# First Impressions



## erickad71 (Nov 3, 2004)

I was just curious, what was the first book or series that got you interested in Fantasy? Or sci-fi even?

If I'm remembering correctly, it was the Chronicles of Narnia for me. I read this series several times as I was growing up and loved it very much. 

I'm having trouble remembering if there was any one book that got me into reading sci/fi. Maybe it was just a gradual interest...I'll have to think about that some more. 

How about you guys...


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## Lacedaemonian (Nov 3, 2004)

The Narnia series, Arthurian legend books (I read so many), Robin Hood books (again I read so many), The Hobbit, Norse Mythology, Greek Mythology - basically the mythologies.

The Narnia series stands out as being the first - read to me before I could read.


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## Princess Ivy (Nov 3, 2004)

My aunt read me The little white horse by elizabeth goudge when i was about eight and down with some sort of bug. i loved it and have been hooked ever since. although i love reading and have read some great books, i've yet to re-capture the feeling of wonder as my eyes were opened to the posibilities of fantasy for the first time.


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## dwndrgn (Nov 4, 2004)

Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster.  Stole it out of dad's box of books headed for the attic because I liked the cover.  Never looked back...


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## Princess Ivy (Nov 4, 2004)

i loved him, couldn't get hold of much of his stuff, but i've read the paths of the perambulator till it fell apart!
*mental note to put in a request at the library*


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Nov 4, 2004)

I'll have to be quite boring and admit that The Lord of the Rings was my introduction to fantasy, when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I'd finished all the 'children's books' at hand, wanted something meatier and a friend told my parents 'try Tolkien'. 

The first sf I read was a collection of Asimov's Mysteries - the Wendell Urth tales and like that.

I think I was pretty much hooked on both genres from the word go.


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## Lucifer (Nov 4, 2004)

I don't remember what my _first_ fantasy series was, but as a child I owned the Brian Froud "Faeries" book and "Gnomes" book.  I distinctly remember being annoying that I couldn't read handwriting at that point.  I also had a book of Russian fairy tales and another of Gypsy fairy tales.  As far back as I can remember I had the Oz books, the Chronicles of Prydain, the Chronicles of Narnia.  My father had collections of Frank Frazetta art that I looked at all the time.  My mother read me Tad Williams "Tailchaser's Song" when I was eight and gave me "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" from the Dragonlance series when I was nine.

Lucifer


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## The Master™ (Nov 4, 2004)

I suppose my first printed matter that started me off was from comics (from 1970's)... My first book was The Hobbit (bought in 1985)...


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 4, 2004)

Hearing people talk of D&D when I was a kid alerted me to the rebirth of myth, and it was instantly appealing. The Hobbit was the first, though. I haven't read a better and more complete fantasy novel.


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## polymorphikos (Nov 4, 2004)

My mum reading us Alice in Wonderland when I was five, which led to stumbling through the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at six or seven, and blundering through LOTR until I got scared by Shelob (plus when young I had the habit of skipping dull parts). Not understanding what was going-on, all the images I have from the Lord of the Rings were a million times cooler than now I understand. The Ring Wraiths wore great helms and dressed all in grey, and Pippin wore a red skivvy for some reason and gor mixed-up with Peterkin from The Coral Island. Isengard was a broken little stone towery sheep-shed-esque thing atop a hill, and the Balrog had a whip made of actual foot-thongs. Shelob was half-spider, and lived in a crevice. Gollum, inexplicably, wore a cloak and had a lantern. Reading it as a little kid, the entire book is hideously nightmarish in parts. It was all so very twisted, yet very, very cool.

Sorry for the digression into weird childhoodness. I wish it still looked that way now, though.


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## Lacedaemonian (Nov 4, 2004)

Your review of Lord of the Rings through childhood backflashes is tremendous.  How many books did our childhood minds distort and reinvent?


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## The Master™ (Nov 4, 2004)

Actually, I must say that I hadn't really thought of Dungeons & Dragons and Tunnels & Trolls and the like as being right for this, but yeah, I was playing D&D in the 80's and enjoying it with friends... Playing bizzare characters, even a duck!!! Ah, Call of Cthulu...

My favourite was a flatulant Dwarf with a drinking problem...


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## Spirit_Caller (Nov 4, 2004)

I have always been interested in fantasy and magic and the like, but it was my next door neighbour who really opened my eyes. I borrowed a David Eddings book The Belgariad. Hooked!!! Totally. Even more so when I picked up a rather tatty looking White Dragon from the second hand market. Loved the pern series ever since. Oh of course with the odd drop of TP mixed in.


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## The Master™ (Nov 4, 2004)

I was never able to get into David Eddings books... Guess it was because of my baby brother telling me how fantastic it was, and all the bleating from him put me off...


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## Brian G Turner (Nov 4, 2004)

The Master™ said:
			
		

> Actually, I must say that I hadn't really thought of Dungeons & Dragons and Tunnels & Trolls and the like as being right for this, but yeah, I was playing D&D in the 80's and enjoying it with friends... Playing bizzare characters, even a duck!!! Ah, Call of Cthulu...
> 
> My favourite was a flatulant Dwarf with a drinking problem...


 Sounds like you were playing the old Runequest rules.


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## Spirit_Caller (Nov 4, 2004)

The Master™ said:
			
		

> I was never able to get into David Eddings books... Guess it was because of my baby brother telling me how fantastic it was, and all the bleating from him put me off...


You should try his new Dreamer series, different from his others. Problem is if you are like me you read quickly and then have to wait for the rest to be published. The first two are out now.


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## aurelio (Nov 4, 2004)

"Chronicles of Narnia" were big in my youth.  I also liked "I Sing the Body Electric" by Ray Bradbury, which as I recall was a series of pretty nice short stories.  Also his "Illustrated Man."

I remember reading "Flowers for Algernon" in school, which is sort of scifi-ish.  I remember liking that a lot too.


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## littlemissattitude (Nov 5, 2004)

I don't actually think it was a book.  I think it was all the science fiction movies I saw practically from birth.  You see, when I was a child it was sort of a family tradition to go to the drive-in movies every Friday night that the weather was decent.  And, most often, the movies we saw were science fiction movies.  Then, when I was probably 9 or 10 years old, my dad started handing me books and telling me about authors that he liked.  I probably can't remember the very first science fiction book I read, but the first one I remember reading was one of Robert Heinlein's juveniles, "Red Planet".  I was probably 8 or 9 when I read that.  Certainly, I was hooked on written science fiction from then on.

I didn't come to fantasy until much later.  I think I may have started with Piers Anthony's "Incarnations of Immortality" series, which I would classify as much closer to fantasy than science fiction, but what really hooked me was reading Stephen R. Donaldson's two Thomas Covenant trilogies.


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## Maryjane (Nov 5, 2004)

_I realy don't rememer the first science fiction books I read but I must of read thousands of them when I was younger the one that I do remember that stands predominantly in my mind was Rama a huge cylindrical starship with land water and ccouds on the inside of the cylindrical ship and an artificial sun at the zero gravety center of the cylinder_


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## angrybuddhist (Nov 23, 2004)

The first Sci-Fi/Fantasy book I can remember reading was The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor Cameron.  I was quite young at the time and forever hooked on the genre.  When I was a few years older I read Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury and then had to read everything else he had written.  If I find a book I really like, I then have to read everything else they have written.  That's why my bookshelves are filled with Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Harry Harrison, Clifford D. Simak, Keith Laumer, and A.E. Van Vogt, to name a few. They were all quite prolific.  I have read LOTR and The Hobbit, and also The Harvard Lampoons, Bored of the Rings, but I don't read fantasy novels very often.


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## Morning Star (Nov 23, 2004)

Hmmm...it was my old man. He introduced me to Dune and Star Wars. After that it was Sierra (old PC games publisher) and the Fighting Fantasy series of books.


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## Leto (Nov 23, 2004)

Apart from the Roman myths my grand father told me instead of fairy tales, I had my first real shot at sci-fi with Dune (grammar school too). I've choose the book because of its cover (a fremen head by Siudmak)
Fantasy came later through Jack Vance's Madouc and Lord Dunsany.


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Nov 23, 2004)

You've read Vance in French or the original English? I understand that Vance has quite a following in France - at least, one of the more active Vance fansites is French and includes essays, tributes and even comic scans based on Vance's work. And it's great to see someone who was introduces to fantasy through Vance - I'm a huge Vance fan, even if I came into fantasy through the more prosaid Tolkien route.


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## Leto (Nov 23, 2004)

At this time, I've read it in French. Now I read him in both French and English, I'm a huge fan. with a sligthy preference for his SF works.
For the Tolkien route, I've tried twice the Hobbit as a kid (around 9 IIRC) and the action took so long to start I've never managed to end the book. I've read it as an adult (after LoTR and Silmarrion which I've enjoyed), I've finished it but I still find it boring.


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## Jayaprakash Satyamurthy (Nov 23, 2004)

Perosnally, I think Vance is definitely the superior stylist. How does his work translate? I mean, he has such a unique vocabulary, and so many apt coinages of his own, one wonders how much of this works in another language.


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## Leto (Nov 23, 2004)

knivesout said:
			
		

> Perosnally, I think Vance is definitely the superior stylist. How does his work translate? I mean, he has such a unique vocabulary, and so many apt coinages of his own, one wonders how much of this works in another language.


As usual it varies following the translator, but usually it's really well done for the Jack Vance's work. Unfortunatly it's not always the case with every authors. A new translation of Dying Inside has recently published here, so horrible you can't even recognize Silverberg's writing style.


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## Hypes (Nov 25, 2004)

Jostein Gaarder, a Norwegian writer, was the first to get me into books in general with his _The Solitaire Mystery_ and _Sophie's World_. 

For fantasy, I believe it was Robert Jordan that was my first passionate/memorable read, though I've later become rather disillusioned with his entire series.


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## Foxbat (Nov 25, 2004)

When I was a child (many many moons ago) my parents used to buy me condensed classics in hardback - especially edited for children. There were titles like Treasure Island and Kidnapped - but the one that really got me was *20 000 Leagues Under The Sea*. So I have to blame Jules Verne for my Science Fiction fixation


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## astounding (Nov 25, 2004)

I remember the hardy boys and the nature of those books.  My mother always thought (and still does) that sci-fi books and the likes there of, such as fantasy genre, were all demonic.  Despite her lack of approval, I continued to improve upon my science fiction collection, and I'm grateful to the writers who have influenced my life the most such as asimov, (fav), pohl, arthur c. clarke,  gregg bear, saberhagen, campbell, ....and many of those others.


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## BandSmurf (Dec 1, 2004)

When I was little, we're talking even as young as one and two, my dad read to me every night, probably until I was around 4 or 5.  And we read a lot of different stuff.  The one though, that probably started my fascination with dragons, and subsequently, all of fantasy, was one of those kids books where they put in the name of the kid?  It was about some dragon wishing me Happy Birthday.  I think it's probably sitting in a box back in my parents garage, waiting for me to find my own place where it will have a place of honor.  The first actually fantasy I remember reading and knowing this is fantasy, this is great, was Mercedes Lackey's Winds of Fate, and I think I was in 4th grade.  Thank god my teachers didn't realize what I was reading!

Anne McCaffery got me into science fiction with her Dragons of Pern.

~BandSmurf


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## hodor (Dec 2, 2004)

i would have to say Lord of the Rings AND t h whites Once and Future King...

those led me into The Mists of Avalon then the series Taliesin, Merlin etc...


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## ommigosh (Dec 3, 2004)

Our primary school teacher sometimes read us bits of the Hobbit last thing on a Friday afternoon.  I was hooked then.  Got into science fiction when a friend lent me Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles.

Om


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## Old Nick (Dec 7, 2004)

I had watched LotR (the animated one) as a kid and wanted to read it, but finding it in my town was apperently impossible at that time...
Later I discovered The Hobbit in the school library. Guess I was about twelve when that happened. Then I moved on through some Swedish fantasy rpg:s and then finnaly LotR was located when I was about 14.


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## jenna (Dec 9, 2004)

hmm does the Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton count? that's fantasy!! then Narnia, god bless that series, i loved it! as far as adult SF/F, Piers Anthony is my god, i started with the Incarnations of Immortality, that probably cemented it for me. the first sci-fi book i read was, i think, Cthon by Piers.


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## polymorphikos (Dec 14, 2004)

Enid Blyton's books have done so much good in this world. The Wishing Chair especially.


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## Blue Mythril (Dec 14, 2004)

Well, I'd have to say that Tolkien's work was the literary kick start to my sci-fi Fantasy love. My mother however is adament that its my Uncle's fault for sitting me down in front of the Princess Bride when I was three. Apparently I've been hooked ever since.

 There's something to say for growing up in the 80's, we had all those fantastic kids fantasy movies and series and shows and all that Jazz. Really really. 

 Oh, I loved Narnia and the Magic Faraway Tree. Actually, I'll stop now, otherwise I'll start listing things for ages.

 Personally, I believe that its in you from the very beginning. My Mum was also very alternative/ artistic/ into all that sorta stuff. There was no escape, ha, especially not if I grew up on Enya either.


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## Kaill Dranes (Dec 15, 2004)

The first book that I read that got me started in reading sci-fi and fantasy was a book called Waylander, by David  Gammell. I had read that book atleast twice before I read another by the same author. I have read every book except three of his. Most of which aren't even around any more.

Thanks, Kaill


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