Science Fiction

Is there any going back once a world has become a dystopia? That's what I kept wondering as I read my first two books from the new batch of Rosie Award nominees. Libba Bray's Beauty Queens is set in the near future and concerns thirteen survivors of a plane crash on a tropical island. They also just happen to be contestants in the Miss Teen Dream beauty contest, sponsored by The Corporation, a company whose ubiquity in media and the marketplace make them a not-unfamiliar behind-the-scenes corporate dictatorship. Divergent, by Veronica Roth, is set in a much less-familiar future Chicago. Read more »

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Take a touch of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, add to it a smidgeon of John Grisham, a dislike for the music industry, (not music, just the industry behind it), stir well and you have Rob Reid's book Year Zero. It's about a universe of beings that have discovered that humans have the best music of any race in the entire universe, only they can't contact us because we aren't part of the "Refined League." In a moment of universal insanity, their solution is to pirate every song ever made, and distribute these to every being in the universe. Suddenly, after coming out of their music- induced rapture, they realize that under earth law the universe owes the people of earth a very large amount of money. Read more »

Warning – Don't look for these books in the Young Adult section! These are "Adult Books," written for adults. Teens beware!

Ok, now that I've got your attention, let me also say that these books are just great for teens. So great, in fact, that the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) made an award just for them, and named them after a famous Baltimore librarian – sort of. Her name was Margaret A. Edwards, but her friends called her Alex, and that's where we get the Alex Awards. The 2012 Alex Awards feature ten books written for adults, but with special appeal to teens. Read more »

This was the shortest film I’ve ever seen. It was based on Kurt Vonnegut’s short story called “Harrison Bergeron”. The original story was published in 1961 and this twenty-six minute film adaptation was published in 2009. The film was meant to be dystopian science fiction but it could pass for just about anything. It’s the year 2081 and there have been an additional 185 amendments to the US Constitution to remove all inequalities in American society. Harrison Bergeron the lone anarchist rebels against this idea and plants a bomb to mount an insurrection. That’s it. If there are any fans of V is for Vendetta then they will probably like this film. The themes are exactly alike; see trailer below. The library has two copies of 2081 on dvd.