Science fiction is a genre of fiction typically dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life.
(Question to ponder: does a novel cease to be science fiction once its predictions become science fact?)
Examples: 2001: A space odyssey - major electronic newspapers,
Fahrenheit 451 - predicts head phones or Brave new world - antidepressants)
Steampunk is modern technology—iPads, computers, robotics, air travel—powered by steam and set in the 1800’s. Steampunk is an inspired movement of creativity and imagination. With a backdrop of either Victorian England or America's Wild West at hand, modern technologies are re-imagined and realized as elaborate works of art, fashion, and mechanics.
Uglies is set in the future and deals with our culture's obsession with physical perfection and hedonism.
Ellie's scientist grandfather has discovered a way to reverse aging and consequiently has turned into a teenager - which makes for complicated relationships when he moves in with Ellie and her mother, his daughter.
A futuristic prison, sealed from view, where the descendants of the original prisoners live in a dark world torn by rivalry and savagery.. A young prisoner, Finn, has haunting visions of an earlier life, and cannot believe he was born here and has always been here.In the outer world, Claudia, daughter of the Warden of Incarceron, is trapped in her own form of prison a futuristic world constructed beautifully to look like a past era, an imminent marriage she dreads. But there comes a moment when Finn, inside Incarceron, and Claudia, outside, simultaneously find a device a crystal key, through which they can talk to each other. And so the plan for Finns escape is born .
First in a new series of adventure and transformation set in an alternative Victorian London, where technology is at once futuristic for its time, and retro to ours.
As a third child, Luke and his parents are in violation of the law. Luke, like all third children, must spend his days hidden or away from public view. When the government starts building houses in the woods behind the Garners' house, Luke is forced to hide inside his house, in total isolation from the outside world
Scott Westerfeld’s “Leviathan” is a tightly paced young adult novel set in an alternate version of the First World War and a welcome addition to the steampunk genre: a neo-retro period adventure.
Young Ender Wiggin is recruited by the International Military to lead the fight against the Formics, a genocidal alien race which nearly annihilated the human race in a previous invasion.
For generations a massive generator has sustained the needs of the underground city of Ember. But the generator was built to last only 200 years, and as its lights start to flicker and fade, it remains to two youths, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow, to follow a cryptic series of clues that will restore light to to the place.