Does A YA Science Fiction Need to Be Bonkers?

No.

Of "non-bonkers" popular YA SF?

We could start with Heinlein and move forward through the decades to Rowling, Pullman, and Collins.

It might be helpful for you to explain what you mean by "bonkers." All variants of SF and F require some willing suspension of disbelief - we all know that in the REAL WORLD vampires don't exist (I hope...), much less playing baseball. The plot of Twilight isn't "bonkers" to me, at least: Girl and boy meet, but there are obstacles to them getting together because he's a vampire. Is that what you're talking about?

I haven't read Legend, but just looking at the cover and reading the synopsis it seems to fall into this dystopian YA subgenre that's popular right now (like The Hunger Games).

justlukeyou said:

I would say a young boy who has to crash through the middle wall a train platform to get to school is a bit bonkers.

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Okay, exclude fantasy then - that still leaves my other examples. What do you mean by "bonkers"?

justlukeyou said:

Sorry, I got frustrated. I tried to write a book without planning it out. Then I read the plot to Legend (and others) and realised how unimaginative my book is. So I tried to write a plot which is alot more imaginative with alot more going on but I wouldn't know where to start to write it.

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You can write a perfectly good book that is devoid of vampires, dystopias, or boy wizards. To be popular, a book needs to be interesting and well-written - the speculative elements are not the recipe for success, just the spice.

The whole point of speculative fiction (horror, sci fi, fantasy, etc) is that it contains elements that don't really exist in our world. You could interpret many of those things as "bonkers".


There's actually a lot more YA fantasy than sci fi. Off-hand I can only think of a very few modern sci fi books in the YA market, the most well-known probably being Across the Universe by Beth Revis, Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, and the re-marketed version of Ender's Game. None of those would I personally qualify as bonkers. Most of the rest I can think of are dystopian sci-fi: The Giver, Uglies, and obviously Legend, as you mentioned.