Children/young people either arrive on or already live on a colonized planet, e.g.:
Robert Heinlein
Red Planet
Farmer In The Sky
Poul Anderson
"Wingless on Avalon"
"Rescue on Avalon"
"Escape The Morning"
"The Faun"
Julian May
Diamond Mask
Comments
There are many other examples.
There is a sense of adventure.
Young readers easily identify with the characters.
Julian May knowingly incorporates this juvenile element into an adult novel.
CS Lewis' The Horse And His Boy, set not on another planet but in a "magical" other world, is nevertheless recognizably Heinleinian.
Such reflections are prompted by current reading, in this case May, but have a wider significance.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Perhaps Anderson's "The Three Cornered Wheel" should also be included? In that story we see the young David Falkayn, sixteen or 17 years old at the time. Yes, the ship of the merchant he was apprenticed to was STRANDED on Ivanhoe, so the teen-aged Falkayn was not a "settler." But the characteristics you described as helping to make a story appealing to younger readers can also be found in "Wheel."
Sean
Sean,
And ENSIGN FLANDRY? (But we never see young van Rijn.)
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I thought of ENSIGN FLANDRY, but I was focusing on short stories, not novels. And I too wish Poul Anderson had given us even just a single Young Nick story!
Sean
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