The First Classic Science fiction novel you ever read.

Difficult to remember. My entire family read SF. I may have raided my brother's complete collection of Galaxy, as I do remember doing that repeatedly over the years.
The first book that I remember by title was the classic collection Adventures In Time and Space ed by Healy & McComas that was sitting around the house. I was lucky.
Fred Pohl said that whenever persons asked where to start with SF, that was the book he recommended
 
Pogopossum, your reply was interesting. Wow! But could you add to it a message about the first sf novel you remember?
 
My mum read me The War of The Worlds to me as a youngster (on my request) as well as Day of The Triffids... I can't remember which was first.

The first I remember consciously deciding to read for myself was The Time Machine.
 
Thanks! When I was a youngster looking for sf at the public library, Heinlein was recommended to me, as I recall, and I think I read one or two of them. Fantasy was more to my taste -- the Lloyd Alexander Prydain books, the Narnian books, Tolkien, &c. One of the earliest sf novels I read was a juvenile by Donald Wollheim called The Secret of the Ninth Planet, which I loved.
 
The first science fiction novel I recall reading was The Big Jump by Leigh Brackett. Probably doesn't count as a classic, though I was surprised that it turned up in an internet search and a Wikipedia page. I don't recall the plot line, but it must have made an impression for me to remember the title easily after all these years. I do not have any idea as to my age at the time.

The first novel that might count as a classic would be Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. It was in the reading rack in my junior high school English teacher's classroom. This would put me at about 13-14 years of age.
 
pogopossum said:
First novel? Probably Farmer In The Sky or Tunnel In The Sky, Heinlein juveniles. I still remember them vividly.
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Tunnel in the Sky was the First Heinlein novel I ever read . Im surprised its never been adapted as a film or tv series.
 
It was either The Invisible Man or The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. At the time I wasn't even aware that they were science fiction, I probably associated science fiction with space.
 
REF: pogopossom.
Your right "Adventures............." by Healy & McComas is a great collection, I have no idea how easy it is to get a copy now days as it was published in the late 40s.
I managed to get mine nearly thirty years ago, but I highly recommend it.
For anyone who is interested you can look this book up on Wikipedia where you get a full list of its contents, so good hunting!
 
It's such a classic anthology am surprised at how cheap these are.
But glad to know they are easy to get still.
 
It was 1982 in The Andover Bookstore that opened up new vistas of imagination. Like many readers of a certain age, the first “classic” SF I read was Robert Heinlein. I believe it was either Rocket Ship Galileo or Tunnel in the Sky. Quickly followed by the other juveniles, mixed in with Asimov, Silverberg some Clarke. I alternated SF with fantasy, with such authors as RE Howard, Moorcock, Leiber, Card, Anthony.

I was 12 (as the saying goes...) and have been reading since. I still have all those paperbacks, and over time have been able to collect many a first edition. I complemented the sense of wonder with occasional role playing games in both the SF and F genres. Most recently I’ve been doing play-by-post on web forums, a creative exercise in collective storytelling in which classic SF inspires and informs the game.
 
Grognardsw said:
It was 1982 in The Andover Bookstore that opened up new vistas of imagination. Like many readers of a certain age, the first “classic” SF I read was Robert Heinlein. I believe it was either Rocket Ship Galileo or Tunnel in the Sky. Quickly followed by the other juveniles, mixed in with Asimov, Silverberg some Clarke. I alternated SF with fantasy, with such authors as RE Howard, Moorcock, Leiber, Card, Anthony.

I was 12 (as the saying goes...) and have been reading since. I still have all those paperbacks, and over time have been able to collect many a first edition. I complemented the sense of wonder with occasional role playing games in both the SF and F genres. Most recently I’ve been doing play-by-post on web forums, a creative exercise in collective storytelling in which classic SF inspires and informs the game.
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Have you ever read Seabury Quinn and Karl Edward Wagner ?
 
Hi Baylor, I know of but have not read any Seabury Quinn. I have read all the Kane stories by Karl Edgar Wagner, collected in the Gods in Darkness and Midnight Sun collections from Nightshade, and his Road of Kings Conan novel. They were enjoyable. Wagner did Conan justice unlike other writers. I haven’t read any of his horror stories, of which there were many.

As a new member here, I’m enjoying reading all the commentary on classic SF/F.
 
I'm not sure, since whatever it was, it would have been in High School and therefore obscured by the mists of time. I'm guessing it was either The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham, or You Shall Know Them by Vercors.
 
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