Close Encounters of the Best Kind: The Latest Sci-Fi

Not only is science fiction alive and well--it's flourishing. From the big screen (howdy, Wall-E) to the big books (like Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, which has attracted loads of prepublication praise), 2008 has been a great year for sci-fi. Publishers have released truckloads of new sci-fi titles this year, but what's particularly impressive isn't their combined tonnage--it's the high-quality writing, thoughtfulness, and timeliness of much of the content. From Cory Doctorow's Little Brother (Tor), a searing examination of the perils of sacrificing personal freedom for national security, to David Klass's "Caretaker" trilogy (Farrar), which describes Earth on the verge of an ecological disaster, sci-fi has a lot to say to today's world and its young readers. In this article, the author provides some titles of the latest sci-fi.