What comes after vampire teen lit? Dystopia. A pair of authors have just made deals with mainstream publishers for young adult novels about dark, romantic futures. Apparently, after the apocalypse, there will be no chocolate, nor women over 20.
Gabrielle Zevin, whose previous YA efforts include Elsewhere and Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, sold a trilogy called "The Birthright Series" to Farrar, Straus and Giroux's Books for Young Readers. This is her first science fiction effort, although her earlier works had their share of fantasy elements. The series is:
set in a dystopian future where chocolate and caffeine are contraband while water and paper are carefully rationed. The series relates the ascension and ultimate downfall of a 16-year-old girl, the heir apparent to an important and dangerous New York City crime family.
The second sale was to Simon & Schuster Children's, and is a novel by new author Lauren DeStefano. Due out April 2011, it's called The Last Chemical Garden, and takes place:
in a dystopian world, the result of a failed effort to create a perfect race, which has left all males with a lifespan of 25 years, and females with a lifespan of 20 years, following a sixteen-year-old girl sold as a polygamous bride-yet her husband is hopelessly in love with her and opens her to a magical world of wealth and illusion she never thought possible.
Further proof that YA fiction's future is dystopian.