“All your generation want to do is go and see comedies like Noises Off,” my daughter says, a touch accusingly. “At least we’re thinking about politics, and the future.” Gemma Malley sees that dystopias not only magnify what teens go through in terms of bullying and the struggle to make their own decisions, but feed “their appetite for adrenaline. I’m very aware of my mortality, but a teenager doesn’t feel that,” she says. “These novels are like scary rides in the fairground.” What my own teenagers have responded to in the genre is not just the action-packed plots but the flawed, complex characters that inhabit them. Katniss in The Hunger Games has hunting skills and a fierce protectiveness towards her little sister that make her, like Meg Rosoff’s Daisy, and Moira Young’s Saba, the opposite to Stephenie Meyer’s passive, virtuous vampire-lover Bella Swann. Furthermore, Katniss pretends to be in love with her fellow contestant Peeta in order to manipulate the millions watching them on TV. She fights back against the expectations of Panem’s totalitarian regime by pretending to conform. Again, my daughter and her friends find this appealing in an age in which boys’ attitudes to them have been warped by internet pornography.