The thought occured to me that these books in particular don't need much more to be added to what we may call "Adult fiction". Yet, it still remains that they're cheifly "Young Adult" books.
Why is that?

I've thought about that for a while now. There seems to be nothing huge to seperate young/adult fiction from each other other than the soberness and content. If soberness and content in adult fiction is the only difference, then adult fiction hardly seems that much better because of it.

Further, I enjoyed these books because they WEREN'T loaded with objectionable content; cursing, sex, etc. I admire fully, the author who can write without these so-called necessities in adult fiction. Reality can be addressed without delving into these things.

It's the same, I find, with Tolkein's work. The Hobbit, although initially written for his son or nephew contains mostly adult material, as does his Lord of the Rings trilogy. As these books are very inspiring to me, I find greater value in them because they're clean, well thought and well written.

So what's the REAL difference between young adult fiction and adult fiction?

I can relate to both, depending on the stories and depending on the hidden nuggets of wisdom within. I've read adult fiction, from CJ Cherryh and Mercedes Lackey, to David Eddings and OSC. To tell the truth, I find more wise and clear presentation from Alexander and Tolkein than any of these.

Is it style? Or is there a difference between the authors back then and the authors now? Perhaps we've lost something over the decades?

At any rate, I consider the Prydain chronicles and Tolkein's work to rate right up there with adult fiction, regardless of the lable they're printed under or assumed to be. In fact, I consider them more adult than most.

I'm curious as to what all of you think. What are the differences? If the difference is minor, then why the distinction? I don't want this limited to just these writers of course. I haven't read all that many young adult novels either recently, but of the few I've read, I've enjoyed them immensely.

These books are believable, they address character growth and wise insight, the struggles against evil and the overwhelming responsiblities of good. They're fraught with moral delimas both obvious and subtle.

Although I enjoy adult fiction, I believe I'd enjoy those books more if they weren't so obsessive with being so totally realistic as to include sex and cursing. NO, this ISN'T a rant about content in stories. I'd just like to know what the differences are.

The age of the characters. Young adult books are often about younger characters and often deal with coming of age issues.

The theme of an adult book is frequently much deeper than the theme of a young adult book. The two types deal with two different levels of questions that people ask. Usually young adults are thinking about different sorts of issues than adults are.

Sometimes young adult books are written with easier vocabulary and sentence structure, but I don't think this is a requirement. None of these things are requirements, it's just a matter of whether the sum of them points to a young adult book or an adult book.

Young adult fiction is targeted at an audience that is between (roughly) 12 and 17 years of age. Adult fiction is targeted at an audience of people over 18.

and in practical terms, that means age of characters (often), difficulty of vocabulary, length, and how much objectionable content.

"Young Adult?" I'll have to go with the age of the characters, as Aalanya says, particularly their age in the opening book of the series.

I think the distinction has far less to do with the character's age than the actual content. Example, Ender's Game; young kid, but the content is somewhat more sober, hence, not really a "young adult" story.

Though, it does make sense that the attention span and the subject material and vocabulary would be different between those audiences.

As others have said, it's a matter of whether you're writing it with younger readers in mind. There are basic matters like sentance structure and vocabulary. Realistically I'm of two minds on this point, but pragmatically it's a sound distinction (and one reason that I don't aspire to try my hand at YA literature). Then there are matters of relating to life experiences. Some are in terms of what kinds of experiences that younger readers will actually have had. For example, if you want to raise the issue of a guy who wants to marry a woman but can't because he doesn't feel he can support a family...you need to explain that to a YA audience, or perhaps replace it with some barrier (like raw social standing) which they'll understand a little better. A lot of SF and Fantasy doesn't have this problem so much, since it doesn't deal with experiences that most adults will have had either, so both are popular for YA literature.

Then you have matters of educational/cultural experience. YA readers won't remember where they were when Kennedy was shot or the Challenger blew up. They also might not have read certain literary works that characterized older generations of readers. They don't remember what life was like before cell-phones and the internet (oh, they understand what it's like to not have a cell-phone/computer personally, but have to be told that once upon a time nobody had them at all). They aren't likely to have traveled a lot, may be too young to have almost killed anyone while driving, may not realize that even sex can get pretty boring after a few years (not that it must, but it can--and that distinction may be another thing they don't understand).

Content issues...never mattered to me, and are less important today anyhow. After all, the most effective "adult" material has always had unrealistic and rather juvenille portrayals of its subject matter. It's always been more for kids, or at least the inexperienced.

The thing we call thematic depth...I'd say it mostly comes from the fact that most adults have long settled a lot of the basic questions, like their religious/political/philosophical affiliations. We want to explore the nuances...particularly those we're thinking about ourselves. We also stop fantasizing about being the main character, we're more interested in watching the main character. Or that might just be me, and to be honest, I was always one to refuse to believe that I could be as stupid/cowardly/emotional as the main characters in most stories.

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So what's the REAL difference between young adult fiction and adult fiction?

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In recent mass market fiction I fear one difference may be in the boldness of whatever political/ethical/moral indoctrination the particular writer may be pushing. This is a bit more cynical than Survivor's slant on the idea, but then I'm a bit older and more cynical than him.

On the Cold War: some of the works written on it make interesting projections about the future. Some projected American victory or defeat in military or economic terms...a lot settled into some kind of permanent balance of power, where each side became more like the other, whatever happened in the course of the story. Very few projected anything similar to what actually happened. (I regret not writing an idea I had in the late seventies, where a section of the Berlin Wall was preserved as a museum piece / memorial long after the Cold War ended. Not that I had the skills to handle it properly in those days, but I would like to have tried it out.)

Now a lot of them are period pieces, detached from the reality of advancing history in the same way as accounts of the first moon landing are. But some are still read and will continue to be read.

Besides, I'm not assuming that the world will end at any specific point, I'm just pointing out that there is no way that you can tell that there will be future generations of humans or know anything about what will seem important to them. You shouldn't write for them at the expense of writing for people who exist today. So it's useless to talk about them.

I think that the ones that projected that the Soviet Union would simply collapse economically were underrepresented, given what we then knew about the debilitating economic effects of large scale socialism. But that points up a difficulty in knowing the future, most of what people "know" isn't knowledge at all. The popular opinion that socialism is just as (or even more) economically viable as a free market remains deeply entrenched in America, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.