The Big Idea: Hannah Strom-Martin & Erin Underwood
Posted on February 15, 2013 Posted by Kate Baker 24 Comments
Facing a horrifying dearth of available science fiction YA anthologies, Editors, Erin Underwood and Hannah Strom-Martin sought to rectify the problem. Crowd-funded through Kickstarter, Futuredaze: An Anthology of Young Adult Science Fiction aims to make a dent in the market, complete with 33 short stories and poems aimed toward the younger fans of the genre. Here are Erin and Hannah to explain the genesis behind their Big Idea.
Erin Underwood & Hannah Strom-Martin:
Our big idea for Futuredaze: An Anthology of Young Adult Science Fiction was born out of a discussion about a lack of short SF for teens. If you haven’t heard of The Hunger Games by now you’re probably living in District 13—but while we both enjoyed Suzanne Collins’ series and looked forward to a Harry Potter-esque revival of science fiction stories for teens, we ended up holding our breath a long time, at least as far as short stories were concerned. (Erin nearly passed out at a Boston B&N when she realized the lack of SF anthologies. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.)
Since our Big Idea evolved as a dialogue it seems fitting for both of us to share the story here.
Erin: In early 2012, the Earth stood still. That was the day I entered a Boston Barnes & Noble’s YA section, really “looked” at what they had to offer. I didn’t see a single SF anthology for teens. Standing there among the paranormal romance, urban fantasy and horror anthologies, I felt a bit betrayed. I’m a girl who grew up consuming a regular diet of geek fiction, and finding an absence of geek among the sleek, shiny anthologies told me that something had gone desperately, horribly wrong with the world. We were being invaded by werewolves, vampires, and witches, and there wasn’t a single space alien to blast them off the anthology shelves. That’s when I called Hannah and the Big Idea for Futuredaze: An Anthology of YA Science Fiction began to germinate. From there, our Big Idea grew into a Kickstarter campaign that gave life to Futuredaze.
Hannah: I’d noticed that, despite the Susan Collins juggernaut, comments about SF or the classic tales from which The Hunger Games derives appeared limited to a few mentions of Battle Royale. As someone who remembers hearing audio broadcasts of Ray Bradbury’s short stories on NPR I kept waiting for some snarky critic to point out the grand tradition of ersatz future fiction that The Hunger Games had drawn on for inspiration. I also noticed that dystopian SF seemed like the only sub-genre to have really gripped the public imagination—and while I adore those kinds of tales, there is much more to the SF universe. This is the genre of James Tiptree, Ursula K. LeGuin, Kurt Vonnegut, and Stephen King’s Bachman books (I can’t read The Hunger Games without thinking of “The Long Walk”). When we started reading for this anthology, we wanted to explore the possibilities of SF written for young adults, but we also wanted stories that hearkened back to our own formative reading experiences and gave us that special thrill of discovering characters who reflect a bit of your own experience—even if they’re in a far different time and place.
Erin: I agree with Hannah. I looked for the stories that made me “feel” something while reading because those are inevitably the stories that stay with me long after the last word is gone. If a story from our submission pool didn’t have that effect on me, I couldn’t imagine it within the anthology. Eventually stories began rising to the top, and we saw several standout stories per subgenre. This encouraged us to move toward a much more generalized anthology that could showcase the best of what science fiction can offer. Except…..
Hannah: Except then we were invaded by robots. My favorite aspect of YA is that it doesn’t talk down to its audience. Likewise, I feel it must be said that our early submission period saw a deluge of what I nicknamed “white-girl robot” stories. Speculative fiction has been going through some self-analysis lately and this sudden influx proved why. A good chunk of those early stories not only thought “inside the box” when it came to the possibilities of scientific advancement—they were also obsessed with the idea of white-girl robots. Not just the obvious sex-bot variety (although those were there, some even well written). The robot horde came from white suburbia and, relentingly, had white suburban concerns. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that—but the sheer volume of such submissions proved why we need more projects like Futuredaze.
Erin: The robots were tough. We received so many we had an abundance of “mech” stories to choose from, but “The End of Callie V” was our favorite because it approached the idea of life and love in a unique way. For me, the biggest concern was the number of stories that, while well-written, didn’t fit the contemporary definition of young adult fiction. By this point, I’d been promoting and working with YA authors long enough to start wondering if there was a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes “YA fiction” within parts of the science fiction community. That realization was a bit of a shock for me.
Hannah: My one frustration with this anthology was that the overall submission pool wasn’t quite at the level I would have hoped for—either in terms of cultural awareness or an ability to think outside the box and get away from typical SF cliché’s like rocket ships. However, the stories that were really thoughtful and original had a way of popping out so we quickly had more than enough entries for a highly entertaining, book length project.
Erin: My biggest challenge was to stop being nice. (If you know me, you’re laughing right now. I know it!) But seriously, once these gems floated to the top, it became a lot easier to cut the other pieces. Eventually, I learned an invaluable lesson: each anthology must have a story that sets the bar for every other story, if you want to avoid publishing an average anthology. For me, that story was “A Voice in the Night” by Jack McDevitt. I’d been a fan of his Alex Benedict series for years, and when Jack agreed to write a YA story for us featuring a young Alex (a teen with his very own “big idea”), I was thrilled. Once I read Jack’s piece, I saw what Futuredaze could be. The bar was set.
Hannah: While I would have liked to see a bigger representation of cultures from our submissions I really think this anthology will be a good jumping off place for kids who may have read The Hunger Games and are wondering what other sorts of characters and situations they can find. We’ve got stories set in the near future, grand space opera type stuff and unique tales from emerging writers like Alex Dally MacFarlane whose “Unwritten in Green” was one of my favorite pieces. This is a story that straddles the fantasy and SF genres in a really interesting way, ups the level of writerly craft, and points the way towards what this nascent rebirth of young adult SF can be. We also decided to include poets in our line-up, which I feel provides yet another avenue for exploration. Exposing our audience to new things—that was the idea all along.
Futuredaze: An Anthology of YA Science Fiction: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Indiebound|Powells
List of Contributing Authors. Visit Erin Underwood via her website.
This sounds really good! I love short stories/short story anthologies and this is on Kindle in the UK – rushes off…..
I will have to try this on my 15 year old niece – who reads fantasy, but not much SF. Thanks for putting it together.
I have always felt much too, well, plain to address you folks here, but this post hit a chord. My husband and I are raising two girls (11and 14) and we all love Science Fiction. We have been really disappointed with the lack of science fiction for young adults of late. That said, I feel I have to share a particularly great find: Hugh Howey’s “Molly Fyde” series. Truly enjoyable, with a strong, intelligent female lead. Thank you so much for making this latest post – I’m off to do a little book shopping!
I hadn’t even heard of this. I will be buying three copies of payday for my favorite readers (and for me). Thank you for this Great Idea!!!
…especially, it seems, SF set in where everyone lives regimented, passionless lives under authoritarian governments. (Is it just that teenagers… or YA editors… are attracted to the premise of imagining what the world would be like if adult life were just as oppressive as an American suburban high school?)
Excellent idea!
I immediately clicked on the Amazon link, and was disappointed at first – only paperback, with no mention of a Kindle edition (not necessarily a dealbreaker, but I was looking for a new book TODAY, and wanted an ebook version). I looked it up separately in the Kindle Store and found it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Futuredaze-Anthology-Science-Fiction-ebook/dp/B00BF6C7QI
(Feel free to edit this for an affiliate link if you need to.)
Really looking forward to this.
It’s Suzanne Collins, not Susan.
I tried to let Amazon know, but their submission form does not make it easy.
Also – purchased!
Thanks again,
You might want to take a look at Firebirds Rising, edited by Sharyn November. Might be more fantasy than SF, but still worthy. Separate listings for the paperback and kindle versions on Amazon.
Thanks, I just ordered this from my local indie bookshop. My son is 11 and reads a LOT of fantasy (e.g. Rick Riordan, and lots more) — he likes sf too, like I Am Number Six.
I like the dialogue format. Nice to see authors trying something different with the structure of a ‘Big Idea’ piece.
I think having something for teens that isn’t suburban fantasy angst romance is incredibly important. As is the occasional non-dystopic SF. So great job, ladies!
So glad to hear about this. Ordering a copy for my family, and one for my High School Library. From the indie bookstore, ’cause that’s what we have in our little town.
I’d buy it just for the Jack McDevitt story. Great writer, always planks you down smack dab into the action.
Delighted to be mentioned by the editors! Just wanted to point out that my name is spelled Alex Dally MacFarlane. :)
Nina and Alex: Fixed and thanks!
What really grabbed my attention is the compliment from C J Cherryh; that in itself is sufficient for me to point YAs in the direction of the anthology, put a request for my local library to get the printed version, and draw it to the attention of a friend who does the SF buying for another borough’s libraries.
Sadly Amazon UK refuses to allow libraries to loan out Kindle editions, otherwise I would request that as well:)
Kudos to all concerned…
Kate, thank you so much! :-)
Geekdad42 Yes. It’s strange how Amazon has split the print and eBook. If you’re on the ebook page, you can find the print version, but not the other way around. I’ll contact them to see what we can do to sort that out for people.
We hope you and your children enjoy Futuredaze. :-) Thanks so much!
I attended Boskone this weekend (the New England Science Fiction Association’s SF and Fantasy convention in Boston) and people were definitely talking about the lack of young adult science fiction in the market. The good news is that there seems to be a number of people who are working to fix that problem, which makes me really happy.
I looked at the list of ciontributers, don’t these people read SF. I missed ALL of the classic writers!
This looks like a great book, which I hope to read. (Even as an adult, I often enjoy Young Adult books). But to give credit where it’s due, there is also an anthology, Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space, ed. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, intended for “young adult” readers. Also, some of Heinlein’s “juveniles” (as they were called back in the 50s) are still worthwhile for SF readers of whatever age group.
@Carl, those are great anthologies and books. However, none of them are terribly recent. My great hope is that the recent trend (slow as it might be) of publishing YA SF anthologies continues and increases in frequency.
Coming back to this post to share that this book is $1.99 for the kindle version today. For anyone who was hoping to get it but couldn’t shell out for the hardcover.