SF Said hopes the time is right for space science to once again become a popular theme in children’s fiction.
When I was a child, spaceflight was a thrilling reality. The Apollo and Soyuz missions promised to extend our reach to the stars. Space exploration fuelled an explosion of stories during the postwar years in comics such as Dan Dare and Tintin’s Destination Moon, and in TV programmes and films such as Doctor Who, Star Trek and Star Wars. Yet even back then, space novels written specifically for young readers were hard to find.
They disappeared completely with the decline of space exploration in the 1980s and 1990s. But the new century has seen a re-ignition of interest in space. Star Wars is even bigger now than it was in the 1970s… …
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Yet children’s fiction has somehow remained adrift from these developments. Where are all the epic new space stories for young readers? Occasionally, there’s a novel in which space is an ingredient. Frank Cottrell Boyce’s Cosmic is one example, as is Sally Gardner’s Carnegie Medal-winning Maggot Moon. But full-blown epic space stories have yet to enjoy anything like the visibility in children’s books that they enjoy elsewhere.
The prevailing wisdom in children’s publishing is that space is a hard sell. Everyone is a little scared of it. No one knows why. I’ve discussed this with authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians; we all acknowledge that it’s an anomaly.
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Happily, there are signs that the tide is turning. Puffin has been commissioning Doctor Who ebooks from some of our best children’s writers, including Eoin Colfer (who also wrote a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy sequel), and the new children’s laureate, Malorie Blackman. Increasingly over the last year, I’ve heard it whispered that “space is the next big thing in children’s books”.
I hope that’s true, because I’ve spent the last seven years writing Phoenix, a space epic for readers of nine and up, set in a galaxy where humans and aliens are at war.
via Children’s space stories are ready to take off again | Books | theguardian.com.
