SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

I was reading a hisotry about science fiction and the author commented that the "Golden Age" of Science Fiction was 12.

For me that is exactly true. Our local library had only a very few children's sf and fantasy books. But when you entered high school, you could check out books from the adult section.At 12, they assumed you could handle it. And they had much, much more sf and fantasy. SF and fantasy has been a major part of my reading tates since then.

So, how old were you when you discovered sf and fantasy?

I wasn't much of a science fiction fan until my 40s. I did, however, read A Wrinkle in Time when I was about eight or nine as well as C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy.

Until I joined GoodReads last year, I had pretty much given up on science fiction and devoted all my reading time to fantasy.

About 10 I think. There was a YA sci-fi series with a female protagonist that I checked out from the library and loved, although I couldn't tell you now what it was called, or who wrote it.

Oh I started young, I had my dad's Mike Mars books and Tom Swift Jr. books that I was reading in elementary school and I was an early reader, so I wouldn't be surprised if I was 7 or 8.

Lara Amber

About 10 for me, as well.
= )

I graduated from the kids' library to the adult library at age 11 or 12 (when I'd literally read every single book in the small-town kids' library). The cover of one of Jack Vance's books (Planet of Adventure) looked so interesting that I picked it up despite having no idea what it was about.

That library put little stickers on the spines of the books to indicate the genre --- a little pistol for a detective/crime novel, a little spaceship for SF, and so on. After that Jack Vance novel, I read every single book with a spaceship on it - I've been hooked ever since!

By the way, here's the cover of the Vance book --- you can imagine how it would pique a 12 year old's interest... http://www.goodreads.com/book/photo/3...

I think I was roughly 12 when I started, and I was a pretty hard core reader (working my way through it pretty systematically) by the time I was fourteen or fifteen. I remember reading just about all of Ray Bradbury, a lot of Heinlein, The Space Traveller by Murray Leinster, and by the time I was 18 and left for college, I took a library of around 500 paperbacks with me -- I stacked the one wimpy wall bookshelf they gave us to the ceiling, two books deep. But I lived and died in the library at first, even though paperbacks back then sold for anywhere from $0.25 to $0.65. I purchased a lot of them in the early 70's when the standard price of a paperback was $0.95 -- it locked in there for a rather long time.

I lot of what I read at first were short story collections pulled out of the remaining pulps -- most of the pulps had died, but a few were hanging on and giving new and old authors alike a place to get started or make a meagre living until they sold a novel or won a Hugo or the like. I still have a bunch of the early collections that contain some really great stories (World's Best SF, etc.)

I started reading adult novels at age 7, but my first interest there were the Saint novels and short story collections (by Leslie Charteris). I still have about 2/3 of the Saint books, some of them with lurid pulp covers. I also read a lot of generic mysteries until SF&F took over my brain... and even after, but much less.

rgb

rgb wrote: "I think I was roughly 12 when I started, and I was a pretty hard core reader (working my way through it pretty systematically) by the time I was fourteen or fifteen. I remember reading just about ..."


I was also 12. I kept reading SF until about I was about 20 and then quit. I quit because SF was alot less Asimov and Bova and alot more LeGuin and Kurtz and I disliked the trend.

Leigh wrote: "rgb wrote: "I think I was roughly 12 when I started, and I was a pretty hard core reader (working my way through it pretty systematically) by the time I was fourteen or fifteen. I remember reading..."

Yeah, the problem was that people started to learn a lot more science, a lot more physics, and it became more difficult to suspend disbelief about things like FTL travel. But still, Robert Forward, David Brin, Lois McMaster Bujold -- there are plenty of really excellent "hard" SF writers in the post-masters era.

rgb

I started at 10 with The Hobbit. I think I had already seen the animated movie so when I saw the book at my school book fair I snatched it up. It is one of a very few books I have read more than once.

My first sci-fi was around 13 and probably was either War of the Worlds or Jurassic Park, my memory is fuzzy on this point.

My first science fiction was in high school, but I strayed away after things got stupid (IMHO) in the late 60s.

I was about 7 or 8, I guess... And I wasn't particularly systematic about it. The first years I rarely knew the author's name, if ever, since it was always the title or the cover that caught my fancy; and the story.

The only "system" I had was based on 1) reading whatever I found lying in my father's piles, or 2) starting from one row to another in the library's section of sci-fi books:-D

Ron wrote: "My first science fiction was in high school, but I strayed away after things got stupid (IMHO) in the late 60s."

What got stupid? I thought it got stupid in the late 70's. I don't mean to sound sexist, but some of the very worst SF writers were women and their stories and novels were horrible.

The stories focused on social engineering instead of science. Everything become silly with all the assumed capabilities with precious little thought about the impacts. It all sounded alike.

I have read sci fi my whole life. My first scifi being in the form of comic books. I remember watching Neil armstrong walking on the moon when I was about 5. ALL I wanted after that was space stories and my Mom accomidated me.

Dad pushed the classics on me and agreed at about 9 or 10 that he would buy me a sci fi book for every classic I finished. red badge of courage at age 9 got me a copy of I robot.

I shook Leonard Nimoy's Hand when he was promoting Startrek when the first series was in its first season at a grocery store in West virginia.
Iwas reading sci fi before that.

We left West virginia to come to Kansas when I was 8. I started readin at 4.5 Just before going to kindergarden.

I can't say exactly when I first started reading Science Fiction (or Fantasy) but I do know I was pretty young. There was a big gap between me and my older brothers, I loved to read and so was reading a lot of their stuff while I was still in grade school.

I was around 8 when I discovered the magic of their AD&D Monster manual. :) It was fertile ground for a young and active imagination. :)

I started reading Fantasy at around age 10-12 (too long ago to remember well ;-) It started with the Hobbit and a Wrinkle in Time. Then I read Narnia.

-- Robin The Crown Conspiracy | Avempartha | Nyphron Rising (Oct 2009)

I probably started in 1969 or 1970 when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I remember falling in love with A Wrinkle in Time around that age. I still fondly remember the copy of Daybreak 2250 A.D that I got through Scholastic Book Club. By junior high, I was reading H.G. Wells, Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clarke.

My science fiction childhood encompassed movies and TV too. I grew up with Star Trek (the original) repeats and Dr. Who on PBS. I vividly remember sitting in the backseat of my parents' car at the drive-in and the awe I felt watching spaceships dance to the Blue Danube waltz. Even our TV documentaries and educational films had a science fiction slant to them. I can't say that a whole lot of what we saw in those films and shows about life in the year 2000 came true. But, they never imagined how things would really be. Microwave ovens? Laptop computers? Cell phones? My life is science fiction.

I must have been 7 or 8 when I started reading SF; certainly no later than 10 (Star Wars came out in '77, the year I was 10 and I know I read the novelization).

Like Stefan, I went through all the books at my library with the SF or Fantasy logo. I can recall Andre Norton's Solar Queen and Witch World novels becoming early favorites and (for a while) anything with a map on the endpapers.

I really can't remember how old I was, but I know I was a very young child when my dad first introduced me to Science Fiction. At that point, fantasy was not nearly as prominent as it is now, and the most popular authors were Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. So that's what I started with. Oddly enough, though, I didn't read Stranger In A Strange Land until I got to college. But I was hooked from the very beginning. I do remember reading A Wrinkle in Time in 6th grade. And I grew up watching the original broadcasts of Star Trek, the Time Tunnel, and The Outer Limits.

I don't really know how old I was when I started reading SF & Fantasy. I was reading comic books very young & then got into some of my Dad's fantasy. It was the Frazetta covers of his Conan books that really captivated me, but so did a lot of other covers. Mom didn't think any of that was appropriate reading for me, but I kept getting into them anyway.

I remember reading The Forgotten Door, A Wrinkle in Time & a bunch of stuff by John Christopher before we moved from one house when I was 8. I'd read the 'Hobbit' half a dozen times by the time I was in 6th grade & we read it for class. I'd about worn out my copy of it.

There wasn't much TV back then & I had less access to it than most. Mom didn't like it & the least infraction got it taken away. Since I was such a wonderful child, I missed a LOT of TV time...

Actually, I read Sf/Fantasy before I was 12, but only here and there. Between the ages of 12 and 20 I read SF almost exclusviley!

Back in 1962, beleive there was not as much good sf for children. Our library had only two Heinlein juveniles---Have Spacesuit, Will Travel and Red Planet---plus a lot of really forgettable stuff.

Also, a child's library card got you six books only! I'd go to the library on Saturday and by Tuesday all were read, and I had to wait until Staruday. Except when school was out in summer , I could go twice a week!

When I got an adult card at 12, you could get 20 books at once and I often did!! Quite honestly, at one time I had a better sf collection than our local libary!

The very first SF/F I remember reading and identifying as being in the genre is Dragonsong, because it was on the Battle of the Books reading list for my middle school English class. Looking back on it, though, I think I may have read A Wrinkle in Time before that. In any case, this would put my estimate at the 10-12 range as well. (Oh! And there was a book about a fairy who gave a woman a small patch of blue hair, and she could pull them out and make wishes when I was in elementary school. That counts, right?)

Anyway, once my aunt and uncle realized I was enjoying Anne McCaffrey & co., they started giving me the firsts in several foundation series, and I have been soundly hooked ever since. This was, of course, further aided by growing up in a family that watched Star Trek and Babylon 5 with great dedication. I have another pair of aunt and uncle who refer to their angel-shaped Christmas ornaments as Vorlons.

I think I saw science fiction as disposable literature, up until a couple years ago. I changed my mind slowly, but was probably pushed over the edge by reading More than Human, The Way Station, and Left Hand of Darkness, all within a few weeks. Clearly, this stuff was at least as good as the literary genre stuff I was starting to read again (I think I was working through some of Maxwell's novels at the time).

I didn't read at all until I got into college (1968), and, in retrospect, I was reading some science fiction then (Vonnegut, in particular), but thought of it as contemporary, rather than science fiction. Maybe my attitude was an artifact of being an English major (Berkeley). With the exception of Robert Graves, everyone on the syllabus was dead.

My 1st SciFi books were the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series which I began the summer before 5th grade and remember having to wait for 1 or 2 of them to be published. How old is a 5th grader?

My first fantastical book was Peter Pan when I was 8. The first real SF book was The White Mountains by John Christopher at the age of 10, which had me searching for more, and I discovered Nicholas Fisk and his brilliant children's SF. A year later I found an Arthur C. Clarke short story anthology in my new school's library. That was it I was hooked !

I started around age 10 with The Hero and the Crown and A Wrinkle in Time. Then it was on to my uncle's battered LoTR copies!

I started fantasy at 10, with A Wrinkle in Time. I started science fiction at 15, with Childhood's End.

My father was a big Oz book fan, so I read those very early on. I also read LOTR around age 12-13. I asked for it for Christmas and read the whole trilogy in 4 days. The first SciFi I can remember reading was either Hiero's Journey or the Out of the Silent Planet series. I do remember getting forced to read Wrinkle in Time and even Anthem in school, but I didn't like them much.

Interesting that so many here mention A Wrinkle in Time. I was supposed to read it for class in 5th or 6th grade, but I only ever got a few chapters in. I still haven't and I doubt I ever will. Heh, it doesn't look that great anyways.

I was reading fantasy and fairy tale kinda things in early elementary school (ekz. the Narnia series, Pinocchio, and the Oz books). Then around 6th to 8th grade I started reading Michael Crichton novels. I read about ten of those before I started to get into other, more SF-canon authors.

I can't recall when I first read sci-fi/fantasy. Most of the adults in my family were avid readers, and my Dad and his brothers all read sci-fi, so we had a lot of it around the house. My Dad's rule about books was, if you're able to read it, you may. So I read whatever I found that appealed to me. I was particularly fond of Tom Corbett stories and Have Space Suit, Will Travel.
I read as many YA Heinlein as I could find. A teacher forced me to read LOTR in 7th grade as punishment for chewing gum in her class. (She had already tried to get me to read it and I didn't) I was hooked on Tolkien from then on. I started reading Andre Norton books around that time too, and I still have a larger collection of sci-fi than the local library. I was 17 when Star Wars appeared, and I was surprised to find that many other people liked the genre. I thought only geeks read sci-fi!

at what age did I start reading Science Fiction- well the stuff was engraved on stone tablets back then...

mmm 14- I got hooked on Star Trek and started reading a bunch of Star Trek books.

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

Sounds like the way we raised our kids. I always hated the way my mother & grandfather categorized SF & Fantasy as 'trash' books. No such thing if it gets a kid interested in reading, IMO. Get them interested & good at reading first. Worry about content later.

My mother had no sense of censorship beyond porn. No porn- Other than that if you old to be interested in it and read it... It was fair game.

I have always been very grateful to my mother for that.

But, I don't remember how old I was when I read A Day No Pigs Would Die
but young enough that I never forgot it- I think I was twelve...
I read The Amityville Horror when I was in high school- scared me so bad I slept with the lights on for two years.

Just recently, I was having a love affair with Charlaine Harris books and I thought my fifteen year old niece would also like these kind of books... So I told my sister she might get some for her. Then one of the characters in the book gave another character a hand job- and I thought well... maybe not- Personally, I wouldn't stop her from reading that level of literature but actually introducing it to her- well... it felt funny

I seem to remember by first sci-fi books as those by Monica Hughes, especially The Keeper of the Isis Light and the rest of the Isis series. After that it was open game for whatever I could get out of our school library. This would have been what I was about 12. When I hit high school, it's "huge" library (compared to the elementary school) was like a dream come true. Spent a lot of time exploring their much larger sci-fi and fantasy sections!

Growing up, my parents never said there was anything I couldn't read. If I wanted to read it and could, it was fair game.

anyone ever read a book called footfall? i remember reading that in 8th grade, around the time i read battlefield earth, but i don't remember the author.

Can't remember when exactly, but before 10. I think Ngai Hong was my introduction to the genre. Looking back, however, I don't find his books aren't very SF-ish these days. I also remember reading the abridged/kids version of some of Jules Verne's books.

Jessica wrote: "anyone ever read a book called footfall? i remember reading that in 8th grade..."

Yes, Footfall was a great book! That was probably the 2nd or 3rd Larry Niven book that I read and hooked me for the rest of his (and of course Jerry Pournelle)

Stephen wrote:
Yes, Footfall was a great book! That was probably the 2nd or 3rd [author:Larry Nive..."

ah! i could have looked it up, i suppose. i remember carrying that gigantic thing around for WEEKS. i'll have to read more of his now - i think my tiny small town library actually has a few.

Footfall was by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle

Jessica wrote: "...i remember carrying that gigantic thing around for WEEKS. i'll have to read more of his now..."

ah yes, I do remember thinking it was big at the time. Now its just the norm ;) I really enjoy Larry Niven, especially his "Known Space" books. I have read many of them multiple times.

Battlefield Earth was by L. Ron Hubbard

a very awesome book which was turned into a horrible farce of a movie...tragic, really..,

My grandfather gave me a set of Tom Swift books at the age of 7 and I stumbled upon The Hobbit at age 9.

Stephen wrote: "I seem to remember by first sci-fi books as those by Monica Hughes, especially The Keeper of the Isis Light and the rest of the Isis series. After that it was open game for whatever..."

"Keeper of the Isis Light" was one of my first SF books, as well. I don't recall for sure, but I'd swear I was reading SF/Fantasy in elementary school.

I forget how old I was when I touched my first scifi or fantasy book. I know young.

Narnia, Wrinkle in Time, might have thumbed through Dune since my Dad and I watched Lynch's version a lot, tried Bradley when I was younger and couldn't get into her. Then went full blown into Mercedes Lackey, Andre Norton and some Bradley. Do like Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Movie sucked to pieces. The CGI is an acceptable interpretation. Still like the book more.

Haven't touched the ST or SW books aside from flipping through Young Jedi or SW comics. Think I enjoy imagining my own 'verses and adventures.

I don't really remember when I first started reading fantasy and Science Fiction, but the first I remember clearly was The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings at seven.
My dad had read those and the Chronicles of Narnia to us growing up, but that was when I first started reading them on my own.

I had to have been 7 or 8 when I started reading the Heinlein, Asimov and Andre Norton books from the library. The children's library in Idaho Falls at that time would only let you have FOUR books, and Mama wouldn't take us but once a week. (There were four of us to drag down there...) I read all the SF and fantasy books they had, plus the fairy tales. I've always been a binge reader, so I'd read ALL the Asimov, then all the Norton, then all the-- You get the picture.

I read The Children of Dune when it was serialized in Analog magazine, then backed up to read Dune--but I was in high school then... And have read SF/F ever since. I do get tired of the overly militaristic SF, but I just read one of the other varieties...

so long ago I can't quite remember. I do know I started with historical fiction, reading about the medieval era, then read fantasy, then sci fi.
Norton was the best!

My first SF book was Farmer in the Sky by Robert Heinlein. I picked it up at random off the shelves of my school library. I think I would have been in 3rd grade, so around 9 - 10. What's funny is that I didn't know what SF was, and that book puzzled me because it was so real and so possible, but I was fairly sure nobody was farming on Ganymede yet. I even remember finding out Jupiter had a moon called Ganymede and going "wow". I was confused.

I don't know why I didn't ask an adult. I just puzzled over it. Anyway, the next SF I was exposed to was Asimov short stories in High School. Then I read all the Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein I could find. I got into Asimov's science-for-laymen books, too, and this sort of sent me into science geekdom and eventually into my career in engineering.

Then through the years I read everything I could by other authors I discovered. Tolkien, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, Ursula K. Le Guin (I think she writes outstanding SF), and on to Orson Scott Card, Octavia Butler, Lois McMaster Bujold, etc. I usually prefer hard or realistic science fiction most, and SF with interesting ideas. Fantasy I love is restricted mainly to Tolkien and Le Guin (who makes her fictional worlds so real). I'm much more of an SF reader than Fantasy.

One reason I joined this club is that I'm looking for good hard SF authors that are new to me. Any suggestions?

Wow this brings back fond memories.
I can't remember, though, if my first SF/F read was The Hobbit or A Wrinkle In Time. Funny how many have one of those as their firsts as well. From there it was anything I could get my hands on. Bradbury's Farenheit 451 was among my first reads as well. The Dune series, The Foundation series, McCaffrey's Pern series... I still have all of the well-loved, dog-eared copies I started with all those years ago. I thank my parents for allowing me the freedom to read anything I wanted. They even bought me my first subscription to Asimov's magazine way back when, and I still have a pile of those too.