Andre Norton SF/Fantasy Award for YA Novels

I rarely talk about my great love of fantasy and science fiction, because it’s true Geekdom, and I try to avoid the appearance of that whenever possible. HOWEVER, I have to give credit and respect to the 93-year-old Grand Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy, because they’ve named an award after her. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has created a new literary award to recognize outstanding science fiction and fantasy novels that are written for the young adult market. The Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Fiction is going to be paired up with the Nebula Awards, and the Bradbury Award, and will start being issued in 2006.

For those of us who want to write science fiction and fantasy, the field has already been open, and is certainly opening further. Norton is 93 and her health is failing, Madeleine L’Engle is 87, and Anne McCaffrey is 79. Ursula K. LeGuin is now 76. While there are younger women in science fiction and fantasy who have been writing successfully for years, these women challenged and changed the male-dominated science fiction and fantasy world and when they go, the genre will change yet again. Which is reasonable, I suppose. After all, science fiction is supposed to be the literature of “what if?” and if not uncertainties, of what else is a new world made?