Which book got you started on science fiction/fantasy?

[bob393]

No question about it, Asimov's Foundation series galvanized my love of SiFi.

 

[io_anonimus]

The first book was The Hobbit. Ironically at that time I was not even aware that it is considered a Fantasy book. I was a child and The Hobbit was, and I still think it is a great adventure book for kids.
The real SF start was with The Voyage of the Space Beagle and Solaris.

 

[MeldedByThePlague]

For me it was Galactic North by Alastair Reynolds- I'd just started reading again, and for some reason it caught my eye. I had so much fun I got one of his actual novels, then I never looked back.

 

[Spade]

Orion by Ben Bova. I read it in 1998 and I've been in love with SF&F ever since.

 

[Anathem]

If you want to go back to my childhood it was probably The Twits and The BFG by Roald Dahl ... though my first real science fiction book was probably The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury ... but Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson is what made the most impact on me.

 

[SiobhanT]

My dad gave me The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett when I was maybe 7 or 8, after that I borrowed his copies of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings (I was a very precocious child), I was also heavily into Greek mythology and Arthurian legend as a child, but I didn't start reading sci fi until I was 15 or so, apart from borrowing my dad's copies of 2000AD, his tastes had a huge influence on mine.

 

[Fairytale Jane]

I've always had a fascination with mythology and astronomy. For years I was faithful to science. I took break after I had literary exhausted all forms of media currently available on my chosen subjects. I have quite a library at home. I guess it all started with Alice in Wonderland.

 

[somnambulist]

All the children's / YA books of my generation seemed to be fantasy by default, but honorable mentions for those that pushed me towards the genre as an adult:

jonathan stroud - the amulet of samarkand, plus sequels
eoin colfer - artemis fowl stuff
harry potter
philip pullman - dark materials trilogy

 

[Sapha]

My first foray into fantasy as a reader was as a child when was given copy of A Wrinkle in Time, so beloved did the become that I still have it to this day. As an older reader (teenager) J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit further nurture my love of fantasy literature. As for sci-fi, Mr Timothy Zahn is responsible for me first picking up a science fiction book, more precisely, Mr Zahn's Star Wars: Heir to the Empire...yes, I'm a Star Wars nerd/geek.

 

[Abernovo]

I think it was Islands in the Sky, by Arthur C Clarke, back when I was 6 or 7 (which was a little while ago ). It was in a small boxset of children's sf, including Andre Norton, but it's long lost now.

I'd had Tolkien's Farmer Giles of Ham and The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Grimms' Fairy Tales before that, but it was science fiction that really started me down the SFF road.

 

[Dante DiBenedetto]

A Journey to the Center of the Earth Science Fiction, and The Hobbit for Fantasy. I read both around eight or nine years old.

 

[chongjasmine]

The wheel of time was what got me into the world of fantasy. It was the first fantasy series I had read.

 

[aaronbev79]

Fahrenheit 451 when I was 15

That book still has one of my favorite opening lines:

"It was a pleasure to burn."

 

[eternalmetal]

Ive been reading literature on and off since I was a child, but for the majority of my high school and undergraduate years I basically only read what I had to for my schoolwork because of the lack of free time. Ever since post-graduate purgatory I desired to keep sharp and read for leisure once again. Not knowing where to go (or where my adult interest now lay), I visited my shelf of unfinished books.

I just so happened to have Terry Pratchett's Truth half finished and I instantly remembered everything I found fascinating about the Discworld series. His clever prose and witty satire had me hooked from the start and his masterful and cohesive storytelling till the end. I have tried other strictly fantasy series (The Hobbit and the like) to no avail; they didnt hold my interest and I found that I simply did not like most fantasy aesthetics. Weird coming from a Pratchett fan, no?

I remembered that I had found Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov very interesting as a kid, so I decided to give the Foundation and Robot series a try. And with the first Foundation book I was completely and thoroughly hooked to the world of science fiction. As a molecular biologist I found the idea of fantasizing within the realms of science a fascinating concept, and decided to familiarize myself with the classics (Clarke, Heinlein, Asimov; at least as I see it) before exploring the rest of the genre.