Wait a minute. There’s a younger generation than the one currently reading SF? Isn’t the common perception that SF needs to do outreach to the adult community?

While you may convert a few adults, I doubt you will make rabid SF readers out of them. Not so with kids. lets face it, one of the cool aspects of SF is the sense of wonder inherent in most stories, the ability of SF to make you look at something in a new and different manner, or to encounter something you might have otherwise. In effect, to be a kid again and to experience something for the first time, and to be affected by it, to be moved by it, to be awed by it. SF is a much harder sell to adults who are set in their ways and are used to looking at the world in a certain manner. Kids don’t have that problem. They haven’t formed a worldview yet. They are experiencing something new every day. I believe there is no better time to reach someone than when they are a child. This is where the outreach programs should be focusing. I’d love to see someone, anyone, trolling the SF community, asking for book donations, then donating those books to school libraries. I’d like to see some organization make a concerted effort to actually reach the kids in schools, and not just through books. Why not a 30 minute tour of SF, showing film clips and reading excerpts from books? At the very least, its something different from regular school work and an attempt to equate SF with fun, not work.

Aha, get em while they’re young. Like the cigarette companies. Smart.