Your first exposure to SF literature

The first SF I can recall reading is an Arthur C. Clarke story called "A Walk in the Dark". I reread it not long ago and found it predictable but way back when (30+ years) I can remember being absolutely entranced by it. Then I came across a Ray Bradbury collection in our school library. THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN. Sweet nostalgia. I've given away at least a dozen copies of Bradbury titles to nieces and nephews: GOLDEN APPLES, SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, MARTIAN CHRONICLES, DANDELION WINE. Bradbury brings out the twelve year old boy in all of us. It's GOLDEN APPLES that sticks with me though. In my office, above my computer, I have a row of the books by authors I revere. Big time literary talents like James Joyce and Beckett, William S. Burroughs and William Golding. And at the end of the row, not spine outward like the rest, but displayed for me to look at every day, THE GOLDEN APPLES OF THE SUN, that bright red cover, Bradbury touted as "The World's Greatest Living Science Fiction Author". Every time I look at it, I remember the wonder it provoked in me and makes me want to do the same for some Reader out there, alone with one of my books, turning its pages with starstruck eyes...

And a quick addendum:

Does anyone remember those Groff Conklin anthologies? I know I devoured a number of them. And there's an anthology I read when I was around twelve that had a big impact: TALES OF TIME AND SPACE. Most of the tales were forgettable but a couple stuck with me: "Birds of a Feather" by Robert Silverberg. Ring any bells? And a Keith Laumer story called "The Last Command". One other novel comes to mind, one I was delighted to find at a library sale a number of years back. LUKAN WAR by "award-winning author" Michael Collins. Surely not the Irish writer who's been shortlisted for a couple of Bookers. Nah, couldn't be. (I've had to take the "Touchstone" off LUKAN WAR because none of the alternatives provided was the correct one. It's a very cheesy effort, released by Belmont Books, cheesy publisher, in 1969. No ISBN. Anybody else read the little darlin'?)

Frederik Pohl's AGE OF THE PUSSYFOOT. Shoot, almost forgot that one. Blew me away in my early teens. Convinced me never to let those Alcor swine ever get hold of my head. Don't wanna be cryogenically frozen and wake up in the future if that's what happens...

In grade 4 our teacher read Rivets and Sprockets by Alexander Key to us, and I was hooked. I have no idea whether or not I would still find that story readable - I have no recollection of more than the title. The first thing I remember reading by myself was something by Alan E. Nourse or Andre Norton when I was in grade 4. I remember the classic SF rocketship (pointy, with fins) on the cover but not really what it was about. It was hard to find SF in my school back then (late 1960s).

Hey, somebody show me how to do these "touchstone" thingees--I've tried twice and all I end up with is parentheses around titles.

Tales of Time and Space - Ross R. Olney

A very influential to me personally collection of stuff, I read this a ton when younger.

All the Time in the World - Arthur C. Clarke
Puppet Show - Fredric Brown
Birds of a Feather - Robert Silverberg
Clutch of Morpheus - Larry Sternig
The Last Command Bolo - Keith Laumer
Fog - William Campbell Gault
The Martian Crown Jewels - Poul Anderson
Of Missing Persons - Jack Finney

A sneaky thief discovers that time travel robbery isn't all it is cracked up to be.

3.5 out of 5

Psychological testing to discover if you will have problems with aliens, and not make a donkey of yourself.

3.5 out of 5

A somewhat bizarre carny has dodgy characters from more than one planet.

3.5 out of 5

The only man alive that has never needed to sleep is the only man that can save the planet from an astronomical event that will do worse than put the populace to sleep, in the end.

4 out of 5

A Bolo is a cybernetic supertank, basically. In this story, an old inactive one comes to life.

3 out of 5

A young bloke has to make a horrible decision during an alien invasion.

3 out of 5

An adventure for the Martian equivalent of the Great Detective.

3.5 out of 5

A gullible young bloke wants to get the hell out of the 50s, and is offered a trip to another world.

2.5 out of 5

4 out of 5

You have to use brackets, not parentheses for touchstones. One for works, 2 in a row for authors.

bracketbracketNosuchauthorbracketbracket
bracketNosuchbookbracket

Time of the Great Freeze by Robert Silverberg was the first SF read that I recall. It was a gift from a book distributor that my Dad did business with, and I was hooked. I read all of the Isaac Asimov Lucky Starr series right after that, then worked my way through the same Heinlein books mentioned above.

We were asked to study The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham in early high school and that book captured my imagination completely - still on my list of favourites.

Tom Swift adventures. Home literature was a trickle down affair in our house; my two older brothers were not particularly science fiction fans. At the same time I was reading my father's war fiction. Also, I think there might have been one of the Classics Illustrated comic books on Journey to the Center of the Earth...

Drat it, all right, I confess: those James Blish "Star Trek" novelizations. Read them all. Ow! Ow! Stop twisting my arm! Okay, okay...and the Alan Dean Foster hackworks based on the animated "Trek" series. Now I've lost every scrap of my critical credibility. Forgive me, Don DeLillo, I was young and stupid...

My first exposure to SF was some puerile dreck given to me (an innocent child) by my least-favorite older relative. It was the worst book I'd encountered (the Dick, Jane & Spot stuff included), and I swore never again to read SF.

I read Wells, and Verne, and Brave New World, and other classics, but never thought of them as SF. Finally, when I was in my 20's, a friend handed me The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and said he'd never speak to me again if I didn't read it. It was hard going at first, as I wasn't familiar with the conventions of the genre, but I got hooked, and when I gave it back I naively asked "Did this guy write any other books?" I raced through 30 or so of those "other books," then bought old "best of" anthologies to discover other authors.

I've read only 4 Trek novels, because I knew the authors. But I did get the ERB Mars series and catch up on those. :-)

Wow myshelves you were a late starter.

It is pretty hard for me to answer. I grew up watching Doctor Who on telly and reading the novelisations from about 8 I guess. By the time I was 10 I was onto Isaac Asimov (his normal stuff not the juveniles). By the time I was 12 I was reading stuff like Robert Silverberg and near enough anything in the Gollancz yellow dj I could find.

Nearly all the books came from the public library.

No idea - not that long in actual numbers of years but I was reading SF when quite young and can no longer remember who or what I started with.

Science Fiction Stories from Outer Space was a book I choose to be dedicated to me by my Cub Pack leader when I left age 10 - so I was well enthralled already by that age. I remember reading Kludge no idea who by in an Anthology 'the Best SF yrs x-y' which has stuck with me, but when or which anthology is long lost. I certainly read Asimov and Clarke while still in school.

Anyone remember those Scholastic book clubs where you could order books at school? When I was 9 or so, I got the The Shadow over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft from the club and even though it's borderline horror, it has "The colour out of space" in it and another about an explorer on a new planet that gets stuck inside a kind of maze made out of some super-hard transparent material ... anyway, that got me hooked ... that and Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar books ... something about the way those covers affected my 9-year-old brain ...

#15, yes, I used to order books from SBS regularly. Fortunately my parents were very supportive of my reading and were willing to pay for some books. I remember being a big fan of Encyclopedia Brown. I suspect there were some SF titles among my SBS acquisitions, but I can't remember them.

I remember reading the Narnia books very early, which are not SF but which as fantasy gave me an introduction to spec fic in general. I remember reading Podkayne of Mars when I was quite young, and Asimov's initial Foundation trilogy (I was young enough that I had to have the significance of the Mule's name explained to me ;-)

I remember that Scholastic Book Club edition of Lovecraft--really bad cover with a fish-man on the front, wasn't it? Likely cost you (or your parents) 60 cents. I read something the other day that Scholastic just had their credit rating slashed so the company might be in trouble. But they recently bought a small publisher in England that claims it's found the next J.K. Rowling so perhaps their prospects have taken a turn for the better. This new potential super-best-seller comes out in June and features the exploits of a 14-year old archaeologist. If you've got kids in the 12-14 year old age group, keep an eye out for it (good end-of-the-school-year bonus gift).

I never got too much in to the BIG names when I was growing up. Hardly any Heinlein except for a few short stories, ditto Clarke and Asimov (both of whom I found quite boring). Some A.E. Van Vogt and, especially, Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison. Quite a bit of Robert Sheckley (his short stories have fun ideas). When I was a teenager I read some of those fat tomes by Pournelle and Niven, MOTE IN GOD'S EYE, LUCIFER'S HAMMER etc. I shudder when I think about those buggers. I liked anthologies...and didn't discover biggies like LORD OF THE RINGS until relatively late in childhood/young adulthood.

I also recall a fat book by a guy named W.A. Harbinson about a conspiracy involving aliens--my history teacher picked it up off my desk and shook his head. "Why do you read this stuff?" The next week I brought in a copy of Shirer's RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH and restored myself in his eyes (he was right about the Harbinson--it was crap).

KT, yeah, I remember getting Starstreak: Stories of Space when I was around 7 or 8. This has Who Goes There and The Nine Billion Names of God in it, as well as an Asimov I think, so that was pretty cool. Grandparents gave me the Tales of Time and Space above around the same time.

CliffBurns: Yep, fish-man on the cover ... I've still got the book, too ... and like you, I wasn't too much into the really big names, except for Asimov ... on the topic of sci-fi books by people who I never heard of again, I can also remember reading Centerforce by T.A. Waters, some kind of post-apocalyptic thing in which people did a lot of motorcycle riding, and The shores of Kansas by Robert Chilson, a time-travel book.

I think the Isaac Asimov Foundation trilogy was the first SF I remember reading. My grandpa started me on them.

Wow, bluetyson. If I'd been given a book containing "Who Goes There?" and "The Nine Billion Names of God" instead of whatever piece of kiddie-lit junk I did get. . .!

I forgot . . . while I was eschewing SF, I was reading the fiction in the Saturday Evening Post. Well, Rockwell wasn't doing covers with not-a-hair-out-of-place blondes cringing away from BEMs, and I don't remember any stories with rocket ships, so it was just fiction. :-) One story by Will F. Jenkins stuck in my head for about half a century, but I didn't remember the title or author until I got some help on LT.

Let's see, first contact with SF lit (as opposed to other media--first encounter with SF would've been "Space: 1999" on TV, at mere six-seven years of age--downright fateful! Sagan's "Cosmos" at fourteen just finished me off and sealed the deal)--well, probably the regular SF story column in a wonderful Yugoslav children's magazine, "Politikin Zabavnik". Late seventies, maybe eight, nine years old?--and the first story I can recall was about time-travel/alternate history, with someone in the future observing a Renaissance painter, who turns out to be Leonardo. I think the writer was French...

Years later I started collecting Yugoslav SF magazines and buying books, with a special interest for SF in comics. Most of this I haven't entered in the catalogue since I'm considering giving it all one day to my brother's kids. It would be my contribution to the next generation's obsessions, scientific or fictional... :)

My town was too small to support either a bookstore, or even a branch of the public library. Mercifully, the central library sent a bookmobile around once a week.

So - because it was illustrated - the first SF I found was Heinlein's Red Planet. Then Andre Norton's Galactic Derelict. Then alphabetically through the downtown public library's shelves: Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke....

#2Does anyone remember those Groff Conklin anthologies?

And yes, Conklin's Giants Unleashed anthology was one of the first books I bought. The early Galaxy Readers were important to me, too. (Touchstones not working.)

I suppose this is going to flag me as one of the younger users here, but I got started on Bruce Coville as a kid and then discovered Ray Bradbury when I was 11. i particularly remember loving Something Wicked This Way Comes at that age, although that's more of a fantasy work.

After that was Ender's Game, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I, Robot, and any I could get my hands on by Robert A. Heinlein.

Bob: (Message #23):

Glad you too recollect those Groff Conklin compilations. I imagine he introduced more than a few youngsters to the many worlds of sci fi.
How often did the bookmobile swing by your town? Don't think they still have the ol' book buses any more--budget cuts and on-line library services. I can conceive of a Bradbury-esque tale of a Bookmobile, a sinister Mr. Dark handing out books to kids, knowing the nightmares they'll provoke (which he then feeds on)...

Bradbury is the perfect author to get a kid started on SF. I think in his heart Ray is still a kid in new sneakers running through the streets and fields of an idyllic small town somewhere in Illinois...

Just took a look at the anthologies, which I haven't listed yet. (Hoping for that "megaworks" system that will let me list contents.) Anyway, I found 14 edited by Groff Conklin. So he probably introduced me to quite a few writers.

CliffBurns at #25 How often did the bookmobile swing by your town?

I think it was every two weeks. Once I was allowed to cross the street by myself, I think I could bike over to another local stop it made, too, possibly on the alternate weeks.

(PS: Looking up Groff Conklin, I'm amused - in light of the other conversation - to be reminded that one of his anthologies was Great Science Fiction by Scientists....)

Bob:

Let's start a campaign to "Bring Back Bookmobiles".

And as for your last comment re: Conklin's antho of SF-writing scientists...
I'll get you for that, Bob.

Have a good one.

Followup question:

Who WAS this Groff Conklin fella and how did his manage to get such a sweet gig (influencing the minds of a couple of generations of SF fans)? Does anyone know anything about his background/history?

>15 KromesTomes: Come to think of it, I probably read more SF than I remembered. I remember the scholastic editions of two books - The Forgotten Door and another book that had a tin man-looking robot on the front porch...

Scholastic strikes again! When I was a kid I used to love browsing their catalogues, making my choices, cutting out the little order form on the back and then taking in an envelope rattling with coins the next day. But you had to wait seemingly an eternity for the books to arrive and when they did, they looked smaller, thinner and less impressive than they did in the catalogue. But they were YOUR books and you treasured them, even when the cheap bindings split and the pages came loose. The dawning of a bibliophile...

Probably the first sci-fi I read was Andre Norton's Star Man’s Son also published as Daybreak: 2250 A.D.. But I remember in grade school (5th grade) a series of books about a cat in 50's-style space suit and 50's-style pointy rocket, Space-Cat on Venus kind of titles. Can not recollect any story-lines.

I too visited the book-mobile every time it was scheduled. I was heavily into WW2 topics (planes and subs mostly), and was allowed to select from the adult sections by 6th or 7th grade.

I have absolutely no idea what started me on science fiction. I think Andre Norton must have been amongst the earliest. I was probably reading two books a week by the age of ten, and I think I'd progressed from The Famous Five go ginger beer drinking and Dr Dolittle messes around with animals by that stage, although Arthur Ransome still held me in thrall. Must have been Asimov, Heinlein, Anderson, Van Vogt and the hundreds of authors that start with a 'C' that I was ploughing through. Anthologies were the big items from the library: the Out of This World 7 series by Amable Williams-Ellis and Mably Owen were the ones that stick firmest in the memory. I'm staggered that only two copies are listed at LT.

(Drat those touchstones.)

My first encounter with SF was when I was about 9 or 10, when a relative gave me a book about two teenagers who went to ganymede and battled aliens. I forgot the title and i cant find the book anymore. drat. anyway, is a wrinkle in time by madeleine l'engle sf? that and frank herbert's dune series cemented my love for the genre.

When I was 13, I read The Time Machine. I loved the whole idea of time travel, particularly traveling to the far future. I'd never seen anyone think that way before. My imagination was ignited like a rocket ship. I read some other Wells, but nothing compared.

Interesting that I wound up having to read it again during graduate school. A sort of coming full circle in my formal education.

I have no idea, it has been a while... My father read sf, so the stuff was around; I remember watching Space 1999 on telly and reading translated and borrowed Heinleins from the library - Space Cadet, Have space suit will travel and Farmer in the sky was among them, and Asimovs, of course - Caves of steel and the Foundation books...
And even before that I devoured everything Jules Verne had ever written.

But maybe it was my discovery of the Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, which existed in a translated version during the 50's, that made it. My father subscribed on both the swedish and american editions, and the swedish ones he bound by hand - one book a year - and so they where in mint condition when I discovered them in the early or mid 70's...

And in the late 70's - aged 13 - I forced myself to learn to read english language books so that I could a) read all the sf paperbacks that I'd found in a box in our cellar, and b) borrow a wider selection of books from the library - the english language section had lots and lots of sf books.

When I think back I've read more books than I can remember. And that feels... weird.

*touchstones!!!*

The Tom Swift books, and Rick Brant which is similar but (slightly) more realistic, may have been my start. But I really don't know - I was reading real books (what my nephew calls 'chapter books') by the time I was in first grade, and possibly in kindergarten. It was a Montessori school - maybe I got some Andre Norton? Oh, The Forgotten Door - that's a memory! And The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, though that may not have been until I was in 4th or 5th grade (9 or so). Nah, I was reading Heinlein and Norton by then, I know. I had over a thousand books (of my own) by the time I was 11 - and lost them all (we were in Iran at the time, and I know it was a thousand because I had to count them for inventory. Didn't help, never got them back.) I really don't remember what they were, either - sigh. Heinlein juvies were a relatively late discovery - I love Citizen of the Galaxy, but I didn't encounter it until I was at least 12. I think I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress before I read Rocketship Galileo (touchstone messed up). I have no idea what I started with, really. And busifer, I've read _lots_ more books than I can remember. I'd forgotten all about The Forgotten Door until I read avaland's comment! Now I remember it...and I'm going to have to find it...thanks a _lot_, avaland! :D

I wasn't sure how to answer this one because I read just about everything I could find in the public library in the way of science fiction. Then I remembered that one of the first books I could remember reading was called "Spaceship Under the Apple Tree" and there was even a sequel that I also read. My Dad also had a small collection of the pre-World War II Tom Swifts that included airships and other kinds of "advanced" technology and then picked up some of the Tom Swift, Jr books from the 1950s.

Robert A. Mosher

Oh yes, Verne and Wells--I guess I didn't think of them as science fiction as a kid, more as "adventure".

I remember watching Space 1999 on telly

Yay! For some reason this series isn't particularly known in the US at all. I thought it was American, but it was actually a UK production.

The first season is IMO still the best SF TV ever.

Lola - I have some of the episodes on tape (bought before DVD hit the market, eh) and I don't know if I agree it's the best SF TV ever; while it held me breathless as a kid now I look at the series and think "hey, there's some vintage set design in there!" ;-)
Still, I like it VERY much; in some ways it's better than TOS.

The first science fiction novel I remember reading was City at World's End by Edmond Hamilton.when I was about 12 or 13, and I never forgot it. In fact, I can remember it was summer, and I was reading it in the backyard of my childhood home, ignoring the other kids who were playing in the yard and trying to distract me from my reading. Before that, I had read mostly biographies, historical fiction, a few classics like Little Women, and Nancy Drew, and this book was a revelation.

I reread it a few years ago ~ or rather tried to ~ but couldn't finish it.

Sad when our memories of a particular work don't hold up well when our adult self re-encounters that same piece. I found that with much of my early reading in SF. What I thought was ground-breaking and cool turned out to be obvious and clunkily executed. Good Lord, I started reading Hardy Boy books to my sons and right away they pointed out to me that all the brothers' adventures seem to take place during the same summer, Frank eternally 18 years old and his brother one year younger. Clever lads, my boys. I didn't realize that myself until about the 25th bloody book in the series.

Yes! I carefully saved all my Tom Swifts and Rick Brants, and recently tried re-reading them. The TS are just stupid - mindless - oh, correction, I mean Tom Swift Jr. The original Tom Swifts are...well, also stupid, but less mindless. I can actually re-read them - as period pieces, if nothing else. The first Rick Brant - The Rocket's Shadow - is also readable, but the second one I spent the entire book yelling at them for being such idiots (Rick's friend gets hit over the head while following the bad guys, comes back to the party - next day the two of them see the bad guys again and immediately begin following them, without informing anyone else...). I did finish the book but I have no interest in reading the rest...sigh.

hey, there's some vintage set design in there!" ;-)

Ha, well, what do you expect--mid-seventies! :)

Actually, I think the first season still looks very cool--much better than any Star Trek edition. Of course, it would be unfair to compare it to the uber-slick products of the moment, Battlestar Galactica and suchlike...

The series was originally meant to be as "realistic" as possible, and that whiff of authenticity still thrills me: the ungainly spacesuits, the sober and elegant uniforms, the spare sets, the superb shuttle models etc. The models are especially good. When you think that the effects were contrived with toys and shadowplay--I scoff at you, CGI! Scoff!

But then there was that catastrophic decline in the second season, when the Brits were joined by an American producer who wanted to "jazz things up"... and suddenly there were metamorphing aliens, hammy romantic stories utterly inappropriate to the mature leads (Bain and Landau were both close to fifty), day-glo costumes etc.

Agree with all your statements, Lola. You know that modelmaking and puppertry they did in the series owe something to their previous show, Thunderbirds?

I've heard of, but never seen Thunderbirds.

Isn't it a cartoon or puppet show?

I've enjoyed several old TV series I hadn't seen before (I STILL don't have a TV, but I watch DVDs on my computer). I loved "The prisoner". Now that one probably isn't classified as "science fiction", but its motifs are so common in SF, maybe it's a borderline case...

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a giant teat? No, it's A WEATHER BALLOON!

It was a puppet show - a set of people who went out in a rocket to save the day.

I've never seen "The Prisoner" so I can't comment, but I LOVED "The Outer Limits" when I first saw it over three decades after it originally aired. The effects are amazing, one dimensional - flat - aliens and all!

Clever buggers. This posting has to do with sci fi LITERATURE and now we're talking about old TV series and getting completely off-topic and--yeah, those Gerry Anderson puppetoon shows were great, weren't they? And "UFO", that was pretty good--hey, now you've got ME doing it. See what I mean? Now I'm completely screwed...

My first exposure to Science Fiction was through The World treasury of science fiction by David G. Hartwell. I decided that I wanted to way to find writers, and it seemed that reading a lot of short stories and rating them would be the way to go. Found a lot of authors this way. Unfortunately, their best work sometimes was what was in that World Treasury volume. That or their normal work was somehow not similar to the work in the Treasury.

re: 2 - I have two of Groff Conklin's anthologies.

The TESSERACTS series here in Canada started out as a "Best of..." and it featured some terrific writing. Then the last four or five books switched to just a regular anthology of SF stories and the quality went into the toilet. Maybe the publisher couldn't afford to pay the big names (Gibson, Sawyer, et all) for reprinting their tales, maybe it was cheaper to go with original stories by unheralded and, in my view, inferior writers. For whatever the reason, the series went from being a benchmark in Canadian SF to being a place to send stories that got turned down everywhere else. Too bad. I recommend the first five or six books in the series but none of the ones that followed.

What do you folks think of today's anthos of BEST SF? Are they worthy, compared to the Groff Conklin stuff from days past? Will they inspire readers to become future SF greats?

I was a Star Trek (OS) fan as a child (and continue to be a fan as an adult), and I am sure that I read a smattering of juvenile books in the genre. However, I clearly remember the book that made me a seriously dedicated fan of SF literature: "Strange Wine" by Harlan Ellison.

As far as "Best Of" anthologies, I read them to find new 'personal favorite' authors and the occasional stand-out story. Sadly, I often have to sift through a lot of disappointing verbage to find the gems. Those gems are always worth it though. That is one of the things that I love about SF. The best stories are real treasures.

Harlan Ellison's a good place to start your SF reading. "I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream" is one of those handful of stories that I've never been able to shake off. The concept and execution were near perfect--I don't think Harlan wrote anything nearly as good before or since. The field needs more characters like Harlan nowadays--he's irascible, opinionated and original. Too many of our contemporary SF scribes are colorless, faceless, indistinguishable from one another. You may not always agree with him but you certainly ignore him at your peril...

My first SF book was in the 2nd grade, a series about "Space Cat". The next thing I remember in SF was Edgar Rice Burrough's John Carter books, and then Tolkien. In 1964 I read a great book called "Planet of the Apes." As usual, book better than movie. I have a book of poetry by Bradbury called "When Elephants Last in the Dooryard Bloomed," although I am not a great reader of poetry. But I couldn't resist title and author. I have a hard time these days finding things I like, I don't really care much for vampire books as none that I have read compare to Bram Stokers "Dracula". I have a few books from SciFi book club that I think are very good: Fault Lines by Powers and "A Familiar Dragon" but can't recall author at present moment.

I vaguely remember reading a book (in elementary school) about a kid who had an intelligent alien slug in his throat. I have no idea who its author is, or its title.

I'm not positive that it was the first SF book that I ever read, but it was probably the first book that I had read which concerned extra-terrestrial parasitism.

The first SF book I noticed was an Honor Harrington book by David Weber on my dad's shelves. He's kept everysingle book he read from forever so he has a ton of SF. I've been reading SF since then but not sure what the exact first one was. My dad's first book I believe was Becoming Human by Jean Vanier.

>54 Glassglue: - sounds like it might be Hal Clement's Needle. That's about an intelligent alien that's a puddle of (green? it's green on the cover, not sure in the text) ooze and it seeps into another being and communicates with him. This one's a cop looking for another of his species who's a bad guy...Very good story, as is the sequel Through the Eye of a Needle. I like Hal Clement, he has neat weird outlooks on things.

Thanks for the feedback, but no, that's not it (I have the books that you mentioned on the shelf behind me.) I too enjoy Hal Clement's writing.

The book I was thinking of was intended for young readers (under 10), and was most likely first published in the late seventies to the mid-eighties. I think I'll have to ask an elementary school librarian who was working in the eighties...

First movie I ever saw was "This Island Earth" (1955) where Faith Domergue & Rex Reason get, among other things, zapped by a green ray! I spent many a sleepless night worrying about that ray!

Second movie I ever saw was "Forbidden Planet" (1956), I even had a kid sized Robbie the Robot of my own, from then on there was no turning back I was a fan!

I don't actually recall what the first printed SF I ever read was. Most likely some Classics Illustrated issue. Does Plastic Man count?

I remember buying books in an elementary school book club, among them was The Time Machine by H. G. Wells as well as some Jules Verne. My buddies had SF magazines such as Analog or Amazing Stories which I read, but I don’t recall any specific stories or authors.

First taste was Invitation to the Game by Monica Hughes - it's cheesy, young adult fiction, but I loved it and was hooked. It still holds a special place as the very first book on the very top row on my first bookshelf. :)

Of course their were movies before I got to books, but the first scifi books I read was Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov- not the best of the series, but it led me to read about 20 Asimov books over the next two years before I burned out. Well, there wasn't much left in our bookstore by then, actually.

After spending a couple of years with Captain Video and Tom Corbett I started school and learned to read. I think my first SF might have been an anthology by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore right around 1950. At about the same time I read the Tom Swift, Jr. books. The first classic science fiction I read was Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke and Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein. I read sci-fi off and on until the late sixties when I read Macroscope by Piers Anthony, Cities in Flight by James Blish and Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner all at once, which I really really liked and followed them up with Stranger in a Strange Land which I hated and put me off sci fi for ever after.

I read a whole bunch of Stephen King when I was a kid and these days I consider horror, SF, and fantasy all pretty much different flavors of the same genre.

If you want to be strict about the SF label, I think my first was Fahrenheit 451 and somewhere around the same time I found Stranger in a Strange Land. I didn't really branch out from Heinlein and Bradbury until years later when I new friend handed me a stack of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan books. I read every one of her books I could find and hit the ground running seeking out other SF authors.

TV! Oh yeah… I forgot about TV! Thanks, geneg for jogging my memory! TV itself was pretty science fictiony in those days. The picture was awful and kept fuzzing up and dropping out… as if it were coming from the moon or beyond. I don’t recall much Captain Video but I was a huge fan of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (also of Sky King & Ramar of the Jungle). I also recall some episodes of Science Fiction Theater.

But getting back to printed literature…After giving this considerable thought I can remember certain books from those days mostly by faded memories of their covers or nearly forgotten ideas stuck in ancient corners of my brain. I couldn’t tell you which of these I read first. That tidbit, I’m afraid is lost in time. The authors and titles I’ve been able to dredge up include:

Heinlein: Have Space Suit – Will Travel
Bradbury: Martian Chronicles
PK Dick: The Man in the High Castle
Vonnegut: Sirens of Titan
Asimov: Foundation Trilogy
Van Vogt: The Voyage of the Space Beagle
Something by Theodore Sturgeon, possibly The Synthetic Man
The usual stuff by Verne, Wells and Orwell
Oh, and I can’t forget Stars by Herbert Spencer Zim. Just look at those illustrations if you don’t think it is science fiction! Those pictures fired my imagination for many a year!

I agree with geneg who wrote:

“…which I really really liked and followed them up with Stranger in a Strange Land which I hated and put me off sci fi for ever after.”

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I decided to start reading science fiction again to find out what had been going on while I was away. I repurchased several of the old titles. While Foundation Trilogy, although much smaller than I remembered it to be, was still a ripping yarn, I was disappointed with the conclusion of Man in the High Castle and threw down Stranger in disgust about half-way through.

My most favorite of all reading matter in those days (yes, and perhaps even now) was the ongoing story of an alternate universe populated predominately by ducks. Carl Barks wrote all the stories. I recommend them highly.

When I was 9 or 10, my mother had me borrow The Martian Chronicles from the library. That was it. I was hooked. It helped that my parents, while not big SF readers, enjoyed many classics of the genre. My father even made watching "the new science fiction show called Star Trek" manditory. He's a real space buff.

Oh, ShellyS ~ Your parents sound wonderful! Do you think they'd adopt me? lol

I was reading fantasy(Charlotte's Web) and horror (Stephen King) before my 10th birthday. But I think my first SF was a couple years later in my very early teens: Fahrenheit 451. Mom taught that one in her high school English class (along with the Hobbit, and Alas Babylon -- Mom was a very cool teacher!). I proceeded to read a LOT of Bradbury after that and eventually discovered Heinlein and read a LOT of that. It wasn't until after college that I realized there were other good SF authors out there. Someone lent me a huge grocery sack full of paperbacks including the beginnings of Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series and I was off and running from that point on.

Truth be told, I have no nostalgia for Bradbury or any of the other early anti-tech beware-the-future style SF that I was reading in my teens. These days I want want characters with more depth than a sheet of cardboard and I want themes that I can't sum up in a single sentence. And, mostly, I want a little bit of moral ambiguity built in, 'cause that's what life's all about.

Storeetllr, my mother died years ago, but my father's still going strong at 81! He's scheduled to leave tomorrow with my nephew to see a space launch. We're hoping it doesn't get postponed.

"And, mostly, I want a little bit of moral ambiguity built in, 'cause that's what life's all about."

LunarSara, I mostly feel that way, too. Early on, I binged on Asimov and Clarke and while I still enjoy that sort of SF, I prefer more character-driven works, open-ended endings, moral ambiguity, and also, lots of angst! But I still want the old-fashioned sense of wonder as much as possible.

Re #66

I think Bradbury's stories often contain a sense of wonder, ambiguity, and characters with depth (it's difficult to go on and on about characters in a short story, but it's possible to give them depth). As for anti-tech, most of his concern seems to be over what people may mindlessly DO with technology, not the technology itself.

>69 selkins:, selkins, It's been a while since I've read much Bradbury, but I don't recall much of a sense of wonder or ambiguity... more a sense of "boy wouldn't this be nifty if people could be trusted not to screw it up." In Bradbury's universe tech advancements are bad because the general populous isn't smart enough to use it wisely.

I've always loved Fahrenheit 451. It's a wonderful book about the dangers of censorship and propaganda. It's about how we need to think for ourselves and not let anyone take away the things that teach us and encourage us to do this.

BUT WAIT! That's not what Bradbury says it's about! Listen to some of the video clips on his website: http://raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html. Especially listen to "Bradbury on Censorship/Television". He says "Fahrenheit is not about censorship". He says it's about the evils of television.

While I'm not in complete disagreement with him (hey, Reality TV, American Idol, Fox News... all kinda evil...) I think he's very negative about it (Farscape, baseball, those HD discovery channel specials... all the exact opposite of evil). I get the general sense from most of Bradbury's work that he thinks the general populous can't be trusted with advancing technology and perhaps we'd all be better off if we halted the advance.

In the 70s when I started to read, the library had a heck of a lot of "space books" for children, with the cold war pulp vision of rocket ships and illustrations straight out of MST3K movies. I can't remember any titles, only that this one case the boy protagonist saved the day by being able to reach under a complicated bit of machinery to find the missing bolt.

I'm pretty sure the first SF I read was Podkayne of Mars. Other very early ones were Slan and A Canticle for Leibowitz. I was an altar boy and didn't have any trouble with the Latin.

I read Dune for a book report when I was a junior in high school. It was right before the David Lynch movie came out. I remember explaining to my friends what was going on in the movie.

The first SF work I remember reading was Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov... although there were probably other works before that.

I quickly moved through all of the Foundation, Empire, and Robots books, and went on to Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, and Philip K. Dick.
I'm also a big fan of Kim Stanley Robinson and Orson Scott Card

That's an easy one... 'Adam Link, Robot'. I was about 10 (1976?) or so and absolutely hated fiction, because it wasn't 'true'. After that it was Heinlein and Herbert and Asimov and...I've never come up since.

I read Journey to the Center of the Earth when I was, I dunno, 8 or 9. (I still have that copy; it was a British edition called, for some reason, A Journey into the Interior of the Earth.) I didn't know science fiction existed then; I thought it was just a book like any other, like The Phoenix and the Carpet but with more grownups in it.

A couple of years later I discovered Tom Swift Jr., and then discovered that the local bookstore, which thrived on the college trade, had a small rack of guilty pleasures. I saw an Ace Double there and thought that was a great concept. The first one I bought was The Golden People, an early novel by Fred Saberhagen, backed with Exile from Xanadu by Lan Wright. I still have that book, too, but haven't looked at it in a long time and have no idea if either of those books were really any good or not.

Around that time I found The Foundation Trilogy. There were three things I loved about it. One was that the cover was almost dignified, especially compared to the stuff Ace was coming out with, so I could carry it around in public and not get looked at strangely. The second was that it convinced me that geeks, nerds, and brainiacs (I can't remember what they -- we -- were called then; probably "weenies" or something) would probably win out and run the entire universe in the long run. I got quite a bit of comfort out of that thought. The third was that it was, and is, a great story.

on edit: typo patrol

oh, of course - 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne was my first science fiction book... how could I forget.

I remember staying at my grandparent's in the country aged about 8 and reading Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man, being terrified by some of it but loved it and went on to raid the parent's collection.

Was actually Tanya Huff, which is pretty sad.
Although I do remember reading All Summer in a Day in seventh grade, I guess that counts.

My first sci fi I remember reading back in the early 60's was The Green Hills of Earth by Robert A. Heinlein, followed very shortly by Farnham's Freehold. These two books not only made me a sci fi fan but a Heinlein fan also

First exposure was to Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land as a young teenager. I hated it, and hastily decided that if that was what science fiction was I wanted no part of it.

Second exposure was in my early twenties--Ender's Game and The Man in the High Castle. I fell in love with the genre and read nothing but for about six years.

I've never tried any Heinlein again though.

Seems like my first (& second) exposures to SF are similar to myshelves (#12) and yesandno above.

First was Planet Of Death by Silverberg at age 13 or so and while not hating it, I read no more SF until I was about 20/21 when one of my friends forced Ender's Game upon me, too. I was all "here I am at work reading a kids book, sf no less" feeling like a dork and trying to hide it when customers came in. (3rd shift at 7-11) I soon realized the errors of my ways and by the time I finished the Ender quartet, I was hooked for life... :-)

(#81)
If my intro to Heinlein at a young age was "Stranger in a Strange Land"
I might not have read anything else by him. with a big election year coming up you might try Double Star.

The Martian Chronicles. I think I was twelve.

Yeah, Groff Conklin. I remember getting Science Fiction Terror Tales in my 6th grade class--not from the actual school library, but a little bookshelf in the classroom. And I can also remember reading Far Centaurus by A E Van Vogt back then--as well as The Time Machine and A Wrinkle In Time. When I signed up for the Science Fiction Book Club in 1970 I got the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, A Treasury Of Great Science Fiction and The Foundation Trilogy, all for 10 cents. Oh yeah, and I remember lots of Edgar Rice Burroughs--the Martian series; and The World Inside by Robert Silverberg (though God knows what I made of it...I was all of 9 years old at the time).

Before starting this thread, I thought my first science fiction exposure was Johnny Zed (trash, but enthalling at the time - I was 12). Upon further reflection, I remember reading Journey to the Center of the Earth at 10 or so.

But then someone mentioned a space-cat story (cad_lib, 32), and I remembered Star Ka'at, which I picked up only because of the cat on the cover. I must have been 8 or 9 for that one. I may have to go hunt up a copy.

Ha! I remember the first sf book I read was Space Cat by who I don't remember, it was the 2nd grade and that was in 1956!!!! I would buy that book in a minute if I could find it!!! I have read SF, Fantasy, Horror ever since.

(#87)

arr,
For your info, there is a copy of Space Cat byRuthven Todd published 1952 on
Ebay. Opening bid 99 cents. Auction ends 9/24/2007

>85 tonydal: Tonydal
Science Fiction Hall of Fame is SUCH a great anthology. I wonder if they'll ever make a new version?

Andra by Louise Lawrence was the first sci-fi I came across in the school library. It must be twenty-five or thirty years since I read it, and I can still remember the plot!

From there I started devouring Andre Norton, and Robert Heinlein's young adult fiction, and the Hooded swan series of Brian Stableford.

If you count The Wizard of Oz series as SF (at least it is fantasy), that was my first SF. My mother read it to me when I was four, but she was too slow, so I learned to read using those books and a dictionary. We had all the first editions from my grandfather who worked at MacMillan Publishing.

For straight SF, my first book was Heinlein's Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. I got it from the Johnstown Public Library (adult section and used by mother's library card) when I was probably seven or eight. I also remember my mother driving me all over Ohio looking for Asimov's Second Foundation. I read the first two from the library and couldn't wait for them to get the last volume. I know I bought a lot of paperbacks from Scholastic and Pocket Books, including the Groff Conklins. I still have most of them, but they are pretty much falling apart.

In the early 1960s, my parents exposed me to "The Eagle", the original UK comic that had the adventures of Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future! Then there was SF on the television - mainly Gerry Anderson.

In 1969, we went on holiday and stayed in a caravan in North Wales. In the van was a paperback sf novel with the cover missing, which I was fascinated by. The story was about a world which we humans knew was in the path of an invading alien horde but which was in the late medieval stage of development. We took it on ourselves to advance their science and technology to space flight in time to defeat the aliens. I never knew what it was for years, though one image stuck with me - a group of nobles in Cavalier-style clothing watching the trials of different types of spaceship. Only much later did I discover it was Michael Anderson and Chester Kurland's Ten Years to Doomsday (and that I'd missed all the smutty jokes in it, only being 12 at the time!).

I went straight out to the caravan site shop and bought the only other sf I could find - Alan E Nourse's Raiders from the Rings and I still have that copy today.

I read nothing else for a couple of years. Then one day my father came back from our local library. He used to bring Mills & Boon romances for my mother, choosing them by their cover picture alone. But this time he'd accidentally picked up an sf novel - Brian Aldiss' Report on Probability A (which has a rural painting by Holman Hunt on the cover - it forms a key part of the book, too). He gave it to me. I didn't understand a word of it! But I thought "This is wierd. But that's exciting!"

I then proceeded to read James Blish's Cities in Flight. In reverse order, just to make things interesting. And I've stuck with the genre ever since. (36 years and counting.)

When I came home from pre-school whining that they weren't going to teach us our letters, my brothers taught me to read on X men comics - and this was back around issue #10. Does that count?

I can't remember not being into sci fi.

Hmmm... can I remember that far back???

I know I watched "Star Trek" when it was first on... and "Fireball XL-5" and "Astro Boy"...

Most of my peers recall reading Heinleins Starship Troopers and his more YA books. I was more into Stranger In a Strange Land. Also loved Frank Herbert's Dune. Before that, quite a few of Andre Norton's books, such as Moon of Three Rings.

The first sci-fi book I ever read was Star Wars . I had seen the film a few times and wondered if the book would be as good . I thought it was , although you can`t beat seeing those special effects !

In Grade 7 my English teacher started reading The Chrysalids by John Wyndham to our class - aloud - about half a chapter per day, in her lovely English/Ottawa Valley combo accent.

After a couple of weeks of this, she stopped and told us that if we wanted to learn how it ended, we'd have to borrow the book from the school library. It promptly became the most popular book ever.

I always thought that her choice was rather inspired, given the "adults don't understand us!" alienation that was burgeoning in our age group :-)

Well, apart from television and comics, specifically SF literature, I always say it was From the Earth to the Moon and the novelization of Fantastic Voyage when I was about 7.
Then things like Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet and The Runaway Robot( I still think The Runaway Robot is a lot of fun). Then the 2001 tie-in, then a little RAH- Farmer in the Sky, Orphans in the Sky(those two pretty much over my head at the time).There are other things sandwiched in there, I don't remember right now. Ah, there's The Illustrated Man -Twilight Zone anthologies , The Counterfeit Man by Alan E Nourse, most of HG Wells' famous novels, Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. Actually a lot of these I read from the school library, or the Scholastic Book Club.
But I didn't turn into a resolute reader of the genre, until I read Ringworld in Junior High School.
And then I started reading Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Silverberg, and the world changed.

The first piece of SF i ever read - i was probably about 12 - was the only SF book my father had in his closet: Jules Verne's Journey to the center of the earth and i loved it. But i never read much more than comics (more on that later) and it wasn't until highschool when i had to read for English and Dutch classes (i'm from The Netherlands) that i picked up reading again. For Dutch we wer only allowed to read 'literature', so no Science Fiction (nowadays i would most probably take on that discussion, but back then i simply wasn't allowed to read what i REALLY wanted...), but for English class i was allowed to read SF and Fantasy. I started out with Ursula K. Le Guin's A wizard of earthsea, but my love for science fiction literature started with 2001: A space Odyssee. I was blown away by that novel and after passing my English exams (and reading some more SF like The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy which not only blew me away, but changed my perspective on everything from life, the universe to the rest!) i went on to read the sequels and many more great sf novels and my love for the genre grew day by day...

Science Fiction outside of literature has influenced me for as long as i can remember. On tv it probably started with child-favorite shows like Transformers, He-Man and Robotech (aka Macross) and movies like Star Wars (I was born in 1977 mind you ;). I was also fascinated by electronic music by the likes of Kraftwerk, which sounded and looked like robot music.

But the main input in the SF field has during my youth always been comics. I was a great fan of the Storm comics and read tons of superhero stuff, which frequently featured storylines or ideas with definite SF influences. Especially the Fantastic Four and X-Men comics were often heavy on SF (but just think about the origins of Superman and The Hulk and you can't deny the SF influence in those; actually the idea of a superhero comes from the pulp-literature of the 1920's which was the spawning ground of modern Science Fiction (hoorah for Hugo Gernsback!)). Bu anyway, in comics i have always liked the stories with the most SF influences most...

But admittedly i really can't remember a definitive moment that changed my whole perspective and sold me out to Science Fiction. I have always liked science fiction for as long as i can remember... I used to build robots from my Lego (even transformers)...

First SF was Danny Dunn series by Jay Williams.

First SF was The World at Bay by Paul Capon, written in 1953, read by me at age 9 in 1960. So young I didn't quite know what "at bay" meant. Bad aliens invade Earth and paralyze the government and all forces of law and order. Looking back, it's clear that the book was a straightfoward allegory of the cold war. At the time, I was an unconscious but absolute victim of anti-Soviet paranoia, so I bought the whole thing hook, line and sinker. Scared the be***us out of me. And made me an SF convert for life.

My first science fiction was The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov. I still have fond memories of the book, which I'm going to have to re-read one of these days.

My first experiences began in high school.

I found Harry Harrison, particularly the Stainless Steel Rat sequence, first, but what really got me hooked was Frank Herbert's Dune and Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men.

I'm sure I'd read some SF before this, as my dad was a keen SF reader, but the first SF story that stuck in my mind, when I was about 10, was "The Voices of Time" by J.G. Ballard, in an anthology called Three for Tomorrow. I got it from the Intermediate section of the Invercargill Public Library in Southland, New Zealand.

#96 What a cool story! I wish everyone could have a teacher like that! :)

#94 Refering to "Star Trek" as being "that far back" makes me feel so very very old! The first sf show I ever watched on our old 13" b&w set was Buster Crabbe in the "Flash Gordon" series. He flitted around outer space (I particularly recall the planet Mongo) in tights and a rocket ship that even to my immature eyes looked like a tin can, alternately saving the universe and his groupie girlfriend's virtue. (I was just a kid, so I'm not real clear on all the details, but I do remember me and my little brother watching it, right along with Hopalong Cassidy, and the Cisco Kid. lolol

*wincing as I stand up and my hear my joints creak loudly*

My first science fiction read was Star Wars. After seeing the film I just had to have the book . I`ve still got it hanging around somewhere .
Strangely , although I am a Star Trek fan, the books have never appealled to me .

Children of Infinity, around 1973. I still remember many of the stories. The best was about an alien from a planet running low on food who goes to an all you can eat restaurant.

The first sf book I ever encountered was called The Future Took Us by David Severn I would have been less than ten. From that I went to Three to Conquer by Eric Frank Russell and I haven't looked back.

When I was a little kid I read what was available in the "children's library"... Thus, my first exposure to SF was stuff like "Danny Dunn and his Antigravity Paste" and the "Freddy the Pig" book where Martians land in a flying saucer and become the first little green baseball team.

When I got out of tiny tot land, I read a couple of Heinlein juveniles. I distinctly remember reading "The Rolling Stones".

Finally, at the age of 10, I bought my first SF paperback: "The Stars are Ours" by Andre Norton. I still love Norton.

BTW - I had the good fortune to live in a house without TV until I was about 11 and my first exposure to "Star Trek" was a used copy of James Blish's first collection of episode adaptations.

Well, my first exposure to Science Fiction was Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove. Since then I've gone on to read his Timeline-191 series. I was given Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last christmas and I enjoyed reading it. Since starting my second semester in College my Communications class has exposed me to a ton of Science Fiction. I had to read some of Ray Bradbury's short stories for assignments and I've since picked up the rest of The Martian Chronicles. I've fallen in love with his short stories. It's nice to be able to sit down and finish a story in one evening rather than a couple of weeks.

Off Topic: does anyone know of any journals I can subscribe to that publish short stories. I'm interested and building a short story section in my library.

Finally! I remember my first experiences with science fiction -- it actually started with a non-fiction book.

I received Infinity and the Mind by Rudy Rucker when I think I was under ten, but I can't remember now, I might have been older -- and I loved it so much that I picked up White Light, and then the entire Ware Tetrology (Software, Wetware, Freeware, Realware) before then getting hooked on Ray Bradbury, H. G. Wells, Alfred Bester, Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, PKD, Jeff Noon, Carl Sagan, and on and on down through my library list.

When I was about nine or ten, my parents bought me a Doctor Who novelisation one Christmas. It was Doctor Who and the Zarbi, televised, I believe, as "Web Planet". Around a year later, a lad at school lent me a copy of Heinlein's Starman Jones. I liked it so much, I started borrowing his E.E. 'Doc' Smith books. Been reading sf ever since...

My first SF read was a Tom Swift novel by Victor Appleton. Can't remember which one in particular, because I ran back to the library that day and got about eight more, read them all before bedtime. I was- four at the time. (Started young, never stopped.) From there, I hit every E.E "Doc" Smith book I could find, then Edmond Hamilton, Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke- I'm going to stop before I crash the server. Haven't gotten to my fifth birthday yet...

I remember reading some of my older sister's Star Trek novelizations based on episodes, and the original Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle, then the rest of the novelizations of the movies. Did you know that John Jakes of North and South fame and The Kent Family Chronicles penned one of those Apes books? I think next I read Cyborg, by Martin Caidin, which was what the Six Million Dollar Man series was based on. Then finally on to Bradbury, Heinlein, Herbert, Hamilton, etc.

Arthur Clarke in Jr High..61-63; our school library had quite a few of his books and that drew me in..My mom had gotten my into fantasy earlier w/ Tolkien and Nesbitt.

My very first sci-fi book was The Lost King by Margaret Weis and Tracey Hickman. I think that's why I haven't been able to find any more really good futuristic, space adventures. I think that series is the best of that category, hands down.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

I was eleven when I checked it out of the library, read it, and became hooked on science fiction. I still have a vivid memory of being in the library and facing the wall of shelves it was on. When I was younger than that, I remember reading various sf-like books and watching sf shows, but The Martian Chronicles was the beginning of my real fascination with the genre. It may also be responsible for my lifelong fascination with Mars. :-)

I fell in love with Sci-fi after reading Bradbury and Heinlein in Jr High (no idea which books). Study Hall was in the library and I used to pull them off the shelf, read a few chapters, put it back and continue reading during the next class.

My first introduction to more “hardcore” sci-fi was reading the (then) Dune trilogy in 10th grade. Took awhile to get through it but, boy, was it worth it!

I remember as a young whippersnapper my father's father had A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and The Warlord of Mars by Burroughs on his bookshelves. Next to these were several Tom Swift books by Victor Appleton. These are the first Sci-Fi I remember. My father and his brother read these books as boys and young men.

When I was in grade school I enjoyed Bruce Coville's My Teacher is an Alien series and other juvenile fiction that wasn't exactly tagged 'science fiction' per se.
When I began reading adult-level books, I mostly read trashy romance novels *blushes in embarrassment.* But then, I took a class in college called "Popular Culture of the 1960's" and for that class I was required to read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. I proceeded to read everything I could find by him over the summer and the next fall I signed up for the class "Science Fiction" which introduced me to Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 and others.
I have since been hooked and my introduction to Sci-fi broadened my reading horizons considerably!

#118 I remember reading A Princess of Mars and many other of the John Carter books. They were great! Haven't thought of them in a long time! Reading all these posts has brought back fond memories of books that I've read long ago. Maybe it's time to reread a few! Although I keep getting recommendations for new (to me) stuff, too!

It was the Narnia books read by my Sunday school teacher that seduced me into learning to read for pleasure. War of the Worlds seen at a drive_in movie too young scared me to death. So I pursued historical fiction in my junior years. Then a friend gave me her stapled together from a magazine copy of of an Andra Norton story, (one of the time travel stories I think but it might have been Witchworld) just before graduation. I had a lot of catching up to do in the next 4 years. *grin*

I was always more of a Fantasy buff than Sci-Fi, but as a kid I loved Star Wars, and Alien was pretty neat when I was older. I was promised by a friend that that one would "make me crap my pants", but nothing that scary was in the movie that would provoke such a bowel movement.

I guess the closest thing I first encountered to Sci-Fi books in my late teens would have be Nineteen-Eighty Four, and I loved that even though it had no Elves in it (big fan of the LOTR movies at this point). Then I discovered there were whole other worlds of literature that had no Elves in it, such as The Ultimate Hitch-hiker's Guide, and Dune (which I still haven't finished).

My first exposure was through my father; he was never a big sci-fi reader, but when I was around 10 he gave me one of James White's Sector General novels and I was hooked.

Compared to most of you I came to sci-fi quite late. In order to suppliment our income, to pay for complete new wardrobes every four months for two growing boys, I took a part-time job in a book store. The sci-fi covers were interesting and tweeked my curiosity. I think the first one was Friday by Robert Heinlein and I was 30 years old. In the 25 years since that first book I think I've made up for lost time.

I've got two growing boys too and, boy, do I empathize.

When I was very young I used to see my dad reading paperback books all the time - he would pass the comics to me. I vividly remember him getting excited while reading a scifi book, when I asked about it he gave it to me to read (I think I was about 10) - it was a SciFi Book club edition of The Gods of Mars/The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. On that first read, I only grasped the gist of the storylines - it wasn't until much later that I re-read and began to understand what was going on and it's still one of my favorite "nostalgia" reads. Next I picked up I Robot by Isaac Asimov - also another favorite. Finally I came across The Hobbit in the school library, which led to other Tolkein books in the 7th grade - by then I was hooked on Fantasy as well as Science Fiction. My dad was more of a pulp-style reader - he was always bringing home old serialized novels like the Lensman series, so I've got a lot of space opera occupying space in the cranium.

The first time I even knew there was a realm outside of my world was in 5th grade when Mr. Moraros read aloud Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time. After that it was Andre Norton's Moon of Three Rings, Asimov's I Robot, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke . . . I haven't stopped reading since. I still remember Podkayne of Mars, and I Sing the Body Electric and continue to search for intriguing subjects.

Although much more a SF fan today than fantasy, I have to admit that I am one of the legion who were introduced to "speculative literature" through JRR Tolkien. I quickly followed that introduction with a spate of novels, especially series (Conan, Gor novels, Pern, Piers Anthony books, Edgar Rice Burroughts, Asimov). I also remember reading Ray Bradbury and a variety of what I can only describe as paranoid SF (like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers") in English class in sixth grade.

Today I read mostly "hard" SF but enjoy serious fantasy (Ian Banks comes to mind). The latter is harder to find than the former, although I am a particular fan of Stephan R. Donaldson's Covenant series.

'serious fantasy'

Hmmm. I like that. Don't recall hearing that phrase before. I loved the Thomas Covenant books, as well, and I can see that 'serious fantasy' would make an apt description. I like 'comedy fantasy' like Pratchett (as light relief), but a lot of other fantasy leaves me cold. Perhaps Robert Silverberg's Prestimion/Majipoor books fall in the Serious Fantasy category.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll definitely take a look at Silverberg. "Comedy fantasy" get really old really fast in my book. I get enough of it on SciFi Channel on the weekends! Ugh!

I didn't really mean to coin phrase for a genre. I only meant that adult fantasy that isn't at all corny or typical is disappointingly hard to find. Perhaps that's because our role models in that category are such icons. Just a thought. I would also add HP Lovecraft to my list, although I've never been a fan of horror otherwise.

My first experience to science fiction came when I was in fifth grade. I was already growing tired of the tripe in the small town elementary school, even though the selection available was expanded by bi-weekly visits from the bookmobile from the county library.

My mom visited a friend. The friend’s son gave me two books: The Amsirs and the Iron Thorn, which was a real SF book, and Slaves of Sleep, which was pure fantasy. I was hooked.

Although I haven’t read either of theses books in a very long time, the fact that I remember them so vividly speaks to their power.

My first science fiction, as far as I can recall, was Star Rangers by Andre Norton and The Mercy Men by Alan Nourse. These were borrowed from the school library and I didn't actually own them til quite recently.

I think the oldest book I still own is Anne McCaffrey's The White Dragon closely followed by the early Dragonrider books.

Some of the Goff Conklin anthologies were also an early influence.

Is there anyone here that got hooked on SF with the series of YA books called Animorphs? It was released in the late nineties to early 2000's. I had read one or two SF books before these, but these helped get me interested.

The series was about a bunch of kids that got hold of an alien technology, which allowed them to acquire the forms of any living animal and take their form, and they had to fight against alien invaders who were small parasites that controlled the brain. Looking back, a lot of it was quite formulaic, but there were some good ideas, and the moral dilemmas that the characters had to answer were really interesting at the time.

The first adult SF book I read was Jurassic Park when I was ten or so, right around when the movie came out. Before that, I'm sure I must have read young adult books which were technically sci-fi, I just can't remember any specifically now (and sadly, I gave away my YA collection some time ago).

been science fiction and fantasy all my life. as far as science fiction goes, i think one of the first (or at least one of the first i can remember lol) was some book called the sliver eyes. can't remember the writer. about how the children of people who worked in this plant had telepathic/telenkisis children. they all had sliver eyes. also, one of my teachers read a bruce covill book to the class and that was what hooked me to science fiction.

jmgold - you and me both. lol

fantasy, i think some of the first may have been rohlad dhal novels. i don't really remember them, but i used to have copies of those so . . . the first i can recall clearly include the CS Lewis books.

Bruce Coville was probably my first major exposure to science fiction, with his 'My Teacher' series, among others. I still love those. After that, I got into Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein... I got interested in Philip K. Dick when I was around sixteen or seventeen. Now I read whatever I find to be interesting and/or a good read.

I find this thread fascinating because it draws on readers and works of different ages so we can see what someone in the 1960's, for instance, might discover as THEIR first SF book, compared to a young reader today. The disparity...and the similarities.

I can't remember the first, but it included Space Cat already mentioned and the Freddy the Pig stories and many others. I was endlessly fascinated by the inside cover illustration on all those Winston juvenile hardcovers -- every neat thing in science fiction wrapped up in one large mural. Did anyone ever make a large size poster of it?

Re Conklin: I read many as a kid and collected many more later, including some signed ones, but they were signed when I got them -- never met him myself. He was the Roger Elwood of his time, but apparently with less controversy.

Groff Conklin certainly produced some anthologies that left their mark...and yet he seems to be an unknown quantity. Here's the very brief citation on him in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groff_Conklin

Not much to go on...

#138

I look at all of the classic SF books that people mention here, but in comparison, reading Animorphs (although it was quite fun reading for a eleven-year-old) hardly seems to be in the same league.

#141

You've just reminded me of the Ladybird-published Transformers books I read when I was only 6 or 7 years old...
and then I had a "read-and-listen" version of Star Wars: A New Hope, where R2 beeped to tell you to turn the page...

so, I guess those were really my first sci-fi literature...

I owned and read a couple of Tom Swift, Jr. books when I was nine or ten. Don't remember what they were.

First sf book I read was Doctor Who and the Zarbi. I was about eight or nine. Then I read a whole bunch more Doctor Who novelisations. When I was eleven, a lad at school introduced me to "proper" sf - I remember reading RAH's Starman Jones and some EE Doc Smith.

Initially I posted The Martian Chronicles as my first, but now I'm not sure. I know I also read A Wrinkle in Time early on, and there might even be others I've since forgotten. Those two made big impressions though.

My first exposure to SF occurred in the 5th grade. It was a short story. I'm vague on the details and do not remember the title or the author. People lived in high rise buildings and never went outside because rogue robots controlled the outside world. I would love to find out what the story was and where I could get my hands on it.

i read dandelion wine in 9th grade..i hated it. but that's probably because it was in school.
i've read the host by stephenie meyer, a world out of time by larry niven, and ender's game by orson scott card. I started journey to the center of the earth and never finished. i probably read some scifi before freshman year and just didn't realize it was sci fi.

Earthlight (by Arthur C. Clarke, ignore bizarre touchstone) and The Dying Earth both read when I was 10.

The first pure sci=fi book I read, was Ender's Game and I enjoyed it. Then someone gave me Battlefield Earth and I couldn't get past page 50.

Luckily I discovered C. J. Cherryh and got hooked.

Earthlight - if the touchstone doesn't come up right, click on the (others) link at the end and look down the list. Clarke was fourth one down (which is ridiculous, but touchstones have been semi-broken for some time now).

106: Children of Infinity was one of my early science fiction reads too. Wake Up to Thunder and Half-Life are the stories that affected me the most, but All You Can Eat was certainly memorable.

My very first exposure to science fiction was probably H.G. Wells - I read The Time Machine and The Invisible Man when I was really young. I also sucked up some Jules Verne too, I ran out to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea after I had seen the movie.

Does Gulliver's Travels count? I read that around the same time.

Then I found Heinlein's juveniles, and a whole pile of Andre Norton in my school library.

Children of Infinity is the first science fiction book that I remember owning. Sometime around 1974. 35 years later and I still laugh over the All you can eat story. I bought my son a used copy about six years ago (he prefers fantasy--curse you Harry Potter).

I started reading the Heinlein juveniles around the same time because that was the sci fi section of the kids library.

The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel I happened upon in my school library in the 6th grade. It was in a rack of suggested reading - whoever that librarian was I am forever in their debt. It was the one that hooked me for life - I had never read anything remotely like it. My scifi experience had been limited to comic books. I then started reading some great Andre Norton's and the following year some pals got me hooked on the Tarzan series. I then went on to discover Asimov and Bradbury and countless others of course, but this was the one that hooked me.

And the second one if I remember right was Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud. Maybe I thought it was some kind of sequel, but it too was an extraordinary book.

jr high/middle school seems to be a key age for getting hooked into SF ?

jr high/middle school seems to be a key age for getting hooked into SF ?

Yep. The traditional formulation of that is:

The 'Golden Age' of science fiction is "twelve".

#155

Saying things like that will cause a huge argument with those whom think it is thirteen.

155, 156
For me it was 9, the summer of Star Wars. I read "serious" SF before that, but none of it really stands out in my memory like that summer.

My first was when my Astronomy Teacher actually made it part of the course curriculum to read Stephen Baxter's book Ring. He later told us we could read The Time Ships for extra credit, but I was already on that - he got me hooked. Blame him.

-Philip

It is so long ago now, more than 33 years ago I am sure, that I can not remember exactly which one I read first. One of my earliest memories is The Day the Oceans Overflowed and Foundation. Space Viking and Mercenary seem to also be memories from this period, all books read many times since then. The last of the books from my earliest memories is Hospital Station all are still in my library, and so i can access them. I just can not remember which was read first.

12.5?
i do remember that our jr high had several Arthur Clarke novels and i got hooked via Childhood's End and Against the Fall of night. They might still be my favorites of his books.

I was about 7 or 8 and had already become a fascinated member of our local library - spent my saturday and sunday afternoons deep in the adventures of Tom Swift Jr (only on the fringe of Science Fiction) and Tom Corbett Space Cadet. It was the start of a life long obsession.

I disagree. They're definitely juveniles, and not particularly well-written - but Tom Swift Jr. is SF. He takes science, as known when the books were written, and pushes it to the limit in several directions. Sometimes it falls over into science fantasy - the Vistor from Planet X book, for instance - but mostly...at least the early books in the series were real science amplified. As it went on it got wilder - but he still had to do development and find bugs (more real than some of the currently-written near-future SF!).

I've still got a nearly-complete collection of Tom Swift Jr (and a few Tom Swifts), though they're painful to read these days (see comment about 'not particularly well-written'). Also Rick Brant, which are also teetering on the brink of SF/science fantasy, and also painful to read. But I was totally addicted as a pre-teen - don't remember if I had Tom Swifts when I was younger (very likely, but I lost all those books so I don't know for sure).

My Mother got me into reading science fiction, first introducing me to two classics - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and The day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. I've been hooked ever since.

The first science fiction book that I remember reading was called Z for Zachariah. It was the story of a young girl trying to survive on her own after a nuclear war. I just remember being completely drawn into the story, and wanting to read more like it.

>164 zwoolard:

I just re-read that. It's still a great book!

I remember reading the Tom Swift books when I was 9 but around the same time I also became a big fan of Doc Savage so I am not sure which came first. I still have the Tom Swift books and even bought a few more recently at a flea market although I may never read them.

I find it hard to read a Doc Savage book now days even though I am often impressed by the Sci Fi aspects and inventions especially considering the majority were written prior to 1945.

I also have a collection of those Scholastic Book Service books.

So, about 40 years ago. . . The very first science fiction book I recall reading was Andre Norton's Daybreak: 2250 A.D.. at age 9 or 10. From there I devoured everything I could find by Norton, then Heinlein, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. I think I read every SF book available in my elementary school and public libraries.

I suppose Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon would have to count as my first SF. Absolute rubbish, certainly, but Tintin was the first series of books that I really remember reading.

When I was in junior high, my Language Arts teacher handed me a copy of Ray Bradbury's R is for Rocket, specifically pointing me to his short story "A Sound of Thunder."

It was all over from there.

Not sure if its "Literature" but my first Sci-Fi

experince was a StarWars novel called "Republic

Commando: Hard Contact" I was hooked. I love

clones!:D

#170

Grouping most of the books mentioned in this thread under the banner of "Literature" is quite a stretch.

171, is there a commond definition of Literature in this context? I don't really understand the distinction. The Road is literature because it won the Pulitzer or because Oprah recommended it? The Postman isn't Literature, but only scifi?
My gut feel was that The Road was crafted better, but the Postman was a better story. Is that the difference?

I know there was a seperate thread on this, but that didn't help me much....

The thread: Science Fiction Fans : Top 100 Sci Fi Recommendations for New Readers of the Genre: Post Your List
seems to have some relevance to us here in this thread.

While not sure that we follow up on our first book of Sci-Fi got us hooked on the genre because I would imagine some people did not get hooked, but those that did, is the book that got you here, worthy of inclusion on a 100 Book recommendation list? I suspect that it often is. That some of what we first read may not and may only be fond memories, but it is also possible that the first book was recommended to you because someone thought that it was great.

That is the purpose of the list

I think I found fantasy literature before I found science fiction, but Ray Bradbury's short stories were probably my first exposure to science fiction itself. Then I read C.S. Lewis' space trilogy (which many don't even consider to be science fiction because he used it for purposes of allegory). What finally tipped me into the more popular stuff was Stranger in a Strange Land pushed on me by a guy I dated in college. But then I found the women who wrote science fiction such as C.L. Moore and Ursula K. LeGuin. Wonderful experience.

>171 rojse: Thanks for clearing that up:)

I had a look at wiki's definition of literature to see what it says

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/literature

Although the first definition is correct -literature is anything that has been written - I don't think that many people really use that definition, because literature then becomes a near meaningless word. We are more likely to understand the latter definition - written work of a high standard, or one that doesn't appear in wiki but is in my dictionary - written work of some significance.

I see, so it just depends on what you think is literature.

It normally refers to the last two definitions, particularly the last one. It's why we call classic novels literature, because they have had a great affect on the writing landscape.

But yes, less ambiguity on the idea of literature would be nice.