When I was young, SF was a relatively obscure genre. Many librarians assumed it was just kid stuff and classified it as such. Consequence: I was allowed to consult and read books that would otherwise have been considered. Which isn’t to say that I haven’t benefited from reading some of these books, but I’m pretty sure that if I had had any idea what these books were, they would have been overwhelmed. (Maybe two ghasts!)
Some librarians must have thought that some of Heinlein’s books were a bit risque. At least someone seems to have categorized them into children’s books and adult books, in my experience: stuff like Stranger in a foreign country Where I wouldn’t be afraid of no demon went upstairs, where only suitable mature adults and teenagers were allowed. (I don’t remember how old you had to be to check out adult books, but I do remember it was boring from my perspective.) However, there were occasional bugs in the sorting system; Full ownership of Farnham finished in the children’s section. The first part was quite conventional: after the bomb meets Incest: No longer just for ancient Egyptians. But then it turned into…how do you put it politely? A Racist Work I don’t imagine anyone would benefit from reading. Let alone a ten-year-old child.
Some books on the effects of nukes (not SF, but SF-adjacent) ended up in the children’s section. These weren’t the delightfully mathematical versions I discovered in high school. But the books contained pictures, as children’s books should… they were pictures of places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or ships like the lucky dragon. When, years later, I encountered the fictional H. Beam Piper, those images helped me appreciate the effects of Piper’s hellburner missiles on a visceral level. When I was six years old, the books helped me worry about the planes above our heads… maybe preparing to drop the bomb on us.
had a policy of NOT buying books for readers above a certain age. Again, however, the system was not perfect. As well as Jeff and Jean Sutton the afterlife and various books by Franklin W. Dixon, they stocked the complete version of Herman Melville Moby-Dick. This may have been due to someone’s idea that children should know that the redacted version of the picture book (also stored) was not the real thing.
Moby-Dick isn’t SF, but the way it includes readers – infodumps the size of the white whale itself – may have predisposed me to like SF. Which, as you know, Bob, is also subject to huge infodumps. Trying to read Melville in fourth grade may have also pre-adapted me to life as a critic: I realized early on that life is too short to finish reading everything I start.
How Norman Spinrad is The Jungle Men, which deals with drugs, violence and infanticide, has entered the children’s section, I don’t know. Is there nothing by Spinrad suitable for children? It was indeed a traumatic book to come across when I was prepared for something more along the lines of Take off at Woomera. If I think of that book by Spinrad now (even though I’m older and somewhat hardened), I still feel uneasy.
by James Blish star trek the screenplay adaptations placed it firmly in the kids’ section as far as public libraries go. It must have seemed logical to place Blish’s other works alongside these books, including his theological sf novels (A case of conscience, black easter), not to mention the most sexist every time I read it And all the stars a scene. Well, no doubt reading these books built character… so understood. Maybe they were just confusing.
On the beneficial side of the ledger:
Alexei Panshin Rite of passage probably seemed safe enough for the library guards. For the most part, it fits well into the coming-of-age mold of so many YA SF novels. It was a bit of a surprise when the young protagonist had sex with another preteen during the rite of passage…but that was character development, not titillation. The plot development that surprised me was the brutal genocide inflicted on a defenseless world. Mia, the novel’s protagonist, decides that all people are people, not just those of her privileged class, and that mass murder, even if people on the planet are freeborn, is wrong. That’s not a bad moral for a book. I also appreciated Mia’s belief that even long-established rules can be changed by determined enough activists.
earthsea made Ursula Le Guin a children’s author with local authorities. Every fiction book she wrote ended up on the ground floor of the Waterloo Public Library, where the books for young people lived. That’s where I first met The left hand of darkness. Genly Ai’s adventure on an ice-covered world populated by people of varied biological gender was certainly an interesting change of pace from Freddy and the Mars Baseball Team, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planetand Son of Star Man, 2250 AD
I never questioned Le Guin’s policy; never asked librarians, “Have you really read these books?” It was revenge. Supposedly wise adults had presented us young people with apparently age-appropriate works old crier (the beloved dog dies), The Terabitha Bridge (beloved friend dies), and The red ball (the magic balloon dies). Without speaking about On the beach, in which everyone dies AND the romance plot falls apart (because romance leads die). If their oversight greatly expanded the range of subjects found in the children’s section beyond a seemingly endless cavalcade of sudden tragedy, I wasn’t going to spoil the game by pointing out their mistake.
Originally published August 2018.
In the words of the TexasAndroid Wikipedia editorprolific and lively literary critic Darwin Award Nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability”. Her work has been published in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on her own websites, Reviews of James Nicoll and Young people read the old SFF (where he is assisted by the editor Karen Lofstrom and internet user Adrienne L. Travis). He’s a four-time Hugo Award finalist for Best Fan Writer and is surprisingly flammable.