Can You Remember Your First Science Fiction Novel?

My first science fiction novel was Dune by Frank Herbert.

So I bought a copy of Dune and proceeded to get pulled in way over my head.

Could you explain how it was over your head?

psik
 
I read it a second time right after I read it the first time. For me, it was just so different, I felt I needed to re-read it to understand it better.

Loved it the second go-round even more!
 
I read it a second time right after I read it the first time. For me, it was just so different, I felt I needed to re-read it to understand it better.

Loved it the second go-round even more!

This is going to sound...weird -- but my experience was that I learned some new things about the book by playing the DUNE board game -- anyone remember that?

Dave
 
But at any rate the kids' section included sf juveniles by del Rey, Wollheim, Silverberg, Heinlein, etc. I believe I found The John Wyndham Omnibus in the kids' section. The adult shelves included Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions and a number of anthologies -- Galaxy, Magazine of Fantasy and SF... I remember Fred Hoyle's October the First Is Too Late being there, but I don't suppose I read it through. I don't know if there was all that much sf in the CB library, but there was some; and they had the Narnian books, Tolkien's fantasy, etc.

I've recently recalled that several of those titles you mentioned came to me via the SF Book Club -- in particular THREE HEARTS AND.... and one of the BEST OF F&SF anthologies -- as well as a couple of anthologies by -- was it Groff Conklin? ... See, I was one of those who, having found out about the SFBC, joined for the three free books and then bought whatever they were offering -- which lasted for about six months, until they discovered I was just a kid and expelled me...but at least they let me keep the books! (And I paid their bills religiously!)
 
No trouble, THE ROLLING STONES by Heinlein, a very practical story about interspace commerce via spaceship. They sure encountered a lot of trouble, that spacegoing family.
 
I believe it was a Fred Saberhagen Beserker series book! Machines that hate life down to the microbe level, if they were in another galaxy and found out a microbe was still alive on a planet in another galaxy the would go back to finish the job!
 
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Star Trek: Mission to Horatius, when I was 11. It was written by Mack Reynolds, who is still one of my top 5 favorite science fiction authors to this day.
 
I think mine was probably Dune. I think I read that in about 6th grade, iirc.
There may have been earlier ones... I read Brave New World in that same time period I think.
1984 not long after. And Hitchhiker's. =)
 
So, I'm pretty sure I answered this, but to expand on the theme, the first SFF novels I think I read, were probably (if memory serves, though perhaps not in this exact order):

A Fall of Moondust - Arthur C. Clarke (definitely first)
The Hobbit / LOTR / Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkein
2001 A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
Various Stainless Steel Rat novels - Harry Harrison
Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov
Stranger in a Strange Land - Robert E. Heinlein

and thereafter I think came long series, of which I read all the books:
Dune series, The Saga of the Exiles, Riverworld, World of Tiers, Majipoor Trilogy (as it was then), History of the Runestaff.
 

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