Technology, Dystopia and Young Adults IV

This list has been updated: a newer, expanded version can be found at  http://richardshakeshaft.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/young-adult-fiction-technology-reading.html 17 February, 2017

Although I had reached the bottom of the pile of YA books awaiting my attention, there have been a couple recommended to me, and there are a few which have been published over the last few months. This is therefore the next instalment of the reading I have been doing since my third such blog post in July.

As before, this is a collection of primary texts which are connected by the common thread of incorporating technology within their plots. In the main they have all been published in the last few years, so this remains - at present - an remarkably up-to-date list of current YA novels in this genre, although there are a couple of older novels which have been suggested to me and I include them for the sake of completeness. My Amazon account still has some yet-to-be-published novels listed in the current orders and I keep scouring publishers' book lists for new additions, so I assume this will not be my final reading list post.

The order of the list is simply the order in which I have read the texts, but there is no significance to the order. I have included a brief descriptions against each title, but each image links to Amazon where fuller descriptions and reviews can be found (along with the obvious ability to do some shopping!)

	All Geared Up (Not Quite Human Book 2) - Seth McEvoy (1986) The protagonist - Chip - appears as any teenage boy, but in reality he is an advanced robot. His sister knows and helps to protect his secret as he becomes the school's best drummer, but with a girl thinking he is really special and a rival drummer set on revenge keeping his identity secret gets increasingly difficult.
	Catching Fire (Hunger Games Book 2) - Suzanne Collins (2009) After winning the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen returns to her district, hoping for a peaceful future, but she hear rumours of a deadly rebellion against the Capitol which she and Peeta have helped to create. As they are forced to visit the districts on their Victory Tour they have to convince the world that they are still in love with each other or the consequences will be horrifying.
	Mockingjay (Hunger Games Book 3) - Suzanne Collins (2010) Katniss Everdeen has, against all odds, survived the Hunger Games twice, but although she has made it out of the arena alive, she is still not safe. The Capitol is angry and wants revenge. She becomes the figurehead of District 13 and the rebellion against the Capitol and sees the life she wants becoming increasingly difficult to achieve.
	vN - Madeline Ashby (2012) The protagonist, Amy Peterson, is a Von Neumann machine - a self-replicating humanoid robot - who for the past five years has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. However, a flaw is discovered in her synthetic heritage which prevents her failsafe, the mechanism which stops robots harming humans, working as it should turning her into both a deadly and desirable entity.
	Variant - Robison Wells (2011) Problem child Benson Fisher wins a scholarship to Maxfield Academy, but when he arrives there he finds himself trapped in a school surrounded by razor wire and monitored by an external agency. He eventually discovers the reason why he and the other students are cut off from the rest of the world and that escape may prove impossible.
	Slated - Teri Terry (2012) Kyla's memory has been erased and her personality has been wiped blank: she's been Slated. The government claims she was a terrorist and that they are giving her a second chance as long as she plays by their rules. However, echoes of the past whisper in Kyla's mind and she starts to search for the truth.
	Incarceron - Catherine Fisher (2007) Incarceron is a futuristic prison world where the descendants of the original prisoners; it is a mix of high technology (a living building pervades the novel as an ever-watchful, ever-vengeful character), and mediaeval torture chamber. A young prisoner, Finn, has visions of an earlier life, and cannot believe he was born in Incarceron. He makes contact with the daughter of the Warden, Claudia, in the Outer World, and his escape is planned.
	MazeCheat - B R Collins (2012) The sequel to Gamerunner, in which cheat programmers work with gamerunners to uncover the secrets behind the latest expansion to CRATER's Maze. If players finally manage to beat the game, it takes their brain and memories to use as material for new games for new Gamerunners, leaving them dead. But no one knows this yet. When the heroes realise what is happening they need to destroy the game, but the all-seeing CRATER already knows what their plans are.
	Delirium - Lauren Oliver (2011) Love, or deliria, is seen by society as a disease from which there is no recovery, but citizens receive the cure on their eighteenth birthday when love is eradicated and they meet their predetermined partner. The teenage protagonist, Lena Holoway, has always looked forward to the day when she’ll be cured but, with ninety-five days until her treatment, Lena falls in love.
	Pirate Cinema - Cory Doctorow (2012) The sixteen year old Trent McCauley is obsessed with making movies by sampling and reassembling footage downloaded from the net. However, in the near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever: if someone is caught three times, their entire household is cut off from the Internet for a year. When Trent is caught, the loss of the Internet nearly destroys his family and he runs away to London where falls in with a group of activists fighting a new bill that will further criminalise digital copying.

To self-publish or not to self-publish?

In a discussion last week, the question of self-publishing academic essays and theses came about. Not in what could be called vanity journals which will publish anything for a fee, but uploading them to sites such as academic.edu.

Well before social media websites made people feel they should share every aspect of their lives I already had a personal website and decided to put all my undergraduate essays there. In doing so, I felt I was staking a claim to my tiny corner of the Internet but also contributing to the available collection of online knowledge. Therefore, when I joined academia.edu a couple of years ago, I uploaded one of my MEd essays and my thesis with little concern.

It was suggested that there are inherent risks and issues with sharing in this way: the primary concern being that once ideas are online they can easily be borrowed without attribution. From another perspective, problems also arise as there is no peer review and the shared work could therefore be of no more value than articles in vanity journals.

As an inveterate sharer these two points, among others, gave me pause for thought.

Having thought about it, I have decided that I will continue to share my work.

Firstly, I believe that sharing work is important within the academic community. I understand that sharing globally is not the same as within the confines of an institution, but the serendipitous connections we make within the walls of a seminar room have the potential to be multiplied with a potential international readership.

Secondly, by having published it, the work is dated and archived for eternity. Should it be borrowed it is easy to show the date of the original work in the upload. However, I would like to think (hope?) that any readers would choose to reference it if they found it useful.

Thirdly, I believe that I am only sharing work that is worth sharing. I am sure – just as with any self-publishing – that some of the work that is shared is of a questionable standard, but that is where the reader has to take responsibility. Only a foolish student will think that the Internet can provide the easy answers to their questions: a wiser student can use the Internet to their benefit as they can access paper and other research to help them support and develop their own ideas. They have to pick and choose and judge the work for themselves.

Fourthly, the Internet is another way of networking and (as I have discovered) a useful way of letting people find and know about your work on top of conferences and more traditional networking.

Fifthly, it provides a means by which an individual can see how they have developed as an academic. In the same way as Facebook is my diary and photo album for the past five years (and counting), academia lets me see how my ideas have matured since the start of my postgraduate study. While I could simply look back through my Word documents on the computer, academia allows me to see them alongside people’s comments and search terms and thereby provides a helpful tool for personal reflection.

I will stop at five reasons for going public with my work as I know there are counterarguments to all of them. Ultimately, it has to be up to the individual whether they feel happy to share their work with the largest audience in the history of the human race and whether they feel there is any value to them in sharing it.

Originally written for the Children's Literature at Cambridge blog and first posted there earlier today.

Las Vegas and Free WiFi

This is a somewhat niche post which was initially written for my personal future reference, should it be needed. However, as it might prove helpful for other travellers, I thought I would make it public.

A couple of years ago, finding free WiFi in Las Vegas was a challenge. Over the course of a few days at the end of August 2012, it seemed that matters have improved to some extent. While the casinos still want to keep people focused on losing money playing on the slots and tables, the following is a list of places where I found free WiFi.

• The Aria casino has the best gaming floor coverage I found with a decent connection guaranteed wherever your find yourself losing money
• Bellagio's gaming floor appears to have some access, but it was a little patchy.
• The Cosmopolitan casino has free access which was certainly available around the bar close the gaming floor entrance on the Strip.
• Excalibur has no free WiFi in the casino itself, but on the first floor, krispykreme offers free access.
• There is access to Luxor's service towards the hotel check in desks on the gaming floor.
• Macy's in the Fashion Mall offers the 'Macysfreewifi'.
• The Apple Store in the Fashion Mall has a multitude of devices connected to the Internet to use, and users can connect to the free WiFi too.
• The Monte Carlo casino's gaming floor has access at various points, but the signal was never particularly strong.
• The Wynn seemed to have coverage across the gaming floor, but in the areas near the entrance from the Strip the signal was not very strong.

In the past, I have found some Starbucks and MacDonald's offer free WiFi, but this is not guaranteed and not something I had chance to check on this visit.

If you are down town, WiFi seems pretty much non-existent. However, people braving the streets outside the Fremont Street Experience will find a cafe with WiFi for its customers at Emergency Arts.

This list is, of course, liable to change and living some 5,000 miles east of Vegas, I cannot guarantee the current validity of the information. Nevertheless, if it is useful to at least one person it was worth posting.

My Kindle and Me

As of today, I have owned a Kindle for three weeks. In this time I feel rather saddened that my reaction has not been the one of complete and utter delight that so many friends and colleagues have experienced since buying their device.

I am now about half way through my third purchased book and this is the furthest I have got with the downloaded books so far.

The first book was a rash purchase: the publisher’s newly released blurb made it out to be a very different book to the one I started reading. Having made it a couple of chapters in, I was delighted to discover that it is possible to return Kindle books and get a full refund within seven days of the original purchase.

The second book was one that I had ordered a few months ago in a paper copy. I changed the order when I bought the Kindle and it duly arrived by magic during the night when the book was published. I managed a little more of this one, but was struggling to commit to the plot and when confronted with an unpleasantly visceral description of violence I was convinced to take advantage of the full refund again.

Knowing that I rarely give up when reading a book made me wonder about the Kindle as a medium: as I consume a lot of information through screens of different sorts, I began to wonder whether consuming a book in this way means that I see it as a more superficial and transitory method of delivery, or is the guarantee of a full refund – something not available for physical books without having to pay shipping costs – something that I would have used previously had it been possible?

The third book that appeared over night, when it was published, is the second book in a series I started reading last year. Maybe because I had some idea what to expect from the novel I am now reading this and looking forward to picking up the Kindle and continuing reading. However, I still do not enjoy the Kindle reading experience.

There are two things which I feel make me dislike it: firstly, the serif font is terrible (the sans-serif alternative is worse) and it is not pleasing or easy to read. I find this frustrating when the quality of some graphics available show that more artistic fonts could easily be offered as options. Secondly – and I know this sounds strange – I cannot stand the lack of page numbers as I do not feel physically anchored in the text (I know there a location reference, but its big jumps lack any sense of continuity). The lack of my physical position in the text also means that it is not easy to flick forward a couple of pages to know that I only have another two pages to read before stopping reading (as by the time the end of the chapter has been found there is no quick way to go back to the original place).

I know people bemoan the demise of the codex book and use that as a reason not to buy a Kindle. I forced myself to overcome that objection, but am really struggling to build any (for want of a better word) relationship with mine. I will continue to use it in the hope that the technology will become more familiar in due course, but in the meantime I think I will have to pick books for it carefully.

Technology, Dystopia and Young Adults III

This list has been updated: a newer, expanded version can be found at  http://richardshakeshaft.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/young-adult-fiction-technology-reading.html 17 February, 2017

In the way in which many of the best ideas are the simplest, I offer a third blog post to list the YA novels I have been reading since I posted the second such list in May. As before, this is a collection of primary texts which are connected by the common thread of incorporating technology within their plots. In the main they have all been published in the last two years, so this is - at present - an remarkably up-to-date list of current YA novels in this genre, although there are a couple of older novels which have been suggested to me and I include them for the sake of completeness. My Amazon account still has some yet-to-be-published novels listed in the current orders so I assume this will not be my final reading list post.

The order of the list is simply the order in which I have read the texts, but there is no significance to the order. I have included a brief descriptions against each title, but each image links to Amazon where fuller descriptions and reviews can be found (along with the obvious ability to do some shopping!)

	Fair Coin - E C Myers (2012) Science fiction in the best sense of the term: alternative worlds, quantum theory, teenagers, and a the flip of a coin. To say anything else would completely give the novel away!
	The Adoration of Jenna Fox - Mary E Pearson (US: 2008; UK: 2010) A seventeen-year-old girl wakes from a coma and is told her name is Jenna Fox. Initially, she has no other memories, but she gradually begins to rediscover her identity and starts to find out what happened to her.
	Hex - Rhiannon Lassiter (1998) Set in 24th century London, the government is hunting down Hexes who are mutant humans whose mutation gives them an ability to interact with computers. The female protagonist, Raven, is a young Hex hunting for her younger sister.
	1.4 - Mike Lancaster (2012) The sequel to 0.4 sees another imminent upgrade to humans, but it is set against the backdrop of the protagonist, Peter Vincent (son of an internationally renowned scientist), uncovering a conspiracy amongst the leaders of the establishment to hide the knowledge of human upgrades from the populace.
	Scored - Lauren McLaughlin (2011) Set in a future in which teenagers are monitored by technology, they are all given a score which determines their ability to succeed. The reluctant heroine's scholarship-winning score is brought down by her best friend's behaviour. She is then faced with the decision between doing what feels morally right and her future.
	The Night Room - E M Goldman (1995) A group of seven high school students are chosen to participate in the Argus project which offers them a virtual reality projection of their possible tenth high school reunion. However, one student is not at the VR reunion and the others try to find out why Argus predicts she will be dead.
	Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (2011) In a dystopian future, the teenage Wade Watts spends his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a virtual utopia where people can live the lives they want. In his spare time, he is one of millions searching for the solution to a series of riddles concealed within the online world by its creator, in a bid to inherit his massive fortune. Players know that the riddles are based in late C20th culture and when Wade stumbles onto the key to the first puzzle he finds himself competing against many others in a competition which takes on real-world dimensions.
	The Maze Runner - James Dashner (2011) Thomas only remembers his first name and is welcomed to the Glade - a walled encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible stone maze - by a group of similar male teenagers. None of them know why or how they came to be there, or what's happened to the world outside: all they know is that every morning when the walls slide back, they will risk everything (even facing the half-machine, half-animal Grievers) to try and find out.
	Soul Fire - Kate Harrison (2012) The sequel to 2011's Soul Beach sees its protagonist continuing to talk to her dead sister in the virtual world of Soul Beach as she tries to solve the mystery of its inhabitants' deaths from the real world
	Divergent - Veronica Roth (2011) Reaching the age of 16, Beatrice has to decide which of five tribes she will join for the rest of her life. Turning her back on her family she discovers a new and violent life and duly has to make choices about where her loyalties lie.

Technology's Effects: 13 Years On

In 1999, on the eve of the new millennium and a mere four or five years after the birth of the Internet as we recognise it today, Eliza T Dresang identified technology changing children’s literature in three main areas. Writing in Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age she describes these as

• Connectivity, or ‘the connections that readers make with hypertext-like links, both visual and mental, prompted by the changing forms and formats of handheld books’ (p12)
• Interactivity, as ‘the changing format of books enables a more active, involved reading […] encourag[ing] a wide range of different responses […as readers…] approach the text in various nonlinear or non-sequential ways that the author does not determine in advance’ (p12)
• Access, or ‘the breaking of long-standing barriers […which…] blocked off certain topics, certain kinds of characters, certain style of language’ (p13)

Looking back on predictions for the future from the safety of that future can be seen as a cruel pastime, but in a world which has – in some ways – been dramatically changed by technology over the past thirteen years, Dresang’s descriptions can be seen to be both prescient and slightly flawed.

The changing forms of handheld books can most readily be seen in Amazon’s Kindle (notably already a Hoover/vacuum-like synonym for ‘e-reader’) which first appeared in 2007. The Kindle does allow readers to interact with their reading matter in new ways and words can be glossed or ideas googled from the device. While I still do not own a Kindle, I know that having a smartphone has changed the way I read printed books as I am able to check references or explore related ideas without having to turn on the laptop.

Dresang’s connectivity category also includes books which use new graphic formats and where links between text and graphics are far closer than just, say, a caption or label. However, from the 2012 perspective, this seems to fall more into her second categorisation.

The rapid growth of tablet, or slate, computers since the introduction of the iPad in 2010 as an additional (rather than replacement) screen in people’s homes has already had a massive influence on the way in which texts can be accessed. Unlike the electronic-ink based Kindles, which fundamentally function as a directly replacement for the printed text, books – or more accurately apps – which are being produced for tablets are founded on the idea of interactivity. Last year, one of the 'Children's Literature at Cambridge' blog posts looked at the potential for picturebooks on iPads, and since then the number of such texts has continued to increase apace. However, while picturebooks are well suited for the transition to new media, YA texts are still, for the time being at least, adhering to the traditional linear narrative, even if they are now available on the Kindle.

Similarly, last year’s launch of Pottermore marked a new step in the production of interactive texts as it was web – rather than app – based. While the reception to Pottermore remains mixed, it wholly fulfils Dresang’s description, and as the rest of the series is made available to online readers, it will be interesting to see how a new generation of even more technologically-savvy Harry Potter fans respond to it as both a narrative and web-based experience. As a little aside, it is worth noting that although these examples do take advantage of new media, paper-based 'interactive' texts were available in the 1970s in the form of the 'Choose your own adventure' series.

While Dresang’s first two categories have stood the test of time well, her third is more problematic. In terms of ‘taboo’ subjects and characters previously without voices, these are things which children’s literature has never shied away from and, although not necessarily commonplace, examples going back to the nineteenth century can be found. While the ready online availability of information on any topic imaginable (and probably some unimaginable) in the twenty-first century may have made some ideas more accessible to readers, addressing taboo topics is not a result of the digital revolution.

In terms of individuals’ access to texts and the sharing of information, new technology has arguably made it more difficult for some people as ownership of a Kindle or tablet and Internet access is a pre-requisite. Indeed, despite having a penchant for gadgetry, trying to use the app to make the cover of Lissa Price’s Starters ‘come alive’ by downloading and installing it failed for me, as my two year old smartphone was simply not powerful enough to cope with it. I will nevertheless try it again when I have upgraded my handset. At a financial cost, of course.

Even though the Kindle will celebrate its fifth birthday in a few months’ time, and the third generation iPad was launched earlier this year, this is still a fascinatingly new area to watch for developments as Dresang’s first two categories continue to shape (or be shaped) by changes in technology. Whether aspects of her third will begin to be realised might also give a commentator in 2025 pause for thought.

Originally written for the Children's Literature at Cambridge blog and first posted there earlier today.

Technology, Dystopia and Young Adults II

This list has been updated: a newer, expanded version can be found at  http://richardshakeshaft.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/young-adult-fiction-technology-reading.html 17 February, 2017

At the end of last October, in response to an enquiry, I blogged with a list of the YA novels I had been reading recently as part of my academic research. A week ago, at the NCRCL conference, I was asked the same question. This is therefore a list of the primary texts I have read in the intervening six months which are connected by the common thread of incorporating technology within their plots. In the main they have all been published in the last two years, so this is - at present - an remarkably up-to-date list of current YA novels in this genre. While my Amazon account has some yet-to-be-published novels listed in the current orders, I will doubtless list these at some point in the future.


The list is in no particular order and I have included only the briefest of descriptions against each title, but each image links to Amazon where fuller descriptions and reviews can be found (along with the obvious ability to do some shopping!)

	Soul Beach - Kate Harrison (2011) When the heroine receives an e-mail from her dead sister she assumes it is a sick practical joke, but then she receives an invitation to join an idyllic virtual reality world where she is able to talk to her sister again but discovers it is only inhabited by the young, the beautiful and the dead.
	Starters - Lissa Price (2012) Callie lost her parents when a virus attacked the Earth and then she lost what to her was home. In desperation she tried to raise money by participating in an illicit scheme whereby teenager bodies are leased to wealthy, but aged, renters. Finally, she loses her body too but she is determined to get it back.
	Monster Republic - Ben Horton (2010) An explosion in a nuclear power plant leads to a class of visiting teenagers being patched up with scavenged body parts and bionic implants to create an army of superhuman soldiers.
	The Future of Us - Jay Asher & Carolyn Mackler (2011) Set in 1996, two teenagers access the Internet and discover a site called Facebook which shows them what their life will be like fifteen years in the future; they are duly able to see the implications of their teenage decisions on their adult lives.
	Unwind - Neal Shusterman (2008) Unwinding means the end of a teenager's life, but such unwanted individuals are kept alive for their body parts. Three runaways fight the system and for their right to their life.
	Gamerunner - B R Collins (2011) The Maze is a virtual reality game but one game does not allow the player to start again when they lose.
	Cinder - Marissa Meyer (2012) A retelling of the Cinderella story in which the eponymous Cinder is a gifted mechanic and cyborg.
	Matched - Ally Condie (2010) A dystopian society is controlled by technology and people's seventeenth birthday sees them given their perfect partner as dictated by society. Cassia's allotted partner turns out not to be the perfect match that society demands.
	0.4 - Mike Lancaster (2011) A teenager's account of a life-changing event has been transcribed from audio tapes and appear to reveal the history of a world in which technological obsolescence becomes personal.
	brainjack - Brian Falkner (2011) An extraordinarily skilled teenage hacker becomes involved in a world of espionage, intrigue and cybercrime when a remarkable hack grabs the attention of a secret government agency.