SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I don't recall when I started reading sci-fi, but I do recall watching it. Star Trek and Planet of the Apes on TV. I grew up with the original Star Wars series. I remember sitting in the theater as if it were yesterday watching ET and Close Encounters. The Jetsons was my favorite Saturday morning cartoon. In fact, I didn't like cartoons; it was the only one I watched.

Wow, this question makes me feel "old."

Recent favorites in books are Enders Game, Jules Vernes' Mysterious Island--which I had mysteriously not read before--and Dan Needles' Terminal Connection.

Probably 6 or 7 for me. I remember getting in trouble during my 1st grade Language Arts class because I was reading Asimov's Nightfall and Other Stories & The Hobbit instead of the "See Dick Run" stuff I was supposed to be reading.

When I was around 9 years old I tried to read Dune, when I saw it on my dad's nightstand. I took me about a year to get myself up to the point vocabulary-wise to be able to read it, but I loved it so much that I wouldn't quit.

♥,
Cat at Galaxy Press

I was thirteen when a friend handed me an A E VanVogt trilogy that is mentioned nowhere by name on the 'Net. It included Slan, The World of Null A and Voyage of the Space Beagle. I have never been the same since. :-)

Raymond wrote: "I have never been ..."

Agreed. Very cool story.


♥,
Cat at Galaxy Press

I read Star Wars when I was 11, after seeing the movie. I had to look up some of the words. I moved on to way better SF at 12 when I discovered Harry Harrison's the Stainless Steel Rat series. I've been hooked on SF ever since. I prefer SF with some humor in it. Authors who don't take themselves too seriously like Mike Shepherd are fun to read. Doom and gloom doesn't appeal to me.

I got into SF in a big way in the fourth grade by reading Clarke, Heinlein, and works by other "Golden Age" authors that my older brothers left around. I credit SF for much of my intellectual development and my rejection of religion.

I read a book called Dar Tellum: Stranger from a Distant Planet when I was nine and was hooked pretty quickly. I think the next one was Armada Sci-Fi 1 and then a lot of Asimov and the love affair continues. some 40 years later.

Pretty much right after I learned to read. I don't remember not ever reading. I've loved books as long as I can remember.

Can remember bringing home books from the local library while still in grade school. Still use the local library to this day. In fact, literally, today, as I spent part of this afternoon at the library. Get more than books, now. CDs and DVDs, also.

I think I first dabbled with it when I was maybe 8, but I didn't leap in full tilt until I was 12. That was May of 1977. You can guess what caused it. =)

I was 13. I read The City and the Stars and was captivated. I intend to reread it in 2015 for nostalgia's sake and to see if the magic remains...

This is a great question. The problem is that I cannot remember when I started. I can tell you that my reading started with comic books and there was definitely science fiction in there. I am now going to show my age. I watched the original Start Trek when it first came on TV and the Invaders, not to mention Outer Limits, The Prisoner, and Twilight Zone. It was always around the house from my dad. the first book I remember would be The Hobbit and Animal Farm that would have been 12 in 7th grade because we all had to read them for school. I know I was reading Sci Fi books before that, just don't remember when. I do remember reading an old Analog story in my Dad's magazine around the age of 9.

I was definitely into fantasy before I discovered science fiction- fairy tales and then later Tamora Pierce was my favorite. I remember getting into The Animorphs in middle school, and that was the first scifi that I absolutely loved. Really great series about kids fighting an alien invasion by turning into animals--it was also surprisingly complex and well done for a kids series.

First one I remember is "Planet of Death" by Robert Silverberg at age 8. I lived in a rural area, and our school had no library, so we had a visiting "library van", and I spent about 20 minutes trying to convince the nice librarian that she should let me (a girl) check the book out. Not sure if her objection was my gender, my age or her dislike of science fiction. Pretty much all my personal reading till I was 15-ish was hard SF. Never got the hang of fantasy - as soon as you throw in a wizard or a castle, I lose interest. Still reading it and listening to it (esp. online!), and being blown away by it, but I also read much more widely.

I began fairly late reading science fiction - just after graduation - I was 22 and was given a copy of Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Needless to say I was hooked and have been reading sf for 45 years.

For me, it was pre-teen, probably around twelve or so (hard to remember that far back -- would have been in the mid-1950s). I remember some of Heinlein's early stuff in the pages of Boy's Life (the Boy Scout magazine), and curiously enough, I also remember the same Van Vogt trilogy Raymond mentioned -- Slan, World of Null-A and Voyage of the Space Beagle. Another of my early favorites was a short-story collection from Arthur C. Clarke -- Tales from the White Hart (copyright 1957).

Jaleenajo wrote: "I remember getting into The Animorphs in middle school, and that was the first scifi that I absolutely loved. Really great series about kids fighting an alien invasion by turning into animals--it was also surprisingly complex and well done for a kids series. ..."


Oh man, I remember reading those as well; I absolutely loved that series in junior high. Wow.

♥,
Cat at Galaxy Press

I was a voracious reader as soon as I learned to read. Luckily my mom fed that craving. I started ready fantasy at about age 9. Earliest reads included The Chronicles of Narnia. In my teens, I read Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" and Tolkein's "The Hobbit" and then as much sci-fi as I could find (of course Outer Limits, Star Trek and later Star Wars) The original Batman TV series started in 1966 when I was about 9, so that also gave me my fantasy fix. Favorite authors of all time are Spider Robinson, John Varley, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Robert Sawyer.

The first major book in the SF canon I remember reading was Arthur C Clarke's "The City and the Stars," and based on where we lived at the time I must have been 7.

(TL;DR autobiographical details: I'd exhausted my mother's collection of Enid Blyton - Adventure, Famous Five, Secret Seven - and found a box full of my dad's old SF paperbacks. A dog-eared c.1956 edition of City was the first one I read, followed by Jules Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth and 2001. That epic box contained an extensive stash of Clarke, Asimov, and Heinlein, and odds and ends like e.e. Smith and Eric Frank Russell, most of which I didn't read for some time but fantastic stuff. Prior to that I was reading Doctor Who Target novelisations, which are of variable quality. Shortly after I discovered John Wyndham, Lewis, Tolkien, LeGuin and Niven - Lucifer's Hammer hit when I was ten, but I didn't find Known Space until I was 12, then I devoured the lot in weeks: Ringworld, the short stories, Protector, A Gift from Earth, World of Ptaavs. After that I think I found Haldeman, and finally managed to read Dune after numerous failed attempts!)

If anyone hasn't read "The City and the Stars," it remains one of the greatest and most evocative science fiction novels I've ever read. Diaspar, mankind's last city on a dying Earth, a city that's stood for a billion years. READ IT.

very young, my school had Scholastic Books subscriptions. I read all kinds of kids books but the one that stands out is Wrinkle in Time and Supernatural Tales. After that and comic books, I was hooked.

In elementary school, I spent my allowance on DC comics. That was back when they were a dime a copy (Lordy, I wish I still had them!!) My older brother would bring home paperback books with Franzetta illustrations on the cover. The first Sci-Fi novel I ever read was Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. I reread it a few years back and was amused to see how the political themes went over by 12-year-old head. I also read some Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson. Other than Bradbury, I'm not a big fantasy fan. My tastes in Sci-Fi favor the Golden Age.

Age about 8 - something by Capt W. E. Johns - very juvenile, but it led on to greater things . . . At about 13 (against the rules - I wasn't supposed to have a ticket to the adult library until I was 14) I found those big yellow Gollancz anthologies - and was hooked! Clarke, Asimov, Zelazny, Pohl, Tolkien, and MANY others - by 18 I was totally addicted, by 20 I was attending conventions, and at approx 22 or 23 I was involved in running Novacon 1. Sadly, the career got in the way and I was almost out of it for over 30 years - but now I'm back!

I read my first comic at 6 yrs old. It was a Batman comic and I was hooked. My dad also bought me Tom Swift Jr. Books which I enjoyed. Other early books I read were the Counterfeit Man an anthology of short stories by Alan E Nourse, Glory Road, Green Hills of Earth, and Podkayne of Mars by Robert A Heinlein, The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury and all of the Star Trek books that James Blish wrote from the original Star Trek scripts.

I think my first sci-fi book (other than Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker when I was 6 or 7) was Robert A. Heinlein's Have Space Suit-Will Travel when I was about 10 years old. I also read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that year.

My parents were pretty easy-going about reading. They let me borrow The Exorcist from my grandma when I was 12, and I also read The Amityville Horror when I was pretty young, too.

I was about 13 when I was introduced to Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels. I haven't read much sci-fi other than that.

I bought and read The Wizard of Oz when I was seven and A Wrinkle in Time when I was eleven. I didn't start reading SF/F regularly until I had a lit class my senior year of high school that dealt with nothing but SF/F. By then I'd already read The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451, two of the books on the required reading list. Fahrenheit 451 the movie came out when I was 11 or 12 so I read the book at 13 or 14.

Michael wrote: "I read my first comic at 6 yrs old. It was a Batman comic and I was hooked. My dad also bought me Tom Swift Jr. Books which I enjoyed. Other early books I read were the Counterfeit Man an anthology..."

Alan Nourse is an underrated author. I've read a few of his stories, notably, "Tiger by the Tail", "The Coffin Cure", and "My Friend Bobby". Last summer I read The Blade Runner and thought it held up really well. In fact it predicted the health care crisis pretty accurately.

Don't remember exactly, but at about age 10 my dad gave me my first Tom Swift, Jr. book. He had read the original Tom Swift adventures as a kid. I was hooked.

I would prob say for hard scif-ish about 9 with the The Time Quartet Box Set we read the first in class and then I went to the library and got the rest. Just recently I've found that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe could be both fantasy and scifi when you think of it because they travel to an alternate world hidden with in their own through a wardrobe almost like a different dimension they never leave earth but yet it doesn't exist once our of the other side of the wardrobe almost like a blind spot one can not see the other etc.
I want to say I was 7 when I read that of course I didn't think of it as any genre it was just a book.

My father gave me his Asimov and other pulp scifi magazines when I was 9 or 10. Didn't understand a lot of it but thought the stories were so cool. Gradualted to novels and been hooked ever since.

It seems I've always loved science fiction. I don't remember the first book I read

Tripods, Star Trek and a couple of others were mine.

(Sorry I lost that thread, but continuing) But I do remember my second grade teacher reading The Hobbit and The Secret Garden. I would like to thank her and anyone who reads to children. She inspired a lifetime love for reading.

I think we read Narnia, Children of Green Knowe, Owl Service and a few others. I suppose reading fairy tales, Thomas the tank engine and other such books was the start.

Age 7. I started with Tom Swift II.

rebecca j wrote: "...My Dad's rule about books was, if you're able to read it, you may..."

That's how I was raised, and how I raised my kids (except, of course, like someone else said, for porn). My dad has always been a big science fiction reader; I'm not, so much; I prefer fantasy. We had lots of Asimov and Heinlein around the house, as well as Tolkein, and when we were little he read out loud to us, Mary Poppins, The Hobbit, the Red/Blue/Violet etc Books of Fairy Tales, and things like that. I read the Prydain Chronicles when I was around 8? and A Wrinkle in Time (weirded me out; just didn't get it at all), and The Weirdstone of Brisengamen (relatives of mine in England knew the author, so they got an autographed copy for me; I was 8, and thought this was very cool). When I was 11 or 12, my parents gave me the Earthsea Trilogy, and I also read Lord of the Rings at a fairly young age.

I consider myself very lucky that I have parents (they're in their late 70s now; I'm in my early 50s) who encouraged us to read and didn't try to restrict us to "children's" or "YA" "age-appropriate" stuff, and who encouraged reading fantastical and speculative fiction at least as much as realistic fiction and non-fiction.

I cant remember the first time I read a book but I do remember pressuring my parents into buying Asimov’s foundation series when I was 8, from then on I was hooked. I had comics and would always go to the 2nd hand shop and buy more. I still have some but they are so well read that they aren’t worth anything. Doctor Who, Star Trek , no wonder my career was in science.
That is why I have joined this site, none of my immediate family read sci fi or fantasy. Recently I found that my nephew loves it , oh joy, someone to talk and share with. I read at least a few books a week and have been very frustrated that my 4 children take after their father and don’t read. Aaaahhhhh!!!!
But I am working on the grandkids.
My biggest disappointment in my life was when I found that we had only just landed on the moon, I was sure that there was secret bases somewhere we weren’t being told about, and then “just landed “ ,oh no

I started at age 9. I can still remember the book -- The Witches of Karres. I particularly liked the female protagonist.

I've read sci-fi and fantasy from as early as I could read. Of course, most kids start by reading fantasy of some sort.

And my mom has a report card, from grade 2, in which the teacher talks about the monster stories I was writing. I don't remember them, but they were fueled by what I was reading and watching (Saturday Monster Matinee, in the afternoon).

I guess I got hooked at about 11. I was lucky in that from the start, books became movies in my head as I read. I read every genre. Then one day I was in the library and looked around. I light went off. With all the books written and still being written, I would never be able to read them all. I decided to pick a genre. My favorite movie genre was sci-fi so I chose that. I read every pulp sci-fi mag as it came out and plowed through the library till the next pulp came out. I still see books as movies in my head. Now that I am writing I right it as a movie. ( no peeking into thoughts, only what can be seen.

I was about 9-10 (1959-1960). Poul Anderson "Vault of Ages"
For some reason SF is what I have read all my life.
Still do and enjoy modern authors.

I was raised among fantasy lovers, so that was the only world I knew for a long time. But when I was around 16 I decided "It would be way cool to start reading science fiction!!", and I went to a bookstore that had some big sale, and picked up every science fiction book I found within my 16 year old budget (3 books).
I never touched those books.
Then a year later I read my first science fiction book, I, Robot and didn't want to read anything other than Asimov for a few months. He completely hooked me.

When I was a schoolboy, about fourteen, I remember enjoying reading a collection of science fiction stories by Ray Bradbury, called The Golden Apples of the Sun. It was that book that led me to books by H.G. Wells, Jules Verne and Arthur C. Clarke.

The answer to this varies depending on how to interpret the question.

I read a lot of children's books that could be classified as science fiction, but I didn't think of them as different from other adventures. The earliest would be Matthew Looney's Voyage to the Earth, probably around age 5 or 6. Not sure what age I was when I read the Danny Dunn series (the first is Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint) or Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars. (I'm in my 50s now.) Those all could be considered science fiction. But I was reading "Harriet the Spy" and the Bobbsey Twins at the same time and not making any distinction that some books were sf and others weren't.

I was in high school when I started reading Asimov and Heinlein, and saw science fiction as a genre that I wanted to read more of.

Julia you said exactly what I would have said. :-)

It's a good point to distinguish when we became aware of Science Fiction as a distinct genre unto itself that we would specifically seek out.

I may have already said this, but I'm going to repeat it: my earliest awareness of SF was in the back of one of those textbooks called Readers in second grade. I liked the stories we were assigned to read, so I went ahead and just read more of them on my own. The one about exploring another planet blew my mind in so many ways that I wanted more of that stuff.

(view spoiler)[ The story was about two astronauts exploring a weird new world. Turns out they were also brothers. The descriptions of the world made it really seem alien and bizarre, yet fascinating.

As they explored their surroundings, they heard a roar from behind a nearby hill. Suddenly a vehicle appeared over the top of the rise! And inside were aliens! The aliens were so strange: they had a weird, grasslike growth on the tops of their heads and multiple eyes and the side of their vehicle was painted with alien words which read "Dune Buggy."

And they only had one head each!

Turns out the astronaut brothers were a two-headed, one-bodied alien who had a single cyclopean eye in each of their bald heads and they were visiting Earth.

A silly twist if you're an adult, but for a 7- or 8-year-old that was awesome. It taught me about the O. Henry twist (although I wouldn't know it by that name for quite some time), about how an author could artfully misdirect the reader by choosing what to leave out and put in, as well as making me view the world around me with new eyes.

That was a lot of stuff to pack into a story which was probably no more than two or three pages long in the gigantic typeface they use for kids' textbooks. (hide spoiler)]

I can't honestly remember when I wasn't reading science fiction. I guess I started out like many with Jules Verne and H G Wells and moved to Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke etc. The Greats. But I can't recall who might have been first. Too old and too many books in the head.

4th or 5th grade

I discovered scifi in the public library when I was 11 or 12, and I never turned back.

When I got my first library card. Tried one of Heinlein's books in the kid's section (he was always writing to my age group as I grew up). Was hooked. Went through every Heinlein book the library had. Then started in on other authors.