SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

My parents used to prop me up as a baby and have me watch the original Star Trek series. I had read the Narnia series in grade 5-6 but it was Star Wars that truly launched the realm of SF. I loved Spider Robinson's Callaghn's Crosstime Saloon, Issac Asimov and the Rama series and journeyed to Pern for a wonderful blend of dragons and SF. Lately, I've moved more into urban style fantasy, less Lord of the Rings and more realism.

I read things like A Wrinkle in Time and suffered through Anthem in school. I didn't start reading SF on my own, for fun, until I was about 16-17, when I got addicted to Hiero's Journey. I moved past it eventually. Mostly I read Fantasy now.

I was 9 or 10 (not counting comics) and started with Tom Swift and Tom Corbett books.

I couldn't say what age I started reading SF. Probably my entire reading career. I remember spending Sundays in bed with my Dad watching Dr. Who on PBS, Star Trek and Planet of the Apes on TV with him. I asked him recently when he took me to see Star Wars. It was the original release - I was 5! So, as far back as I can remember, I've been reading or watching SF/fantasy.

Liz - my experiences were similar to yours! My parents took me & my siblings to Star Wars When I was five, too. :) Although I also watched Dr. Who consistently through Jr. High, I didn't actually start reading SFF until I was 14 or so.

I think it started with Anne McCaffrey and Piers Anthony, because those were the SFF books I could pick up when shopping with my mom at the grocery store.

Liz & Dana - same here, though I was more like 10 when Star Wars came out....

Started reading SF and F when I was 8. Had always been a book hound. I read The Hobbit Or There and Back Again, Starman Jones, Podkayne of Mars and Anthem. That started the obsession. I had to train my Mom to find SF&F books at garage sales. She would bring me a box full of them about once a month.

Norton, Heinlein, Zelazny, Herbert and Asimov were my fare for many years. Many happy memories.

By around 7, I was reading tie-in novels - Star Trek (memorably The Entropy Effect and the James Blish adaptions), Star Wars (memorably Splinter of the Mind's Eye) and countless Doctor Who novels, which led on to Ursula Le Guin (Earthsea), C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time).

Shortly after that I was let loose in a box of my dad's old paperbacks, an absolute gold mine to which I probably owe my entire taste in fiction. I must have been around 8 or 9 when I discovered Arthur C Clarke - The City and the Stars was the first one I read, a battered '50s paperback, after which I devoured everything he'd written in short order. Next came Asimov, Heinlein, Verne, Wells, and a cross-section of whatever else my dad had - Eric Frank Russell's The Great Explosion, Fritz Lieber's The Wanderer, Charles Maine's Calculated Risk, James Blish's Cities in Flight, E.E.Doc Smith's Lensman, and James White's wonderful Sector General. I attempted Frank Herbert but Dune was too hard going back then. Meanwhile in school we were reading Judy Blume....

But Niven & Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer absolutely gripped me at 9. I read it around the time of the first Shuttle flight, shortly after visiting the Cape and JSC, and seeing the huge Saturn Vs turned into lawn ornaments.

I wouldn't discover the rest of Niven until I was about 12, when I started hitting the libraries and buying books myself, along with Joe Haldeman, Stephen King, Tolkien, and the rest of the Universe.

Twelve probably is the golden age.

Stephen wrote: "Jessica wrote: "anyone ever read a book called footfall? i remember reading that in 8th grade..."

Yes, Footfall was a great book! That was probably the 2nd or 3rd [author:Larry Nive..."

I was about 13 when that came out. It was one of the first books that I found completely unputdownable. Don't think I moved for the last few hundred pages, right from the moment the Michael blasted off...

"Eat hot gamma rays, foolish Centaurans!"

My parents gave me a very large hard cover collection of the Buck Rogers comic strips when I was 6 or 7. I spent the next three years drawing space ships in the shapes of cigars with wings and cockpits. That was the beginning.

Then I was given some juvenile sci-fi short story collections and I learned to look for the planet and rocket ship stickers at the library and proceeded to tear through the Heinlein juvies and every John Christopher book I could find.

When I was ten, I read The Stars Like Dust by Asimov. I remember this clearly because it was the Rubicon line for me. I moved from juvenile sci-fi to the hard stuff. I still read juvies, but once you've had Asimov, you can't go back. Foundation at age 12 was mind-blowing.

This is a difficult one, as I was brought up on the like of Dr Who and remember the original transformation of William Hartnell into Patrick Troughton. On the other hand I probably did not actually read any sci fi till I was about 13. Then it was a case of what Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein or Moorcock I could find...I know Moorcock is more fantasy.

Added a little postscript.

It might have been Victor Appleton's Tom Swift Jr. series. That was awesome, when I was about nine or ten. Even my son, now 19, says he loved them when I introduced them to him. Sadly, these books have been pulled from most libraries now, and are hard to find. My first real non-reality was of course Tolkien, starting at about nine years old.
C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy was an early read for me, around the 8th grade. And I read Asimov's Foundation when I was about 15. But I never read SF much until I was out of school.

Jason wrote: "It might have been Victor Appleton's Tom Swift Jr. series..."

Yeah, I read those too. Fond memories.

I read The War of the Worlds, Farenheit 457, The Time Traveler and Journey to the Center of the Earth all by the time I finished 3rd Grade, so at about 8 years old.

I was 7 and in the second grade. I started with Fantasy (Narnia) but by the end of the school year I was also reading Bradbury's short stories- didn't always understand them, mind you, but I loved them! The rest, as they say, is history :) I benefitted greatly from being the youngest child in an entire family of readers.

Junior high (13? 14?). Michael Crichton's works is my first sci-fi love, started with Congo, followed by Jurassic Park, the Lost World, etc.

Stacie,
I was the fourth child in a family of readers. We had so many books in our house that it was sometimes hard to know where to start. The family definitely influenced me towards fantasy and Sci-Fi.

It must have been 11 or 12
We read "Little lost robot" in English class and from then I was hooked. I reread the story that night and from there bought a couple of Asimov books and never looked back. 30 years ago! OMG

I know I watched Star Trek on TV every night when I was a kid. But as to books, I remember when I was in third grade, I was in an advanced reading group, and we read a book about a couple of boys that build a spaceship in their back yard and fly to the moon. That's the earliest sf book I remember.

The next one I remember, I was probably in eighth grade. I read all of the Walter Farley horse books, and one of the Island Stallion books had aliens in it.

In High School, I got into fantasy on my own by reading the hobbit and playing D&D. Then in 12th grade, one of my English electives was Sci Fi and Fantasy. We read 1984 and Farenheit 451.

I also remember going to the town library when I was in High School and reading everything they had by Isaac Asimov.

My family has always read sci fi but not as agressively as I have been on recent. Ender's Game got me reading it more seriously so 40s.

I was 7 and my first SF book was Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein. I loved it! Several months ago I started reading it aloud to my daughter who is 6 and she likes it, especially Willis and his ability to copy anybody's voice.

I honestly can't remember how I got into sci-fi, which is odd. I remember exactly when I got into fantasy (sixth grade with Sword of Shannara), and I read a ton as a kid (Roald Dahl, John Bellairs, Stephen King). I just can't recall where sci-fi entered the mix. Relatively recently, within the past ten years, almost certainly. I don't recall reading any in college.

I've always liked sci-fi-ish movies, so it's strange that I just never got around to reading any until recently.

The first science fiction book I ever read was Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land"... May of 1973, I was 17. The only reason I remember the time so clearly is because I was away from home for a whole month at the time (first time extended trip without family) and it was the first book I borrowed from the Wichita, KS library.

My first sci-fi experience was "Starship Troopers", by Robert Heinlein in 1967...I had just been told that I could actually take a book home from the "Bookmobile" that came to my elementary school. What a joy! I have since then ruined my eyes reading - and can't stop!Starship Troopers

I was in fifth grade (about 11?) I read "tom Swift and The Ultrasonic Cycloplane." Then, "The Time Machine." I was hooked!!!

3rd grade and my first chapter novel...The BFG. Roald Dahl turned me on to the world of the fantastic and I have never looked back.

Some where around 8 (1964) I moved from Super Hero comics to these syfy pulp magazines. I was delighted to find this on the web, 'Video magazine recounts the history of the pulps.'
Link: http://www.rimworlds.com/thecrotchety...
[summary:]
"The premiere episode of Electro-Pulp Video Magazine, a visual history of pulp science fiction magazines. The premiere episode covers the inaugural issue of Startling Stories from January, 1939. Features Stanley G. Weinbaum's novel The Black Plague, a short story by Eando Binder, the first ever SF story to be inducted into the Scientifiction Hall of Fame (D D Sharp's The Eternal Man), an editorial by Otis Adelbert Kline and a letter column featuring Isaac Asimov."

Some where around 8 (1964) I moved from Super Hero comics to these syfy pulp magazines. I was delighted to find this on the web, 'Video magazine recounts the history of the pulps.'
Link: http://www.rimworlds.com/thecrotchety...
[summary:]
"The premiere episode of Electro-Pulp Video Magazine, a visual history of pulp science fiction magazines. The premiere episode covers the inaugural issue of Startling Stories from January, 1939. Features Stanley G. Weinbaum's novel The Black Plague, a short story by Eando Binder, the first ever SF story to be inducted into the Scientifiction Hall of Fame (D D Sharp's The Eternal Man), an editorial by Otis Adelbert Kline and a letter column featuring Isaac Asimov."

I believe I was eight years old when I read The Hobbit. A Wrinkle in Time followed shortly as well as War of the Worlds. I had nightmares for weeks after that one.

Great topic! I don't know if reading Marvel comic books count but my SF type reading began in my teens with them. Later in the early 1970's I began reading the Ace doubles and Perry Rhodan novels.

Age 11/12 - not sure which was first, but I read all of these during that year of school:
The Hobbit
Fahrenheit 451
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Midworld

I read some fantasy (and likely even some sci-fi) in Elementary school starting around when I was 8 or so. We read Wrinkle in Time, and an Asimov short involving people made of sugar for school. (To this day, I sometimes exclaim, "I'll melt! I'm made of sugar!") I read Pinocchio and Peter Pan on my own. (However, I had been exposed to Star Trek and Doctor Who since well before I could read. -- However, the Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon was my first exposure to fantasy. I loved that show, but I was unable to continue watching it once I started kindergarten due to schedule conflicts.) However, I didn't really get in to science fiction until 6th grade... that puts me squarely in the 11/12 bracket.

I had a lot of book reports when I was in 6th grade. I thought it would be easy, as there were a lot of books in my house. Of course, it turned out my English teacher personally hated science fiction, and so didn't want any of the kids to do book reports for books in the science fiction genre. I had a problem in school: my interest usually waned (in part because I pretty much always refused to do anything that appeared to be busywork) and my grades would slowly slip. That year almost all my classes saw a true 1 grade slide every quarter. It didn't take long before my parents decided something needed to be done, so they said I couldn't watch TV until my grades improved... so I started reading books instead of doing my homework, and there was only Sci-Fi on hand, so...

That was the year I started reading books in class instead of paying attention to the teacher. I read things like Animal Farm and Tolkien for book reports. I read Heinlein, Asimov, Niven and Herbert for fun. It wasn't long before I had read every sci-fi book in the house worth reading, and the major thing I wanted for Christmas and my birthday was money for more books.

I was 13. My dad used to bring books from the library, six at a time. No specific genre, just stuff that seemed interesting. Two books arrived to change my life: "Rendezvous with Rama" and "Aurian" (Artefacts of Power).

Doreen, I believe you win the March 2014 award for digging up the oldest thread. I don't recognize any of the names above.

I was about 14. I'd already been reading some fantasy in the local library for a couple of years, but sci-fi was something new. It brought up new "what ifs", some of which that were possible.

10/11, but only because where I was living didn't have any bookshops with SF until that time.

Thanks to Doreen for this resurrection :)

I was in my late teens in the mid '60's when SF became more available in the UK. Until then, it had been buried (not quite the literature teachers/librarians wanted to be read by growing minds), and was certainly nothing one could buy in a respectable bookshop.

I'd been reading "fantasy" (or those books purported to be 'unrealistic') for a while - they were essentially set in a NOT-Earth situation, with magical/fantastic characters - in other words "fairy stories" :) so SF became a 'modern' concept of fiction, and ultimately, popular with the emerging "free spirit" mind of the late '60s.

Never looked back!!

I had read HG Wells War of the Worlds and Jules Verne by the time I was eight. We had some great aunts with shelves full of books and I probably read the first editions!!! There was also a Ripley's believe-it-or-not, which I still have. This may be a first edition too as it has no reprint or edition markings on it, dating from around the 1930's. I thought it amazing at the time, but now I realise how gullible people were then.

Carol-Ann's right - SF was hard to find in the 50's and early 60's. Few publishers thought there was a market for it, I suspect, and during the late 50's I mostly read 'Argosy' which was a quarterly cheap paperback of SF short stories. I think it gave a platform to many of the now legendary writers. There was also 'Astounding Fiction' or some such. I think this was American and as rare as hen's teeth.

I think I was five or so the first time my dad and I read the Hobbit together. I was obsessed with that story, and that definitely sparked my interest in fantasy.

When I was 7 or 8, my mom bought me A Wrinkle in Time, because she said it was the only science fiction book she ever liked. That was when I started getting really interested in science fiction. I think I read the first three books in the series in, like, a week.

I was 7 or 8 when I first read War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man, and I just kept going from there.

I'd say about eight or nine perhaps - Andre Norton. I think it was Catseye, actually.

I was around 10 my neighbor had given me a gift certificate to a local book store for my birthday. I picked up A Malady of Magicks by Craig Shaw Gardner. That was the beginning of my journey.

My great grandfather was a huge Jules Verne fan and he started me off, reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It wasn't so much the book that hooked me, as the discussions we had around it. There was so much to talk about, war, pacifism, nuclear power, justifications for murder, even the design of the submarine. I think I was about five when he first read it to me and we went on to look at the others, including Robur the Conqueror and The Master of the World but by that time I started reading on my own. I'm pretty sure the first sci-fi I read myself was The Time Machine and I think I was about seven.

Probably when I was 8 or 9. I'd go to the school library and read everything in the SF section. Mostly Asimov shorts about "Planet X" and other speculative stuff. I was hooked from the start.

I go way back, almost to the Stone Age. TV's "Captain Video" hooked me with all those cool spaceships when I was probably 6 to 8 years old, and my reading went in that direction as soon as I discovered that there were books about all that stuff in the school library.

Age 10. I was struggling to find a genre when I picked up 2010 a Space Odyssey and I have never looked back. It had the last few pages missing which made me go to the bookshop and discover a whole new world.

I can't really remember a time when I didn't read it. I do know I was reading it in first grade.

Age 8 years "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea". I still remember vividly I got all the dreams around that during/after reading the book! :-)