SCI FI for kids!!

in victory on janus the settler who finds he's turned into a janus alien is ill and has a dream in which he plays a sort of game of chess he doesn't understand: his pieces keep turning out to be his opponent's pieces — i loved that

they were all very moral: mean people ended up badly

actually i maybe think "hegemony' was in a book by someone else, about this bright kid who invented a spacetravel system with only a torch-light battery

i liked the story that THE THING is based on: either by damon knight or in a collection he edited

i remember scenes, never stories, connections never systems => [xXx] could remember whole robert ludlum plots in books only read the once (but forgot eg important promises to ME so bah)

those stainless steel rat books were great.

Can't remember who wrote them but what about the "LAST LEGIONARY" sequence - Galactic Legionary, Deathwing over Veynaa, Day of the Starwind and Planet of the Warlord, all starring Keill Randor, last of the elite fighting men and women of Moros... ahh, salad days.

Anybody got anything to add? My 11 year old is very much enjoying...er...a Red Dwarf novelization and I'm thinking he could probably do better than that?

Mortal Engines by Phillip Reeve

Not space opera, more post-apocalyptic, future society type stuff. And magnificent.

Oh, yes, good one.

I think I was the same as Ned upthread, John Christopher and Asimov - also John Wyndham. But I think (like his father) he'd appreciate a few more gags.

Asimov "Foundation"
Bradbury "Something Wicked This Way Comes"
Arthur C Clarke "Rendezvous with Rama"

not much in the way of gags :( maybe that terry pratchett fellow?

I read a lot of Star Wars novels as a kid, but I don't really recommend it (aside from a few good ones like the Timothy Zahn trilogy.)

I remember the Red Dwarf novels being actually pretty good.

OMG! The Mortal Engines series is ace and aces.

Ummm. There's a lot more middlegrade sci-fi than I can remember but it almost doesn't matter because the jump to YA or even lots of adult SF is so easy. But just for kicks:

HIDDEN TALENTS by David Lubar / Bad cover, good book.
HOUSE OF THE SCORPION by Nancy Farmer / Stunning.
INTERSTELLAR PIG by William Sleator / Award-winning, highly recognized.
ENCHANTRESS FROM THE STARS and THE FAR SIDE OF EVIL, by Sylvia Engdahl / ENCHANTRESS is one of only two sci-fi books ever to win the Newbury Award. Back in print now thanks to a very smart editor.
SWEETWATER by Laurence Yep / A charming old book, one my mother somehow had a copy of from before I was even born.

I'll probably think of more later. The Timothy Zahn novelization of THE LAST STARFIGHTER I remember being good entertainment, probably better than the movie.

Mission of Gravity!

What's that harry harrison series about big dumb lummox who gets recruited into many military adventures, gets interracial arm transplant but it's the wrong arm?

Umm, Stainless Steel Rat? I've never read Harrison, so that's the only series I know of by him.

found it!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b5/Billthegalacticherocover.jpg/220px-Billthegalacticherocover.jpg

"The standard ways of circumventing relativity in 1950s and 1960s science fiction were hyperspace, subspace and spacewarp. Harrison's contribution was the "Bloater Drive". This enlarges the gaps between the atoms of the ship until it spans the distance to the destination, whereupon the atoms are moved back together again, reconstituting the ship at its previous size but in the new location. An occasional side-effect is that the occupants see a planet drifting, in miniature, through the hull. ("No-no! Don't touch it!")"

flight of the navigator

event horizon babies