Your earliest sci-fi memory...

[Loner]

I have a disitinct memory of reading two short stories in a sci-fi story magazine (something like Asimov's Science Fiction) when I was in fifth grade ( ten or eleven years old).


The stories have stuck in my mind to this day.

One was called Enid I think. It was about a boy who has what you are led to believe is an imaginary friend he calls "I need". His mother interprets this as a mispronounciation of Enid. He says I-need is going to fix his crooked teeth and do some other physical improvements that require surgery, but tells his mother not to worry as I-need knows what she is doing. I seem to remember it ended with the son coming back totally changed and bringing I-need with him to fix his mother's problems... and his mother screaming when she meets I-need who is an alien. It was a melancholy story because the boy felt his friend had helped him and could help his mother but she just feared his alien friend.

The second story was about a classroom full of children on an alien planet who were preparing for a historical occasion: The only rainfall their planet would have in twenty years (or many years, a long time anyway).

The second story was weird to me then. Now it doesn't seem quite so far-fetched...

What are your earliest sci-fi memories?

 

[j d worthington]

I have a disitinct memory of reading a short story in a sci-fi story magazine (something like Asimov's Science Fiction) when I was in fifth grade ( ten or eleven years old).

Okay, you just made me feel very, very old, as I was already married when IASFM began publication.... (Yes, my name is Methuselah! )

What are your earliest sci-fi memories?

Filmic or written? I'll assume, from your own tale, literary; in which case, coming across part of a copy of an old Signet paperback edition of I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov. I say part because apparently, when I was just a toddler, I'd torn the darned thing apart. So here I am, at age 6, thoroughly intrigued by the cover (which depicted an alien landscape against a black sky, with part of a rock wall in the foreground, and a robot with a spacesuited figure in its arms, in the background another figure which looked like a robot... or was it another human? Anyway, I read the blurb on the front cover ... and the first few pages, and was hooked. Then went on a scavenger hunt for the rest of the book, which was quite literally scattered all over the house (I even found some pages in the attic, in some boxes). Amazingly, I managed to put the whole thing together, and read it cover to cover more times than I can count... I've still got the darned thing in a plastic sheath somewhere in storage. And I was hooked. After that, I checked out S is for Space by Ray Bradbury from the library, and by that point I was a lost cause. And so it has remained.

(Incidentally, at the same time I was first encountering Asimov, I picked up a book of Poe's stories as well, which got me hooked in that direction.)

 

[Dave]

The rain story could have been by Ray Bradbury. He wrote many rain stories. I know I've read "All Summer In a Day" but that is opposite to what you said as the children are preparing for sunshine after seven years of rain.

My earliest memory is from TV. At age one or two I would watch 'Dr Who' at my grandfathers on a Saturday afternoon while the tea was made. I used to bounce on the sofa to the music. All I can remember is the music, that it came on after the football results, and the Daleks, of course.

 

[Loner]

Okay, you just made me feel very, very old, as I was already married when IASFM began publication.... (Yes, my name is Methuselah! )

Well, I'm not sure what it was exactly. It might have been Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. I'm 35 myself so I'm no spring chicken! But its amazing how powerful an effect these first impressions have!

I also recall being in high school and reading some E.E Doc Smith and thinking that George Lucas had ripped him off. There were sword fights, space knights and huge spherical planet-destroyers. To my young mind there were lots of similarities. If only I could remember which book it was!

 

[Loner]

The rain story could have been by Ray Bradbury. He wrote many rain stories. I know I've read "All Summer In a Day" but that is opposite to what you said as the children are preparing for sunshine after seven years of rain.

Hmm, I wonder if my childish memories got scrambled? That sounds too close to be coincidence!

 

[steve12553]

I have memories of a story or book being read to my class when I was under ten about a pair of children pursueing a parent(s) through what seems now like an interdimensional portal. I read the Martian Chronicles by Bradbury at a young age. I remember picking up I, Robot by Asimoz from a local library branch when I was in grade school. I also remember acquiring Revolt on Alpha C (Silverberg)and the Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek (I can't remember). from Scholastic Book Club (You order the books from a flyer you got at school and waited patiently for a couple a weeks till they were brought into the classroom. It was very important to have your $1.35 to take in with your 3 book order.)

 

[Loner]

I also remember acquiring Revolt on Alpha C (Silverberg)....

Revolt was a popular word in titles in my childhood. I remember reading Revolt at 2100, in grade 5.

from Scholastic Book Club (You order the books from a flyer you got at school and waited patiently for a couple a weeks till they were brought into the classroom. It was very important to have your $1.35 to take in with your 3 book order.)

We had that too! But I was too poor to ever order any... i used to have to wait for my friends to get theirs and read them before I could borrow them. The suspense was the worst!

 

[Nesacat]

It's more fantasy than sci-fi really. It's Ray Bradbury's Fog Horn. I read it when very little in the Reader's Digest. The story stuck in my head although I'd forgotten both the title and the name of the author. I'd tried to find it off and on over the years with no success until just a couple of years ago. I was in Pay Less Books and picked up a book with an illustration of a lighthouse and this beast. It was the right tale. It was the most amazing feeling.

Loner is right. Sometimes a tale just creeps under your skin and stays there even if you first read it years and years ago.

 

[Harpo]

TV: Doctor Who, I had a toy dalek that I was scared of. The earliest episode I remeber actually watching (rather than seeing as a repeat later on) was a Patrick Troughton one involving life sized toy soldiers, but I forget the title.

Book: My dad had a series of Sci-Fi stories which I think he'd got from Reader's Digest. The only one I can remember reading was called "Tiger By The Tail" (I've just checked, it was by Alan E. Nourse)

 

[Brian G Turner]

Star Wars and Star Wars figures, aged 5.

 

[Perpetual Man]

For me it must be Doctor Who (again) I have vague memories of Daleks beign crushed or destroyed by a giant Metal worm which I guess if probably Death to the Daleks, and the Sontaran Lynx from the Time Warrior, which would make me three years old...

The first book I ever bought for myself was Doctor Who and The Invasion of Time

But the books that got me into reading (after a badly stalled start) were a series of Pirate books, filled with wonderful pictures of Dragons and Griffins featuring pirates by the names of Benjamin the Blue, Roferick The Red and Gregory the Green!

 

[Paige Turner]

Well, one hates to date oneself, but I was a psychotic fan of Fireball XL-5 as a (very!) young child. It was the first show I ever declared to be "my show," and I had to watch it. (There was an elaborate TV watching ritual I won't go into here.) Rockets, romance, robots… today's science fiction could take a page from that book, I can tell you.

I wish I was a space man.
The fastest guy alive.
I'd fly you round the universe,
In Fireball XL-5.
Way out in space together,
Compass of the sky,
My heart would be a fireball,
A fireball,
Everytime I gazed into your starry eyes.

We'd take the path to Jupiter,
And maybe very soon.
We'd cruise along the Milky Way,
And land upon the moon.
To our wonderland of stardust,
We'll zoom our way to Mars,
My heart would be a fireball,
A fireball,
If you would be my Venus of the stars.

 

[Tau Zero]

The earliest sf I can remember reading had to be some of the Danny Dunn series written by Abrashkin and Williams. (I had to look up the authors on the Internet.) I don’t actually remember any of the stories, but I know I read some of them. I must have been about 7-9 years old. Then I read some Tom Swift books, but not many. When I was 11, I read The Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings, which rocked my world.

On TV, I remember Fireball XL-5 but it’s very vague. The show I got into, mind and soul, was Astro Boy. Man, did I love Astro Boy! I must have been about 8 year old.

Hey, look! There’s Astro Boy as my avatar!

And, of course, the theme song:

There you go Astro Boy.
On your flight into space.
Rocket high, through the sky
What adventures soon you will make.

Astro Boy bombs away
On your mission today
Here's the countdown, and a blast off
Everything is GO Astro boy.

Astro Boy as you fly,
Strange new worlds you will find
Atom celled jet propelled,
Fighting monsters high in the sky.

Astro Boy there you go
Will you fight friend or foe?
Cosmic ranger, life of danger,
Everything is GO Astro Boy.

Friends will cheer you
You're our hero
As you go go GO Astro Boy.

 

[Parson]

My earliest Sci-fi memory would be a book by Andre Norton, which I do not even remember the title of. It was a story a young herder from the planet Norden, who was a herder. He had been transplanted into another star system where immigrants were only allowed to the main planet (?) if they had a job. He got a job at a pet store but soon pets who had been inhanced to the point that they were no longer pets are sent there. He finds he can speak with them telepathically. And so on. If anyone recognized this and can tell me the name of the book I would appreciate it a lot.

 

[Pyan]

Well, one hates to date oneself, but I was a psychotic fan of Fireball XL-5 as a (very!) young child.

Yes! another fan of Steve Zodiac! It's a very good way of finding someone's approximate age, by the way: just ask them the name of the earliest Gerry Anderson (all hail! all hail!) series they remember.

 

[j d worthington]

TV: Doctor Who, I had a toy dalek that I was scared of. The earliest episode I remeber actually watching (rather than seeing as a repeat later on) was a Patrick Troughton one involving life sized toy soldiers, but I forget the title.

The title of that one was The Mind Robber, Harpo. It's available on DVD now, should you want to give it another viewing.

 

[Dave]

It's a very good way of finding someone's approximate age, by the way: just ask them the name of the earliest Gerry Anderson series they remember.

STINGRAY

But Thunderbirds was the best. I even saw the films at the cinema!

 

[carrie221]

Well I am not sure what the earliest would be but I remember in 1997 when the 20 year anniversary of Star Wars came to the theaters.

I can remember watching the opening scene for "A New Hope" and just being in awe of the movie

 

[chrispenycate]

Kemlo and the space cadets; a group of children who could breath vacuum because their mothers had birthed them therein.
I must have been about seven, so we hadn't yet aquired a T.V., and I was already a fast reader, so the local library children's section saw a lot of me.

 

[mosaix]

Dan Dare in the Eagle. I was six.

Edit: That would be 1952.