Science fiction written for people in their teens or early twenties.
Themes and stories within this subgenre will appeal to an adolescent or young adult audience, with common storylines containing a budding romance within a dystopian society or survival/rebellion without the help of adults.
Humanity lives above the clouds in mountain villages, and travels by air from one community to the next. The Earth below the clouds has become dangerous for humans, but the reasons for this have been lost to history. All you know is that anyone who has ventured below has never returned. When you learn that your family's airship has crashed beneath the clouds, you decide to rescue them despite the fact that you are only 15 years old. With your trusted friend by your side, you begin the descent down the mountain.
You are in a small boat on the river with your neighborhood friend when you discover a cavern in the riverbank. It seems a recent mudslide revealed a previously hidden cave. You urge caution and stay in the boat, but your friend jumps out and dashes into the cave. When he emerges just seconds later, he is wounded and running for his life as gunfire roars behind him. Even more surprising, he looks like he's about forty years old. Upon seeing you, bewilderment crosses his face as he leaps into the boat, guns the motor, and zips downstream. Humanoid figures in silvery battle suits emerge from the cave, firing madly at your boat. When you finally get somewhere safe and hide, you are left to care for him as he explains.
When there is a tapping on your window late one night, you open it expecting your boyfriend and are irritated to find it is your younger brother. He is yapping with excitement, begging you to come. He claims he's found a "government drone" in the backyard. Annoyed and doubtful, but with your curiosity piqued, you follow him. Your sourness turns to shock as he leads you to something silvery, smoking in a massive crater. It's not a drone at all, not unless it's from a country you've never heard of that writes with characters you've never seen. It appears to be a metallic sphere––and now it's open. Your brother claims it was closed when he first saw it. Your childhood fantasies of aliens begin to look less and less far-fetched the more you study this thing. Just as you are deciding what to do, there's a shower of what seems to be asteroids a mile up the valley. There's no doubt in your minds that it's more of the same bizarre spheres.
Your mother is part of team tasked with inspecting trading ships that dock on your planet. Sometimes you join her on board, relishing the chance to explore the ships and imagining how one day you might make those interstellar journeys yourself. Today is a particularly good day because your best friend—and crush—is with you. You break away from your mother's crew and lead him into an isolated wing of the ship, only to accidentally stumble across an unmarked crate hidden in a storage room. Your friend dares you to open the crate, so you take out your crowbar and get to work. Your youthful excitement turns to grim dread as you manage to break open the crate and look inside. Now you and your friend are stuck with a secret that, if whispered to the wrong ears, could get you both killed.
As Her Royal Highness of the Violet Rose and daughter of one of the five most powerful men in the galaxy, your life could be worse. On the other hand, it could also be much better. For example, you could not have two older, arguably more beautiful sisters who get all of the attention. You could not have one piggish bully of a brother set to inherit the throne. You could not have to marry the equally piggish—and quite old—Duke of Starstreams, an ogre of a man with a large fortune whose family has made no end of trouble for your own throughout the last century since the Empire dissolved. When a marriage alliance was proposed between the houses and you were chosen to wed the man, you thought you'd die of shame. You earnestly consider running away, until you discover his plot to overthrow the Galactic Council and establish an empire in your new husband's name. Now you know you have to stay, at least until you see him toppled. But to do so, you have to win his trust, and to win his trust you have to play the happy wife.
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