Your introduction to Fantasy/Scifi

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After some chat about reading and influences in Brians reading of Lord of the Rings thread I figured this would be an interesting question to ask.

So what were your first experiences of fantasy/sci-fi worlds - what drew you into the worlds of make-believe; and for some even sparked that fire to write your own and not just read.


Mine would be my father who, oddly, has little interest in reading fantasy or sci fi in general (he's much more likely to read something botanical or at present something on antiques). However when me and my siblings were young he'd read to us. Started with those made up stories that are never written down and, by some strange coincidence, often involve a number of children with very similar names to ones self doing all kinds of things.
However in time we moved on to Narnia (which we went through twice over but never really made it as far as the Last Battle) and then to the Hobbit and thence to Lord of the Rings. I recall that whilst I was often most interested, my siblings were not so much and would be a constant source of annoyance that they'd be messing around and interrupting!

So I got what was probably the most "traditional" introduction into fantasy from those two powerful works. Oddly I never really followed that interest (though did read Dark Side of the Sun - and still think I'm about the only person in existence who's first experience of Sir Terry's writing isn't Discworld) until many years later at Uni when I decided it was time I read the Lord of the Rings myself - and then after that a legion of other fantasy works; including the first big sci-fi which was Dune (which I got at the time along with a computer game - and remains the only time I've seen a game bundled with a physical book that inspired it)

So that's a bit of my past and introduction into fantasy and sci-fi - now what's yours :)
 
Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein. Toorak library, Melbourne, 1976. A Wizard of Earthsea, Armadale Primary School library, same year.
 
So being a child in the late 70s/early 80s in the UK there was one routine that sticks in my brain.

Saturday evening. BBC1 - Footie results - news - Basil Brush - Doctor Who - something like the Generation game. So it was Tom Baker at the time and, I believe, a lot of scripts written by Terry Nation. SF was very prominent to me because of that!

But the first SF books that got me hooked were Arthur C. Clarke, especially got fond memories of his short stories, and Douglas Adams Hitchhikers series. That got me started, then as I devoured the contents of the local library, it set me up for more SF.

Oh and special mention to Brian Aldiss/David Wingroves look at the history of SF, Trillion Year Spree, that I got hold of when I was 21. I found that invaluable at finding work that I probably would not have sought out, and giving insight into SF literary developments over the past 100+ years.

I'd say after the initial SF push that I probably read a lot more horror and especially Stephen King around the age of 13. There wasn't YA at the time so I think of King as my YA :p.

As for Fantasy, we had The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings at home, so I got them quite early, but I was too much of a SF-kid to make it push me deep into Fantasy. (Although it did a bit :D) I did read some other fantasy that was to hand, the first series of Feist's Riftwar cycle springs to mind.
 
My journey started with:

A Wrinkle in Time
The Hobbit
Piers Anthony Xanath books
The Sword of Shannara
 
I've always watched sci-fi but although I'd read some fantasy as a child, I grew out of it, reading more horror, occult, detective novels and western. Then when I was 21 I picked up Feist's Magician and was drawn into whole new worlds. Now I can't get enough of it.
 
About science fiction, when I was a child my father introduce me into the Star Wars universe since I was 4 years old. But my introduction in fantasy world was a consecuence to read Neverending story.
 
My grandfather was a mechanical engineer who was fascinated both with nature and the possibilities of space travel. He got me interested in space and taught me names such as Gagarin, Armstrong, and Katherine Johnson (he was an engineer, and maths person, after all). He got me a book with cut away pics of Skylab, and how future space stations might look -- still waiting for a large torus to appear.

My first sci-fi reading was a collection, which included Catseye, and Sargasso of Space, both by Andre Norton, as well as Islands in the Sky, by Arthur C Clarke. That was me hooked.

My mother also bought me Five Children and It, by E Nesbit, which led to Narnia, and more. It probably helped to have a teacher who taught folklore to explain some of the songs and poems we did at primary school. That, and a different teacher played Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds when we were ten.

Then, of course it was Doctor Who, and Blake's 7 on TV; and Thunderbirds, and The Champions -- on repeat, I might add. And I was taken to the cinema for a new sci-fi film when I was six: something about a princess and a farm boy, a rogueish smuggler and his hairy companion, and a scary black-armoured lord with a planet-destroying space station. ;)
 
My first memories are of watching Star Trek TOS with my family as they originally aired. It's one of the reasons I take Star Trek so personally.
After moving to Hawaii in 1970 I found TV heavily weighted with live action Japanese sci-fi. They are now known as Tokusatsu series. Things like Kikaider, Kikaider 01, and Rainbowman.

I read LotRs when I was 10. Started playing D&D not long after it's creation. Made it to my first sci-fi/fantasy convention in 78 after moving to Florida. By the mid 80s I was flying around the country to get to the big conventions and working with a group call Skirmishes to put on smaller conventions through the state.
 
Famous Five books as Christmas gifts from Grandparents in the UK, to
Hardy Boys books as birthday presents from parents, to
Tom Swift books at grade school library to
Robert Heinlein young adult books also in school library
and list goes on from there.
 
On science fiction . Very difficult to pin point exactly., but I would say , Star Trek the original and Lost in Space . I can remember the last year that both were ongoing tv series. I didn't really get into science fiction books until years later.:unsure:

Fantasy , probably not until till about the late 1970's and im not sure which tv show movie.:unsure:
 
I kind of focused on books rather than TV but yes I have to say 6pm BBC2 - Startrek and Farscape (and latter Simpsons too for a long while). It was always a torment when the Tennis season started and those shows got pushed out of the way for that. Babalon 5 was almost a mystical series for me as I only ever got to watch little snippets when channel 4 was working for us, so it always held a very dark feeling of a series. Dr Who was also a strong favourite.

However alongside that there were a lot of fantasy and sci-fi shows in the childrens hour too - Bucky O Hare; Farthing Wood; Conan; Dungeons and Dragons; Skeleton Warriors; Dragon flies (sp) and loads of others.
 
The Star Kings by Edmond Hamilton, my first SF novel.
Asimov's Mysteries by Isaac Asimov, my first SF short story collection.

After that I was hooked.
 
I'm not actually sure. When I was little I had a lot of books with talking animals and one about a space rocket, which were slightly fantastical. I also loved dinosaurs, so I suppose it would have been natural to move on to myths and monsters. I think science fiction was always in the background, in toys, books, TV and so on.

The first SFF book I can remember was an Usborne book of King Arthur, which I was given when I was very small. It was magnificently full-on with really good pictures, and ended up with Arthur and Mordred battling on top of a heap of dead knights! Again, some of it didn't make sense to me, and I think that lack of clear answers intrigued me. It had armour and interesting heraldry and strange weapons. Top stuff.

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And then I ended up at a school with a very big library. The most interesting books had pictures of aliens and dragons on them, so I read those. And never really stopped...
 
Not a clue. I read voraciously as a child, so it was somewhere in the children's book room at the library, the Weekly Reader book orders from school, and the myriad of books we had at home. Danny Dunn, A Wrinkle in Time, Narnia, these are all likely culprits.

There's a fine and blurred line between most children's books and F/SF, so who's to say where it started? Dr. Seuss, at the very beginning.
 
There's a fine and blurred line between most children's books and F/SF, so who's to say where it started?

Yes, since a huge amount of children's stories could be classed as fantastical and would seem to lead naturally to an interest in it, I think it would be just as interesting to ask those who no longer read SFF when and why they gave it up.
 
Dr Who in the 60s. As a small kid I had a toy dalek that I was scared of.

Later there was Star Trek and then saw the 50s "War Of The Worlds" film on telly. Probably numerous other 50s classics too, but that was the one for me.

Books came later. Asimov's robot stories weren't the first I read, but the first that became lifelong favourites
 
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In elementary school they thought I was reading too much Dr. Suess so I browsed and found Eleanor Cameron's Mushroom planet series.
From there when my dad brought home books from an auction I found Poul Anderson's After Doomsday.
And from there the corner store had a rack that held Marion Zimmer Bradley's Colors of Space and those three got me started.

[GALLERY=media, 2305]Mushroom Planet by tinkerdan posted Apr 15, 2018 at 9:12 PM[/GALLERY][GALLERY=media, 2306]After Doomsday by tinkerdan posted Apr 15, 2018 at 9:12 PM[/GALLERY][GALLERY=media, 2307]Colors of space by tinkerdan posted Apr 15, 2018 at 9:12 PM[/GALLERY]
 

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