Road Rash
Decades passed? For several years, in old South Austin, I lived next door to a drummer. Virgo, if you must, and I must. Great neighbor. Taught me a bunch of drummer jokes. Also gave me a really good line, as he was grad student in physics, “It really is rocket science.”
At the time, my first introduction to “Science Fiction” as a genre, and one of the few remaining childhood belongings I still have? Thin copies of paperback books, part of the “Future History” series from RAH, and more important, a ton of them were “juvies,” the slightly pejorative term for what is now termed “YA” for Young Adult, as in the tweens and teens. I haven’t reread many of them, but I’m — for some reason — unwilling to part with the faded paperbacks. As a source, though, the old, “young adult” fiction is part of what shaped my nascent thinking. Not the first YA material I’ve read, but it also has a familiar tempo, scenarios that are lighter in weight, less graphic sex, toned down drugs and alcohol, more teenage angst rather than real-world problems. I got here from that shelf full of RAH “science fiction.”
Might really be rocket science?
Road Rash
Mention highway around Barstow, and the great opening lines echo in my mind, “We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold…”
That’s not from YA fiction, just an American classic.
But Road Rash was fun, tight pacing, racing along, but just a little unbelievable; however, I refused to put the book down. As such, enjoyable. Rock on, dude.
