Gateway books: What were the first books that began your love of SF?

[Swank]

Was Gateway anyone's gateway?

 

[Parson]

Was Gateway anyone's gateway?

Interesting question. I'd bet it was a bit to mature to rope in many tweens and such.

 

[Swank]

Interesting question. I'd bet it was a bit to mature to rope in many tweens and such.

Sex and suicide are so tween.

 

[feralreason]

I was intrigued by the short stories of HG Wells quite early on. The first of his novels I read were 'The War of the Worlds,' and 'The Time Machine,' when I was about 14. For Jules Verne it was 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth,' and 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.' But my first choice you may find surprising: It was 'The Day of the Triffids,' by John Wyndham, which I read when I was about 14, quickly followed by every other book he had ever written
Christopher Priest famously criticized Wyndham's work as "the master of the middle-class catastrophe". Brian Aldiss condemned his books as suitable for an audience who 'enjoyed cosy disasters," but for me it seemed so 'real,' set as it was in modern Britain, and at the time I read it, 'Ban the Bomb' was a topical subject made even more real by the Cuba Crisis when the world seemed to be on the brink of WW3. By choosing to write about situations that were not about space, but relevant to the present day, Wyndham was a pioneer of a form of sci-fi we might nowadays call 'speculative fiction". I used to lay in bed dreaming of how I planned to survive when the bomb dropped. Later my tastes became wider and much more diverse in SF but I will never forget the day I first read 'The Day of the Triffids.'

Yes! - H.G. Well's short stories are surprisingly good. You can see his influence shining through when you read Heinlein - especially the fantasy, e.g. Well's "The Magic Shop" and Heinlein's "Magic Inc."

 

[feralreason]

Red Planet by Robert Heinlein for sure.

And still an awesome book! Just finished reading it again about a couple of weeks ago. Great book to read for some insight into the nature of the Martians who raised Valentine Michael Smith in "Stranger in a Strange Land".

 

[smellincoffee]

I was reading SF from an early age -- Great Illustrated Classics versions of Wells and Verne, Bruce Coville's SF stories, Star Trek junior fiction, Animorphs --- but I don't think I admitted I was a SF fan until I was much older (early twenties), once I'd tried Asimov's short story collections and wound up reading every short story collection and novel I could find by him save for End of Eternity.

 

[Astrocartician]

In grade school I discovered Star Trek on TV. About then, I ran across Star Trek 10 which had the short story versions of the tv episodes (I got it for the cool space battle scene on the cover) and read much of that series of books. Later, I saw another book with a cool cover called Dune and my love of SF really started.

I have learned in life that sometimes you actually can judge a book by its cover.

 

[beccabear67]

With me it's a toss-up between Heinlein's Have Spacesuit Will Travel and John Christopher's Tripods/White Mountain trilogy circa age eight. Between those two though I started looking for (and finding) more like them.

 

[Parson]

With me it's a toss-up between Heinlein's Have Spacesuit Will Travel and John Christopher's Tripods/White Mountain trilogy circa age eight. Between those two though I started looking for (and finding) more like them.

Have Spacesuit Will Travel is one of the very best of Heinlein's YA books. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing like them being published today.

 

[beccabear67]

Have Spacesuit Will Travel is one of the very best of Heinlein's YA books. As far as I'm concerned there's nothing like them being published today.

I know I also loved The Star Beast by him (name of Lummox).

 

[Pyan]

Space Cadet, Tunnel in the Sky, Farmer in the Sky, Red Planet, Space Family Stone/The Rolling Stones - all brilliantly crafted stories, that really transcend the idea of 'juveniles'.

RAH's book about his writing (among other things) - Grumbles from the Grave is worth reading, if only for the anecdotes regarding his struggles with his publisher's childrens editor about what was permissible in juvenile SF at that time.

 

[Runvävare]

The first Fantasy book I ever read was Conan The Destroyer. I was about eleven years old at the time. Although I liked it, it took a couple of years before I ever read a Fantasy book again.

If books by Astrid Lindgren also counts, (and come to think of it, why shouldn’t they?) I suppose the first Fantasy book I ever read was The Brothers Lionheart.

 

[BAYLOR]

Space Cadet, Tunnel in the Sky, Farmer in the Sky, Red Planet, Space Family Stone/The Rolling Stones - all brilliantly crafted stories, that really transcend the idea of 'juveniles'.

Im surprised Tunnel in the Sky hasn't been made into film or even a tv series . It's made for both.

RAH's book about his writing (among other things) - Grumbles from the Grave is worth reading, if only for the anecdotes regarding his struggles with his publisher's childrens editor about what was permissible in juvenile SF at that time.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

In this day and age I think it's implausible that a person's first exposure to sci-fi/fantasy comes from books. I was probably watching cartoons and TV shows and movies in that vein before ever opening a book. Nowadays we're almost born with an innate tendency for it, so much is pop culture saturated by it.

But speaking of printed material, growing up in the late 1980s before books I had superhero comics, and before that I had Disney comics. Thinking back I'm amazed how much sci-fi and fantasy Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck packed in their adventures! So those were my first forays. Then came superheroes (and the early '90s cartoons of X-Men and Spiderman played a big part), whose concepts were more complex and expanded my little head with all kinds of ideas about clones, multiverses, time-traveling, lost kingdoms, underwater cities, galactic empires, shapeshifting aliens, folklore monsters, science monsters, pagan gods, cyborgs, the positive effects of gamma rays and radioactive spider bites, etc.

When I gravitated to prose at last I naturally gravitated towards the same content. My early exposures were Jules Verne and H. G. Wells for no better reason than they were on the shelves when I rummaged them, so I didn't have to buy anything at first. It was a choice made by inertia. Little by little I took control of my reads and set out to actively find what I wanted.

 

[Pyan]

In this day and age I think it's implausible that a person's first exposure to sci-fi/fantasy comes from books. I was probably watching cartoons and TV shows and movies in that vein before ever opening a book. Nowadays we're almost born with an innate tendency for it, so much is pop culture saturated by it.

Very good point - I'm a boomer, so growing up in the UK in the 50's and 60's I had very little access to SFF visual media, and there only were books. Your point also shows why there are entire generations growing up that have no idea about the authors we consider the giants of SF - Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc. Oddly, that doesn't apply so much to the Fantasy greats - Lovecraft, Tolkien, Le Guin, who are still devoured today.

 

[Sargeant_Fox]

I wasn't aware of that divide between sci-fi authors and fantasy writers, but thinking two minutes about it now I recognize I DO know the fantasy greats a lot more and better - Lovecraft, Machen, Lord Dunsany, Tolkien, even George MacDonald. Of course it may just be my personal taste that points me that way.

But continuing with the visual media theme, I wonder if in the last 60 years it hasn't been easier for a sci-fi fan to be sated by film/TV than for a fantasy fan. From Star Wars to Alien to Blade Runner, the standards are pretty high. Even lighter sci-fi like Back To The Future is a very good accomplishment, cinema-wise.

I think mainstream fantasy is less consistent achieved those heights. Labyrinth or Dark Crystal may be someone's guilty secret, but I'm not sure they beat reading a novel. Lovecraft is notoriously hard to translate into the screen. Whether it's dark fantasy or urban fantasy or high fantasy, it's very challenging to capture those visions. Take high fantasy or sword and sorcery. Let's assume Arnie's Conan movies are great (I do), but I wouldn't put John Boorman's Excalibur on the same league. And production-wise, Peter Jackson's LOTR blows both out of the water.

If fantasy, which depends a lot on mood, doesn't translate well into cinema, that may explain why fans have to keep going back to the classic books.

 

[Pyan]

It doesn't help when they make films like this gem, which turned up on Legend TV tonight:

Age of the Hobbits aka Clash of the Empires aka Lord of the Elves

 

[Swank]

I think mainstream fantasy is less consistent achieved those heights. Labyrinth or Dark Crystal may be someone's guilty secret, but I'm not sure they beat reading a novel. Lovecraft is notoriously hard to translate into the screen. Whether it's dark fantasy or urban fantasy or high fantasy, it's very challenging to capture those visions. Take high fantasy or sword and sorcery. Let's assume Arnie's Conan movies are great (I do), but I wouldn't put John Boorman's Excalibur on the same league. And production-wise, Peter Jackson's LOTR blows both out of the water.

The problem with this is that SF seems to be more inclusively counted. Virtually anything that could be thought of as SF, is.

My favorite fantasy film is Orlando - a marvelous film that most of you reading this right now are scratching your heads and wondering if that should count. But it is far more fantastic than Man From Earth or Gravity is SF. But all the films you listed are in a narrower lane.