How did you get hooked onto SF?

[TomMazanec]

Call me a Vulgarian, but for me it was the first episode of Lost In Space. I watched Astroboy but he was a robot the same way as Bugs Bunny was a rabbit...it just didn't click. And the Gemini flights were like the song...you may leave here for four days in space/but when you return it''s the same old place (I was born in 1958).
But seeing the Jupiter 2 leave to colonize another planet, I realized...this could all be leading to something. Someday there may be new nations up there in space.
What was your SF initiation?

 

[Vladd67]

Probably being terrified by Dr Who at about the age of 3. I have vague memories of watching Moonbase 3, and I grew up on a diet of Star Trek, Gerry Anderson, Dr Who, etc. The first sci-fi books I remember reading were Islands in the Sky by Arthur C Clarke, and Space Family Stone.

The first courtesy of The Puffin Book Club at school, the second belonged to my dad. Another title I got from Puffin was Space Hostages, but not the version that usually crops up when searching online.

 

[BAYLOR]

I used to watch alot science fiction on tv when I was kid , Lost in Space Star Trek , Space 1999 . and classic film li Godzilla Quatermass and other Hammer films and American International the like Silent Running and Star Wars. This of film and tv series. is long one The reading side came much later for me. two writers in particular got me going in Science fiction and fantasy Robert E Howard and Harlan Ellison.

 

[Guttersnipe]

My dad showed me Star Wars.

 

[Vince W]

Earliest memories are of Doctor Who, Star Trek, Thunderbirds and Space 1999. The first 'real' science fiction I read were Starman Jones and Space Cadet by Heinlein. There was no turning back after that.

 

[Astro Pen]

I borrowed, age twelve, a copy of Bradbury's The Silver Locusts (The Martian Chronicles in the US) then The Illustrated Man followed by Asimov's Pebble In the Sky. Mostly read at night by torchlight under the bed covers. They still read well today.
The Foundation Trilogy sealed it.

 

[Parson]

I discovered the Heinlein and Clark YA's in my Junior High library. Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Islands in the sky, Starbeast, etc. So I was really stoked when "Star Trek" made its appearance on television. Must see TV for sure!

The first book I remember buying was "Catseye" by Andre Norton.

 

[Bick]

My mate Warren read loads of SF and had shelves full of later stage Heinlein and Asimov. He got most of them from a market stall in Bracknell. I caught the bug then, aged about 13-14. Another early influence was another mate of mine, Dave, who lived over the back from me - we discovered the Stainless Steel Rat books as well as Dune. Two of the Stainless Steel Rat books on my shelf still have my youthful note inside, "Christmas present from... December 1985).

 

[mosaix]

Dan Dare in the Eagle in the early ‘50s

 

[BAYLOR]

Probably being terrified by Dr Who at about the age of 3. I have vague memories of watching Moonbase 3, and I grew up on a diet of Star Trek, Gerry Anderson, Dr Who, etc. The first sci-fi books I remember reading were Islands in the Sky by Arthur C Clarke, and Space Family Stone.
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The first courtesy of The Puffin Book Club at school, the second belonged to my dad. Another title I got from Puffin was Space Hostages, but not the version that usually crops up when searching online.
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Cool covers,

 

[Foxbat]

I have a vivid memory of the first time I saw The Time Travelers. I was probably about ten at the time. I found the ending particularly fascinating. Fireball XL5 and Stingray probably influenced me heavily too.

 

[jd73]

Growing up in the 80s, I think there was so much fun sci-fi around that it was hard not to get hooked. But I did go away from the genre for a while. Nowadays, if it's in any way speculative, I love it

 

[Droflet]

Yeah, the usual. Lost in space, at least for the first 6 episodes, then Star Trek, anything from Gerry Anderson and of course movies like Forbidden Planet and so on. I read a fair bit of everything including classic sci fi.
Then I discovered, in a second hand bookstore, Harlan Ellison's anthology books including Dangerous Visions. I had no idea sci fi could be written like that. I began seeking out similar stories and I'm still at it today.

 

[Rodders]

In rapid succession, 2000AD and then Star Wars. I was seven years old at the time.

My Dad took me to see Warlords of Atlantis at the cinema.

 

[Elckerlyc]

I don't really remember anymore.


PS
It must have been somewhere in the second half of the 60's. Or perhaps earlier after having seen a few episodes of The Twilight Zone.
And then there were the books my father read.
I guess it grew gradually on me. Can't say it was this or that.
All I know for certain was that, at some point, there was no turning back. I was lost forever.

 

[Vladd67]

Cool covers,

Glad to say those are the actual covers in my possession. Just don’t tell my dad about the Space family one, he thinks it accidentally got thrown out in a tidy up years ago. Well it did but I rescued it, borrowed it and around 40 years later have yet to return it.

 

[Triceratops]

I was always interested in Star Trek as a kid, but when I read my first novel by Poul Anderson, Virgin Planet, I was completely awestruck and taken over by it. That started the whole writing things which has last for 36 years, (with a 13-year hiatus in there). I haven't stopped since. A few weeks later Alan Dean Foster did the same thing to me with his Icerigger books.