SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

This thread is great! To see so many people who, like me, started reading SF in elementary school! I can't remember the first ones, I just know I was reading Heinlein and Asimov and many others early on. My parents didn't think much of scifi--my dad doesn't read fiction at all. So they didn't keep track, and I always had huge stacks of books from the library. I kinda wish they had guided me a bit, kept me from reading Stranger in a Strange Land until I was at least in junior high. It was way too much for a 3rd grader. But that isn't the only thing I read early. I didn't really zero in on fantasy until later--I just read everything I could get my hands on. But science fiction was a favorite from the beginning.

The first book I was allowed to buy was Galactic Warlord. I was 8, and after I read about the Last Legionaire suffering radiation poisoning and trying to avenge his dead planet Enid Blyton would never do it again for me.

I also got a book of short sci fi stories and they amazed and entranced me.

Like so many here, I started reading sci-fi in middle school. I started out with the classics, Rendevous with Rama, The Martian Chronicles, The Foundation Trilogy, Dune. I also read just about everything the marvelous Andre Norton wrote. My very first fantasy read was The Hobbit.

I started reading scifi as soon as I discovered it, about age 11 or 12, when I was allowed into the edges of the adult secton of the public library. That's where the one scifi bookshelf was located. This was in the early sixties.