These stories are great for where J is right now, both language-wise and conceptually. Clarke's style is very lucid, with fairly short sentences and not a lot of technical vocabulary. The plots are concrete and people-centered, mostly set in the near future, when humans have recently made the jump to living in space and in the process of colonizing the solar system. And, with some exceptions, the tone is optimistic about the future. That is important to me. At the moment, young adult sci-fi seems very pessimistic by and large, oriented towards dystopian scenarios. It echoes adult sensibilities. I don't think that's a good thing for children, at least not unmitigated. I personally feel gloomy about the future in many ways, but I do my best to spare my son these fears and do my damndest to communicate to him a positive vision of the future.
Right now he's on fire about space travel and, after watching a documentary about Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic, wants to build "space hotels." He has also been obsessed with the panet Saturn all year. Well, lo and behold, Clarke wrote a short story about a space hotelier building a hotel with a view of Saturn:
Awesome!
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