children's science fiction rant

[Celeritas]

I am batting around the idea of attempting to write a science fiction story as a gift to my son.

but i'm not sure how to start.

Most of my stories are of a nature that is more.....adult.

it seems like a simple idea but i'm struggling with it.

I want to have the two main characters be my son and our main dog bolo who he loves and gear the story towards him when he's a little older.

and I don't really want too much of space battle and such....but how to make a story of a more questioning nature interesting to a little boy of 5 or 6?

I want a story that explores the natural world and hints at a respect for nature and for life.

i'm stuck. this is "pooey" as my son says....

any thoughts?

[BookStop]

How old is he now?

You probably want to read as many kid science fiction books as you can find just to have a frame of referance for what is age appropriate. I don't think the genre is too big though. You may have trouble finding many in his age range. My son read alot of Bruce Coville when he was 6 or 7, I think those are science fiction in nature a lot of the time. I think most science fiction is aimed at older kids because the younger theya re, the more difficult the concepts are to understand. The Magic Treehouse series has a lot of time travel adventures.

You may be better off trying to wirite him something he can grow into, or maybe something with the character that grows as he does, so you can explore mmore difficult science fiction themes as you go along. The stuff that already exists starts to get really good around the age of 9 -12, so that may tell you about what age kids are mature enough to follow the sometimes confusing concepts of the science fiction world.

[TheEndIsNigh]

Strangely enough my brother once told me a storey once when I was very young 7 or 8 which now I've read your post was very science fiction like though at the time I didn't now what fiction was never mind the price of fish.

It started with a frog wanting to dam a stream. He whipped out a ray gun and pointed it at the valley where the stream ran and a wall materialised.

I kept asking questions about how this could happen and my brother (6 years older) always came up with reasonable extensions to the tale which I soaked up like a sponge.

Not that this helps but thanks for the memory.

[Celeritas]

he's two and a half but the developmental specialist tested him and he's comprehending things and concepts more typical of a 6 or 7 year old. it's kinda scary actually. he speaks in full sentances with very good pronunciation and knows his alphabet well as well as basic math concepts. so writing something for him now would be directed at an older mentality.

I'm thinking I could use the dog as some sort of silent guide to the wonders of nature. she could take him to caves with many veins of pretty rock and stalagtites and such. then they could go into the ocean and check out the deep( been repeatedly watching 'the blue planet' with enormous fascination) and then find some way to rocket into space....

any thoughts, suggestions, e.t.c......?

[Teresa Edgerton]

Originally Posted by Celeritas

he's two and a half but the developmental specialist tested him and he's comprehending things and concepts more typical of a 6 or 7 year old. it's kinda scary actually. he speaks in full sentances with very good pronunciation and knows his alphabet well as well as basic math concepts. so writing something for him now would be directed at an older mentality.

Actually, I've heard that if you accelerate a brilliant child too fast, they're great on the big concepts and have trouble with the smaller things that everyone else understands. I saw a documentary about a little boy in India whose IQ is tremendous; he's working with doctors to find a cure for cancer. But when they gave him a simple test with shapes and colors and pictures he failed miserably, because he was looking for more complex relationships between things and couldn't see the obvious. The doctors who tested him recommended that he spend less time on science and medicine and more time just being a little boy. Also, there is a big difference between intelligence and emotional maturity.

So if you are writing this for your son, my advice would be to write something for a child of whatever age he is going to be when you think the book will be finished. The only difference would be that instead of you reading the book to him, he'll probably be able to read it for himself. Since he's so advanced, he'll probably be getting plenty of intellectual stimulation from other sources. Let this book ground him in some of the other things, the fun things, the silly things, the imaginative things, he might otherwise skip.

Anyway, that's my advice, for whatever it's worth.

[Urlik]

have a read of some of Heinlein's juveniles for some examples of great SF for the younger reader

[The Procrastinator]

When I was little I loved The Wump World, by Bill Peet. Its a kind of sci-fi, but really its about how we treat the natural world and all our neighbours on this planet - very cleverly done. Check it out - it might give you some ideas.

[Celeritas]

the reason I said scifi is because the movies and shows we've allowed him that he REALLY likes are all scifi or fantastical. things like fraggle rock, really old transformers stuff, the adventures of mark twain and so on...

I have sort of branched off into a thing about a boy who adopts a genetically engineered, telepathic dog from a shelter that is an escapee from a research facility, but I don't know where that's going to lead...

thanks for the input guys.

[The Procrastinator]

Sounds like....UNDERDOG!

[Celeritas]

I don't really know if that's going to go anywhere yet....we'll see..

[Dave]

I was going to ask if you had considered making it more fantasy, because having one of the two main characters non-speaking would be quite limiting. Having Bolo speak (possibly only to your son) or being Telepathic, which is what you have now moved on to, seems to have much more legs. The idea of him escaping from a top secret establishment, and so introducing "the bad guys" who are chasing them, gives plenty of scope. Bolo could have any number of special powers - the reason he was being tested and experimented upon.