Author Topic: Which story first turned you on to SF?  (Read 21470 times)

zagboodle

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on: March 04, 2007, 04:43:02 PM
For me, it was "And He Built a Crooked House," by Heinlein.  That story had my teenage brain going in circles trying to figure out what four spatial dimensions looked like.

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ClintMemo

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Reply #1 on: March 04, 2007, 05:00:42 PM
When I was in the second grade, we had a textbook that had short stories and segments from books that we used for reading.  The book had Asimov's short story "The Fun They Had" and a segment from C.S. Lewis's "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe."  That pretty much did it for me.

Life is a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, the answers are not provided.  You have to go and find them before picking the best one.


jrderego

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Reply #2 on: March 04, 2007, 05:08:29 PM
My dad taught me to read at 3 years old. The book he used was "The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe".

"The Cask of Amontillado" probably was the one that turned me on to literature of the dark and fantastic.

As for Science Fiction, I didn't know Kon Tiki was really non-fiction until I was about 12. But I read it at 6.

The first real "science fiction" I remember reading was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea when I was 4 or 5 or The Princess of Mars which I received for my 6th birthday from my Dad.

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Swamp

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Reply #3 on: March 05, 2007, 04:28:30 PM
I would have to say that it was children's book by Ronald Dahl like James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocholate Factory and then later on it was Edgar Allen Poe and the Dragonlance books.  I know these are mostly fantasy.  A sf children's book that IU read several times was The Runaway Robot, but I'm not sure of the author.  First serious science fiction was Dune, but I didn't make it all the way through at first.

Aside from books, of course, there was Star Wars, the original Battlestar Gallactica, and Buck Rogers.

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Mfitz

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Reply #4 on: March 05, 2007, 07:36:36 PM
I refused to read fiction as a child and which frustrated my very literary mother.  I was crazy to read anything about space or dinosaurs, or any sort of natural history so the summer between fifth and sixth grade she brought home two anthologies from the library in desperation, R is for Rocket and the Calibrated Alligator, and was in love from there on.

I'm not all that old, but I'm old enough that I had to have a note from my folks to take out Andre Norton's space opera books from the "boys" side of my grade school library.  I also needed a note in Jr high to take out some SF books, like Anne McCaffery and the Dune books  that were shelved in the adult section at the public library.  This made SF books seem semi-forbidden fruit and all that more desireable to read.



ClintMemo

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Reply #5 on: March 05, 2007, 07:57:48 PM
My dad taught me to read at 3 years old. The book he used was "The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe".

Well, that's a far cry from "See spot run."  :P
(Somewhere out there is a really funny joke where someone takes words from Poe literature and uses it "See spot run" style, like "See the Raven. See the Raven tap."  That's an awful example. Someone more well read please prove me right.  )

"The Cask of Amontillado" probably was the one that turned me on to literature of the dark and fantastic.

We read that when I was a freshman in high school. The teacher claimed it was the best short story ever written and that it had the best opening line ever written.

Life is a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, the answers are not provided.  You have to go and find them before picking the best one.


Russell Nash

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Reply #6 on: March 05, 2007, 08:04:04 PM
I saw Star Wars in the theater three times when I was 6. Then BSG on TV. In school we had Bradbury in our reading books.

When I started to become an advid reader, I just went for what was lying around the house. Later people just gave me all of their paperbacks. This meant at 9 I was reading Ian Fleming's James Bond.(Which is why I hate most of the movies)

The thing is nobody gave me SF. SF was a TV and movie thing. When I was 23 I looked on a friends book shelf and said, "What's with the 15 books called Thieves World?" I proceeded to pillage his bookshelf. (that the same time I finally got into D&D)

My in genre reading is lacking, but I've read everything in my second hand store from Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, Card, King, Thomas Tryon, and some others.



jrderego

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Reply #7 on: March 05, 2007, 08:08:47 PM
My dad taught me to read at 3 years old. The book he used was "The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe".

Well, that's a far cry from "See spot run."  :P
(Somewhere out there is a really funny joke where someone takes words from Poe literature and uses it "See spot run" style, like "See the Raven. See the Raven tap."  That's an awful example. Someone more well read please prove me right.  )

"The Cask of Amontillado" probably was the one that turned me on to literature of the dark and fantastic.

We read that when I was a freshman in high school. The teacher claimed it was the best short story ever written and that it had the best opening line ever written.


The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.

I am partial to the last line -

In pace requiescat!

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DKT

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Reply #8 on: March 05, 2007, 09:10:00 PM
The Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I ever saw in a theater.  Growing up, I always liked sci-fi, but it wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that I got the real bug.  That was one of the first books I read that really got me thinking.


Swamp

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Reply #9 on: March 05, 2007, 10:51:13 PM
but it wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that I got the real bug.

Yes, I forgot about Fahrenhiet 451.  I read that in high school and it definately strengthened my intrest in the genre.

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zagboodle

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Reply #10 on: March 06, 2007, 01:55:13 AM

(Somewhere out there is a really funny joke where someone takes words from Poe literature and uses it "See spot run" style, like "See the Raven. See the Raven tap."  That's an awful example. Someone more well read please prove me right.  )


Or there's xkcd's awesome take on it...

http://xkcd.com/c133.html

"The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle.  The flagon from the dragon has the brew that is true.  It's so easy, I can say it!"

"Well then YOU fight him!"


lowky

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Reply #11 on: March 06, 2007, 10:40:14 AM
Not sure when I started reading them exactly... The Tom Swift Novels.  Were put out by same publisher who did the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books iirc.  While also considered horror, other early sci-fi reads for me, included Frankenstein.  I was in 4th grade and the school librarian didn't think I would enjoy it, it would be too hard etc.  So she demanded that in order to check it out, I had to write a book report on it for her.  Which I did.  By the time I was in 6th grade ( i was actually part of last 6th grade class, before they moved them to the middle school), library time was boring for me as there was nothing left to read, that was interesting enough.  I was always reading at least two to three grade levels above my actual grade.  I first read Heinlein around then I think, read John Norman in highschool, read asimov in high school.  Lovecraft was probably middle school.  Poe I am pretty sure I was in grade school. 


Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #12 on: March 09, 2007, 12:17:51 AM
Star Wars is the first thing I was aware of, outside of the best-selling book in the history of the Earth (you know the one I mean... I'm not the only one who considers it SF, either).

We lived quite a ways out from town, and our weekly trips to the library were such an orgy of literary experimentation for me, I can't remember all of the stuff I was reading.  I recall the Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald, and the Hardy Boys (my collection of which my 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son just finished burning through); I remember one called "Starluck" by Donald Wismer (thank you Wikipedia!); and I remember a series about a boy who finds an alien boy on his bus (or train) and befriends him.  All I remember about it was that the alien boy was wearing a seersucker suit, which the author never failed to mention at least every other paragraph or so.

Our fifth grade teacher read us "A Wrinkle in Time", and "Twenty-one Balloons" by William Pene du Bois, and then in seventh grade, I shared a music stand with a kid named Chris who was reading Stephen King, Clive Barker... and Dune, and Watership Down... and, well, let's just say it went up from there.  :)
« Last Edit: March 10, 2007, 04:26:50 PM by Tango Alpha Delta »

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Swamp

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Reply #13 on: March 09, 2007, 12:46:13 AM
A sf children's book that I read several times was The Runaway Robot, but I'm not sure of the author.

I have been thinking about this book since I posted it. so I did some reserach and found out that the author was Lester del Rey.  Nostalgia is now beckoning.  I think I will have to buy this book and read it to my kids.

Here is a breif synopsis:

"When Paul's father tells him they are returning to Earth, Paul can't wait. But when he finds out that he can not take his robot Rex with him, he refuses to leave him behind. So begins a series of breathtaking adventures in space as Paul and his robot Rex attempt to outwit the forces that seek to separate them."

« Last Edit: March 09, 2007, 12:49:26 AM by kmmrlatham »

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SFEley

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Reply #14 on: March 09, 2007, 02:24:22 AM
The earliest stories I can remember were the Narnia books.  Took home a Scholastic book club flyer one day, and my parents got me the 7-book boxed set from it.  I must have the whole series through three times as a kid; some books, the good ones, probably four or five times.

Never got anything deeper from them, though, beyond "These are really good stories."  I was in college before someone pointed out to me that the whole thing was Christian allegory.  That was a real D'oh! moment.

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ClintMemo

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Reply #15 on: March 09, 2007, 02:31:43 AM
The earliest stories I can remember were the Narnia books.  Took home a Scholastic book club flyer one day, and my parents got me the 7-book boxed set from it.  I must have the whole series through three times as a kid; some books, the good ones, probably four or five times.

Never got anything deeper from them, though, beyond "These are really good stories."  I was in college before someone pointed out to me that the whole thing was Christian allegory.  That was a real D'oh! moment.

I Read the Narnia books a bunch of times in elementary school. I read them all again when I was in high school and it wasn't until then that I saw all the religious overtones.  Last year, I read them to my daughter and the experience was quite different.  I found the religious overtones a little but disturbing, but I had never noticed much racism and intolerance there is in the a few of them - all the ones dealing with Tash and his followers.  I'm not sure which bothered me more - the fact that it was there or the fact that I never noticed it.

Life is a multiple choice test. Unfortunately, the answers are not provided.  You have to go and find them before picking the best one.


Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #16 on: March 09, 2007, 02:41:06 AM
The earliest stories I can remember were the Narnia books.  Took home a Scholastic book club flyer one day, and my parents got me the 7-book boxed set from it.  I must have the whole series through three times as a kid; some books, the good ones, probably four or five times.

Never got anything deeper from them, though, beyond "These are really good stories."  I was in college before someone pointed out to me that the whole thing was Christian allegory.  That was a real D'oh! moment.

Thank you for that... it's nice to know I'm not the only one who misses things like that when I'm caught up in a good story.  Even GREAT BIG things like that!

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Mfitz

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Reply #17 on: March 09, 2007, 03:19:23 PM
The earliest stories I can remember were the Narnia books.  Took home a Scholastic book club flyer one day, and my parents got me the 7-book boxed set from it.  I must have the whole series through three times as a kid; some books, the good ones, probably four or five times.

Never got anything deeper from them, though, beyond "These are really good stories."  I was in college before someone pointed out to me that the whole thing was Christian allegory.  That was a real D'oh! moment.

That happend to me all the time in my Lit classes in college.  We would read some work of fiction and them talk about it the next week and I would start to get the feeling that I had read some other book with the same name, because I hadn't seen any of the sub text.



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Reply #18 on: March 09, 2007, 03:24:26 PM
"The Alchamista" was my first real SF story that I had the pleasure to hear. Thank you to EP for that one!



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Reply #19 on: March 09, 2007, 07:21:19 PM
The Empire Strikes Back was the first movie I ever saw in a theater.  Growing up, I always liked sci-fi, but it wasn't until I read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 that I got the real bug.  That was one of the first books I read that really got me thinking.

As DKT said, I've always been a sci-fi fan -- but the first book that really made me love sci-fi novels was Hyperion by Dan Simmons. 

I've read that book more times than I can count, and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.



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Reply #20 on: March 09, 2007, 07:35:53 PM
Have you read any of the sequels?  I read Hyperion and liked it a lot, but I haven't read any of the others yet.


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Reply #21 on: March 09, 2007, 08:05:07 PM
Yeah, read the whole series.  Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion are one story, and then Endymion and Rise of Endymion comprise a second story set in the same universe.

The subsequent books are good, but nothing is as good as Hyperion.



zagboodle

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Reply #22 on: March 10, 2007, 03:51:20 PM
The earliest stories I can remember were the Narnia books.  Took home a Scholastic book club flyer one day, and my parents got me the 7-book boxed set from it.  I must have the whole series through three times as a kid; some books, the good ones, probably four or five times.

Never got anything deeper from them, though, beyond "These are really good stories."  I was in college before someone pointed out to me that the whole thing was Christian allegory.  That was a real D'oh! moment.

I never read Narnia, but I was a huge fan of that other Christian allegory series (without being aware of it) by Madeleine L'Engle.  In fact, A Wrinkle in Time may have predated my reading of "And He Built a Crooked House."  Of course, AWiT is a novel, so technically my first entry is still accurate.

"The pellet with the poison's in the vessel with the pestle.  The flagon from the dragon has the brew that is true.  It's so easy, I can say it!"

"Well then YOU fight him!"


contra

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Reply #23 on: March 13, 2007, 07:42:33 PM
I read Narnia when I was fairly young... and didn't get all the bigger themes obviously...

The first thing I could easly class as sci fi I remember is the short "Chronoclasm", by John Wyndham.
It was in my Mothers collection, and I just picked 'seeds of time" up one day, and picked a story at random

I enjoyed.

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Reply #24 on: March 13, 2007, 07:54:03 PM
I was in sixth grade when I read it came from the sun by Ben Bova.  The story was simple but very believable even with the technology they had back in the 70's.  I really enjoyed it and it started me into more scifi, before that I was reading mostly fantasy like "Lord of The Rings" and  "The Sunset Warrior."  Now those were some bloody books!