Young female heroes…
I often think of tweens and teens these days; how they’ll make out in the world we leave them, the new trials and tribulations awaiting them that previous generations didn’t have to survive, and so forth. Like everyone else, they were affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, but their lives were more adversely affected and interrupted than those of adults. Moreover, because they’re on the path of turning into adults, they’ll have intense adolescent problems to contend with long forgotten about by most adults plus a mountain of new ones to climb.
That’s how I became interested in young adult (YA) literature. I’d read Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars as a kid long ago and immediately liked that novel about teen angst set in the future, something I and my nerdy cohort could easily identify with. Later, with that fond memory, I knew I had to try writing a YA novel. I didn’t embark on that marathon immediately. As I did with my mystery and crime novels, I studied what was “out there.” (That included those Harry Potter books, which taught me what not to do. Thank you, J.K.!) As with the mystery and crime stories, I discovered that sci-fi and YA literature weren’t incompatible, just like Heinlein had indicated.
My first YA sci-fi novel, The Secret Lab, was a sci-fi mystery set on the International Space Station (ISS) far in the future when families with tweens, not just astronauts, form a tight-knit little community living aboard a much-enlarged station. This YA novel’s timeline coincides with what was going on Earth below as the “downies” struggle through the Chaos in the hard sci-fi novel I titled Survivors of the Chaos.
In the two YA sci-fi novels after that one, we followed J. K. Rowling’s trajectory a bit: Tween to young teen and on to older teen, in The Secret Lab, The Secret of the Urns, and Mind Games, respectively. I say “we” because A. B. Carolan rewrote, reedited, and republished The Secret Lab and then authored the next two novels. But, in another major difference with Rowling’s fantasy series, besides those three novels being hard sci-fi as well as YA, their young heroes were all girls. Why is that?
You might think it was because of Podkayne? No, I had more a more profound reason that A. B. fully agreed with: Too many YA authors refuse to recognize young girls’ importance! (That’s true in general, of course, probably more so.) Young women aren’t sexual objects or childhood brides. They’re not men’s slaves. They’re not breeders who should stay home taking care of men’s children. Good things happen in societies when they can be creatives—artists, storytellers, techies, and scientists—even entrepreneurs, and yes, politicians. Our societies only have to give them the chance to realize their full potential to reap the benefits!
I’ll leave it to MFA students’ theses to analyze how many YA heroes are girls. Heinlein, of course, was a pioneer when he created Podkayne. I’d still bet the number of male YA heroes is larger than the number of female ones. Having known and admired many strong women in my long life, and having taught many years in academia where girls are often told they can’t do math or science (today called STEM), it was easy to get motivated and create Shashibala in The Secret Lab, Asako in The Secret of the Urns, and Della in Mind Games. (Readers will note that A. B. and I have followed the timeline of the three books in the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy”—making a YA version of each one, if you will.) These three girls are young female heroes who represent the future power of women that lamentably is only beginning to be unleashed in some of Earth’s current societies.
Hopefully, I can get A. B. to finish the “Denisovan Trilogy.” His Kayla Jones could really kick ass in Origins! (That novel is not set in my usual sci-fi universe, but it’s hero is still a young adult female—something like a wizard, in fact, so take that, J.K.!)
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Three A. B. Carolan YA sci-fi mysteries. They’re listed above. The Secret Lab has Shashibala and her friends out to find a cat loose in the ISS. In the process, they uncover a conspiracy. The Secret of the Urns finds Asako befriending some strange ETs living on an Earth-sized moon of a Jupiter-sized planet. Humans are persecuting the ETs, and Asako wants to stop the persecution. Mind Games has Della trying to find her foster father’s killer. She has to use her ESP powers fully to thwart a plan to take over the fledgling ITUIP (“International Trade Union of Independent Planets”). These three novels, available in both ebook and print format wherever quality books are sold (even on Amazon—they were published before our boycott), would make a great holiday gift for the young adults among your family and friends. Many adults who are young-at-heart have also enjoyed them!
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
