Can You Remember Your First Science Fiction Novel?

KFSF said:
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.
Click to expand...

Thanks for mentioning this book. I'd forgotten it, but I had a copy many years ago, bought when it was new, I suppose, and must have read it as a lad. At the time I wouldn't have recognized Reynolds' name, I expect.
 
Extollager said:
Thanks for mentioning this book. I'd forgotten it, but I had a copy many years ago, bought when it was new, I suppose, and must have read it as a lad. At the time I wouldn't have recognized Reynolds' name, I expect.
Click to expand...

Ive never heard of that Trek novel.:unsure:
 
Bick said:
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.
Click to expand...

You know, I'm getting kind of suspicious: how can one have read so many good books as his first SF, without hitting a stinker???
 
2DaveWixon said:
You know, I'm getting kind of suspicious: how can one have read so many good books as his first SF, without hitting a stinker???
Click to expand...
I only read the most famous books I'd heard of, as I had the thought from an early age that I should try to read the 'canon' of best SF, as there seemed so much, and I didn't want to 'waste' any time. Also I read books that were recommended by a particular friend who had read much more widely in SF. I clearly recall him telling me that if I wanted to read SF I should read Asimov, Heinlein and Niven. I asked what the 'best' Heinlein was and he said maybe Stranger. Looking back this was probably because he had read all Heinlein's later era stuff, but not his juveniles. For Asimov he insisted I had to read Foundation, so I dutifully did. In point of fact, opinions on May's Exiles saga is quite divided so not all are classics. Also, I suspect the local bookshop was (a) smallish but good and (b) didn't stock pulp. In Britain in the 80's there was less pulpy stuff around by memory than there might have been in the US. The 'second tier' books that did still sell well - such as Edmund Cooper and E.C. Tubb - were not read or recommended by any of my friends, so I missed them. My high hit rate early on was therefore due to circumstances, a conservative attitude and having one highly knowledgeable best mate, rather than anything that does me credit.

My mum was an English teacher too, and I think I often went into the bookshop (which I can just about recall) with her. If it looked a bit trashy, she might say, hmm, how about this, handing me an Arthur C. Clarke, a John Wyndham or a Brian Aldiss instead. I never did read Wyndham as a teen, but my mum would have approved. I was too conservative looking back - I wish in hindsight I'd tried more authors 35 years ago, as authors like Stableford, Shaw, Cooper etc that were available. I can remember all the Pan SF books on the shelf of that bookshop to this day. Good times.

[Dune was read in 1984 I'm sure, and was inspired not by a friend but by the movie]
 
Last edited:
Incidentally, I was very proud of reading Majipoor, because it was possibly the first book I "discovered" without any advice from a friend. I bought it on the basis of the cover. I still have the same 1982 Pan pb.
 
steve12553 said:
The Shy Stegosaurus of Cricket Creek by Evelyn Sibley Lampman.
Click to expand...
I remember doing a book report on this novel in elementary school in the '70s. I bought a hardcover reproduction from Purple House Press several years ago, and recently they put out a paperback reissue of the sequel "The Shy Stegosaurus of Indian Springs", which I'm currently reading! :giggle:
 
Star Trek 10 was the first SF book of any kind I ever read. I believe it was in 1973. About 3 years later when I was about 13 or 14 I read Dune as my first non-star trek novel. It was a little more advanced reading than the star trek books I had read. But it made me like the deep horizons that SF can explore that other genres cannot.
 
Astrocartician said:
Star Trek 10 was the first SF book of any kind I ever read. I believe it was in 1973. About 3 years later when I was about 13 or 14 I read Dune as my first non-star trek novel. It was a little more advanced reading than the star trek books I had read. But it made me like the deep horizons that SF can explore that other genres cannot.
Click to expand...

The James Blish novelization of The series episodes . Read those a long time ago, they were good.:cool:
 
1981, I was 13. Planet of the Apes. It was for school, which was in France, but I quite liked it. Afterward, I didn't read anything of note in
SF and started my interest in earnest in 1986, when I read first some short stories. I can't really remember the 1st novel I read, then.
Maybe City, by Clifford Simak.
 
Elvraie said:
1981, I was 13. Planet of the Apes. It was for school, which was in France, but I quite liked it. Afterward, I didn't read anything of note in
SF and started my interest in earnest in 1986, when I read first some short stories. I can't really remember the 1st novel I read, then.
Maybe City, by Clifford Simak.
Click to expand...

Both terrific books .:cool:
 
I think I'd previously read many straightforward science fiction stories. Adventure stories really. But reading A Time of Changes, I realized the SF genre could facilitate a fascinating study of humanity. The genre allows a writer to place humans in all manner of strange worlds, societies and situations; the aim being to study how we are affected. That's the kind of thing I like.
 
I think that I posted here earlier that the first SF that I remember was the classic Adventures In Time and Space (not a novel) the collection by Healy & McComas. My dad and siblings read SF and it was knocking around the house. My actual first novel was probably a Heinlein juvenile although I read other stuff due to access via the family. I also remember raiding my brother's GALAXY collection and reading The Caves of Steel.

Not quite as early,
I lived in rural San Diego County during Jr. High School (Years 8 & 9 for Brits.) with my grandparents. A quite odd guy lived three houses down the road, about a quarter mile away. He not only read SF, but collected. He had numbered and often signed, copies of the deluxe editions put out by Fantasy Press. When he discovered that there was a nearby kid who read SF he started to loan them to me. I particularly remember the Lensman series and the Williamson title Darker Than You Think. I said odd? He had a slightly halting speech pattern and while quite friendly, didn't really know how to talk about the books. Along with the Vista California Public Library (where I borrowed all of the ERB John Carter series,) he was my source for SF for the years that I was separated from my previous access, my dad & siblings.
A couple of years later I asked my grandparents about him. It seems that he had a manic episode, picked up his couch and threw it through his picture window. They took him away.
 
It may have been "Lost, a Moon", about kids getting kidnapped by robots and taken to phobos. (Much later in life, I read Heinlein's "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" -- same basic plot but much better constructed story -- really the masterpiece of the Heinlein Juveniles.) I also read Jules Verne's 20,000 leages under the Sea (about the same time. I may have been 12 or 13.) At that point I was hooked and read all the Sci fi I could get my hands on.
 
Herbert's Hellstrom's Hive, from the middle school library (!), with the cover and blurb referring to men and women in continuous orgies, among other things.
 
It was "The World of Rocannon" by Ursula Le Guin and it is still one of my all time favourite books.
However, I've read short stories before (Bradbury, Sheckley and a few others). But the question was about the novel, so I don't count them.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
B (Found) Old series can’t remember name Book Search 2
L Trying to remember a science fiction novelette Book Search 12
T Can't Remember the Title of a Science Fiction Novel I read as a kid Book Search 0
R Science Fiction/Space Opera-only remember scene. Book Search 0
R Can't remember title of "Eco Science Fiction Comedy" Book Search 0

Similar threads


Back
Top