Best "Classic" Science Fiction Books for Teens

Award-Winning 80's-Era Sci-Fi Novels for Younger Teens

Sep 1, 2009

From peasant blouses and skinny jeans to punk rock and the Rubik's cube, fads from the 1980's have come back in fashion, including these award-winning sci-fi classics.

They're a blast from the past and the future; check out these great futuristic science fiction books from the 80's.

Best because: The film version of this book achieved a cult following in the 1980's in part by its frequent airing on HBO.

Rowan Hart lives in futuristic America where food is scarce, technology rules and a Big Brother-style computer system dictates and watches your every move. Life would be perfect if it weren't for his bizarre little sister Anna.

Anna is aloof, a genius,and doesn't care about anyone or anything except herself. But Anna is no ordinary child. She is a clone; part of a Nazi plans for genetic engineering of humans. There are six more Annas, and none of them turned out just right. Now the doctor who cloned them is getting ready to create another Anna and eliminate all of the failed ones: including Rowan's sister Anna and also her family.

Best because: it's an ALA Notable Book, a SLJ Best Book of the Year, and a Junior Literary Guild Selection.

Suggestive of the popular movie Jumanji, a board game is the catalyst which sends sixteen-year-old Barney on a quest to solve a mystery and save the planet.

Although he has geared up for a boring summer at his parent's rental cottage, the summer begins to get interesting for Barney when he learns that their rental once belonged to a sea Captain who kept his insane brother locked up in what is now Barney's bedroom.

Even more interesting, exotic neighbors with their glamorous lifestyle have invited Barney over for a game of Interstellar Pig, a board game in which all planets will be obliterated except the planet who possesses the Piggy.

Barney's snooping uncovers a manuscript written by the Captain which tells of the event which made his brother go crazy, and suddenly the claw marks left on the wall spell out a secret message. Barney realizes that the game is real, that his neighbors are aliens in disguise and they will stop at nothing to find the Piggy.

Best because: McIntyre is an award winning novelist, author of a number of Star Trek and Star Wars novels.

As the orphaned Barbary gets ready to be shipped off to her new home on a space station, a commotion gives her the opportunity to smuggle her pet cat Mickey on board. When her cat climbs into an exploratory space probe, Barbary and friend Heather must attempt to rescue the cat and face the probing aliens.

Although the plot is simplistic, the descriptions of performing ordinary functions of life in space, such as the down-to-earth mechanical details of zero-gravity toilets, are fun and interesting.

Best Because: It was nominated for the 1985 World Fantasy ward for Best Novel and is listed as an ALA Notable Children's Book, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and a Boston Globe - Horn Book Award Honor Book.

Thirteen-year-old Howard Sykes lives in an English town with his family and au pair. Their tranquil life is interrupted one afternoon when an unnamed thug comes to collect the two thousand nonsense words which Quentin owes to somebody called Archer. The mystery behind the quarterly payment of two thousand words shrouds the town itself and it's up to Howard to confront the six wizards who hold his family hostage and find the elusive seventh one in to stop the incessant persecution of his family.

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