Because you're a GIRL!!" as a valid reason that we can't be or do something. But the way many of these authors pushed that point home was by just having it be so. It wasn't a big deal in the books, why should it be so in the real world. However, you can see in some earlier books/older authors that the fight is still their central point. I don't read those anymore. I can't.

That may be what Doctorow is doing, that a new generation who has a new fight on their hands and the fight is the point, but you're right. It's preachy enough that I don't see my friends in many of the charecters. They're not real teens to me and so the point makes me cringe, as it becomes Another Piece of Literature I Should Read and Improve Myself Upon.

*I still am working on the goal I set at 10 - own everything of hers I can. Still working on the non-fiction.

Regarding YAs: Reviews in the July issue of you-know-what will be devoted to them, so I've been reading tons. Another notable Australian author is D.M. Cornish (trilogy which started with Foundling and now has sequel Lamplighter out). Though the vast appendices initially put me off, and only some of the pervasive "exotic word" definitions seem really useful, the writing itself is impressive: vivid, with a good ongoing story. Since it also comes with drawings by the author, it's a bit like the bastard son of Mervyn Peake. (I won't discuss it further, for fear of plagiarizing my own eventual column.)

And more goodies are coming soon, from people like Diana Wynne Jones.

Lindra: First, you're amazing. You write very well. If you hadn't told us you were a teenager I'd never have guessed.

Second, I bet you read every bit as well as you write, or even better, and so I doubt there's any YA fiction that really works for you. I remember reading YA fiction after reading The Lord of the Rings in junior high, and rolling my eyes a lot. Tenth graders who read at the 10¹² grade level are not the target market for this book; tenth graders who read at tenth grade level are.

Third, FINISH THE BOOK. I found Marcus much more likeable by the end.

Fourth, there might be a bit of the "brick wall on stage" effect going on here. You know that one? If you build a brick wall with real bricks and mortar on stage, it will look fake from the 10th row. To make it look real, you have to put up a muslin frame and paint bricks onto it. If you transcribe teenage speech (anyone's, actually) exactly as it's spoken, it looks stupid and makes THEM look stupid, because written English is quite different from spoken English, to the point where some linguists have called it a separate dialect. Just a thought.

Fifth, Marcus is in California, and nobody I know talks like him (I live in New Jersey).

Sixth, Cory did get a couple of things wrong. There are a couple places where I could detect some Canadianisms creeping in.

Serge @52, it makes it feel like home. Thank you for putting your best foot forward at that early hour.

Sisuile @ 92:

Exactly. Yes, that was my problem with it, and my reaction was, as you said, way too visceral. In retrospect I posted too early while I was still experiencing that twinge of 'ugh, not again!'.

I ran for the adult section as fast as I could, too, but the thing is, I still read YA and I do in fact like YA as a whole at times despite how much I slam the genre. It's that so much of what's recommended are, well, the sorts of books taught in English classes With Important Points, and I've learnt to avoid them, but then you get something like Little Brother recommended all over the place and it is jarring, yes, because there's all this other awesome YA out there and there's this and in some ways it's almost orthogonal to what I've come to expect of quality YA fiction.

I often fall into the (bad) habit of barely thinking of quality YA as YA because the subgenres of Good Story and Good Characters are to some authors so separate from the subgenres of Listen Up, Kid and Moral Lesson that it's tedious and really very obvious, and the kind of YA that is brought up in discussions tends to fall into the latter two. Except in places where it doesn't, and then it does for one book or another, and -- I don't know about you -- I react with a kind of mild horror. ML is recommending what? etc.

The lessons are important, of course they are, and they need to be said. It's that the delivery methods are different as a spray can and a hammer, and once I've learnt that I hate being hit in the head with a hammer, or that the spray can stories are awesome for all the background graffiti that's taken as perfectly normal and pretties up the landscape to boot, I can't stand the hammer stories anymore because of the unsettling sense that they should be painting the wall, not putting holes in it, to stretch the simile too far.

This thread gives me the impression I really, really, really should read more Madeline L'Engle. Anywhere specific I should start?

Ronit @ 95... You're welcome. It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

Lindra 96: ...to stretch the simile too far.

Yes, that simile was stretched to the point where it snapped and recoiled and put out its own eye, and may have injured other innocent similes who were just walking by at the time. My metaphor has now suffered a similar (npi) fate.

Sisuile #92:

I can think of a bunch of good SF with young characters playing major roles without being superheroes, exactly. And yes, not needing to beat anyone up or get into a shootout or whatever. ISTM that a critical lesson of fiction at all ages/levels is that you're not some helpless pawn under the control of the bigger and richer and more powerful people. Even if you can't beat anyone up or buy anyone off, you've got a mind and eyes and hands and courage and beliefs, and you can take meaningful action. And you can take responsibility for making things better, or for making your own world better.

Gaiman and Pratchet had a wonderfully funny book called Good Omens, in which three of the important characters in the book were pretty young, and were not immobilized by this fact. Though one of them was kind of superheroey, in a Revelations sort of sense. (I'm not sure this book would be nearly as funny if you weren't raised with some minimal cultural familiarity with Protestant Christian millenialist ideas.)

Vinge's The Peace War has a main character who's about 15, and isn't a superhero, though he's way, way off on the far right end of the intelligence distribution, and has certainly had an interesting life. A bunch of his books feature pretty normal but bright kids maturing as the story progresses--A Deepness in the Sky and A Fire Upon the Deep both have bits of this.

L Neil Smith's Pallas follows a non-superhuman guy from about age 15 to the point where he's a grandfather, but a lot of the core action that sets his life's path happens when he's very young.

Shulman's The Rainbow Cadenza> also follows a young, very talented but not at all superhuman woman as she matures and resolves her big plot/life difficulties.

All these characters solve their problems by thinking much more than by fighting, though there are small bits of fighting in each one. One thing that strikes me is that I don't think any of them are marketed as YA, partly because there are occasional sexual references. (By contrast, it seems like Card's Ender's Game is marketed as a YA title, which is sort of amazing, given how amazingly dark and horrible the story really is.)

So I've been wondering, are lurkers the dark matter in the fluorosphere?

(Prompted by finding someone on my LJ flist who also got an ARC of Little Brother from the Making Light offer. I didn't know she was a lurker, too.)

Lindra:

... the subgenres of Good Story and Good Characters are to some authors so separate from the subgenres of Listen Up, Kid and Moral Lesson ...

[laughing too hard to continue reading] Oh, well said!

Xopher @ 94:

First - I give ML and its commenters, including you, partial credit. Three (four?) years of lurking gave me a significant starting point.

Second - there is YA fiction that works for me, but it has to be YA fiction that sounds like me or my friends, or at least credits us with thought processes. Which is probably more of a tough call than it sounds ('of course they all think like I do!' ego-centrism, etc.).

Third - I'm glad to hear he was more likeable by the end, so I will try. I'm tempted to ask if I really truly have to, but he is already growing on me a little, so I won't.

Fourth, Fifth, Sixth - you could be right about the brick wall, but probably not in the way you mean, exactly. Marcus speaks in complete sentences, and so do I and my friends and the people I know. He just doesn't speak in the sentence I'm accustomed to, sentences with commas and digressions and true tangents meandering back toward the original topic. The dialect is very different from mine, yes, because I'm not in the US or ever have been, but I'm used to that from other novels. There's a kind of authenticity to it, but it's the same fake-authentic they describe of the San Fran baths. I don't know, precisely. Hm. I'll have to think about this.

Lindra #96:

I'd start with House Like a Lotus or Certain Women, just because those are my favorite of her books. The YA/juvenile books are quite good, but they're definitely written for younger readers, so a lot of what an adult worldview wants to see is a bit out of focus. Of those, Arm of the Starfish has a somewhat oddball SFish premise, but is a good read. Meet the Austins and A Ring of Endless Light are, IMO, very good. I