But is there a girl on the cover?

It's not a secret that I like science fiction, or speculative fiction, as some prefer to call it. I posted a picture of me at a college SF party, I blogged about Connie Willis for Tell An Author You Care Day, and I titled a post using a Star Trek/Shakespeare reference. (Shakespeare was the greatest SF writer of his time, by the way.)

So I'm thrilled that Sam Riddleburger has declared John Christopher Week at his blog. And John Christopher (aka Sam Youd) himself has made an appearance in the comments! If you devoured The Tripods trilogy as a kid, like I did, you know that the imagery of his books haunts you, years later. Honestly, I want to re-read these books so badly now that Sam has reminded me of them, but I'm a tiny bit scared of the nightmares. Maybe I'll start with The Sword of the Spirits trilogy instead, since I haven't read them. At least they'll be new nightmares.

Here are some other SF books that I loved as a kid:

The Enchantress From the Stars, The Far Side of Evil, and This Star Shall Abide, all by Sylvia Louise Engdahl. I've been meaning to blog about these books forever, but I need a kick in the pants. First of all, I need to re-read them to see if my memories are correct. Second, I need to find someone else who read them as a kid, someone who will get all excited with me and remember what it was like to read a story of a GIRL who was a space explorer.

The Day of the Drones by Mary Alice Lightner. The hype on the 1969 cover reads "an incredible adventure in the radioactive ruins of the world where whites live like insects and blacks are the elite." I'm sure I had no idea at the time that I was reading something that radical. I just remember it as a great adventure story. And again, there's a GIRL on the front.

I wish I could remember more, beyond the obvious like A Wrinkle in Time or anything by Ray Bradbury, but most of the rest that I loved were fantasy, like The Borrowers or Half Magic or the Earthsea books, rather than science fiction.

I did run across this fabulous site where an expert will help you with a faulty memory: It's called All Experts, and in the category of Science Fiction books, there are some great questions (and answers.) I love this one:

"I was wondering if you could tell me the various methods used in Science Fiction to raise the dead..."

and this one:

"Many years ago I read a (juvenile) science fiction book about two educated parents who taught their infant son to travel through an alternate universe."

And then there's the really weird:

"Do you know anything on how bananas brown so fast?"

I'm sure if someone had written a SF book about that last one, AND it had a girl on the cover, I would have read it too.