First SF stories Read

Cafe Society
1

There seems to be a lot of Science Fiction readers here and I have been wondering what stories got them started on SF. For me, looking back, the earliest was probably being read “A Wrinkle in Time” in school in about 2nd grade. I also remember reading all of the “Danny Dunn” books in the local library (“Danny Dunn and the Time Machine” et al). I also recall a book called “The Weapon Shops of Isher” by A.E. Van Vogt. Then on to Asimov and the rest is history (or future history :). To set the timeline, this would have been in the early 60’s.

Anyone else?

mc

2

I read Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles in fifth grade. It wasn’t assigned reading, but it was great stuff.

3

I always loved fantasy as a kid: Baum, Lewis, etc. From there it was a short step to the Danny Dunn books and the Mrs Pickerell(?) books (an old lady, a-la Mrs. Pollifax) who went to Mars, etc.

From there I went to the James Blish Star Trek books and from there to an Asimov anthology called Tomorrow’s Children. At that point, I stumbled onto either Tunnel in the Sky or Have Spacesuit, Will Travel…then there was no turning back.

And I hated Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man for A) Being filed right next to Harlan Ellison and B) having a title that sounded like SF.

Fenris

4

Hrm. I think the earliest sf book I read was A Wrinkle in Time, but I’d been into science fiction long before that. I trace my love of sf in general to seeing Star Wars in the theater when I was a year old. I started reading two years later, teaching myself with TinTin comic books. TinTin wasn’t exactly sf, but a lot of the stuff in there skirted the edges, such as Professor Calculus’ inventions. My two favorite comics were the hard sf* two-parter Destination Moon and the Von Daniken inspired Flight 714.

[sub]*Well, hard sf for a children’s comic book, anyway.[/sub]

5

For me, a bunch of other books like A Wrinkle in Time happened about the same time I discovered the Blish Star Trek books. Bradbury did too. I don’t know why the Blish always comes to my mind first when the others were better.

But it does.

6

Back then we called them “Amazing Tales of Super-Science” and I believe I was reading the stuff from the time I could talk…

7

To this day I own a copy of The Invisible Man because I picked it up at a library book sale when I was 12. I can’t sell it, some fool kid will think its sci fi.

8

Though I don’t really like Sci-Fi, A Wrinkle in Time was probably the first Sci-Fi book I’ve ever read. It was a good long while ago, back in 4th grade. I liked it a lot.

9

Mr. Bass’s Planetoid. It happened right after I was given a library card, third grade, I think. Cleaned out the SciFi section of the George Mason Elementary School Library (Heinlein’s juvies, the Lucky Starr series, Lensmen, Skylark, and a few Andre Norton books) by the end of the year, and had to start reading other stuff.

Didn’t read Wrinkle until about two years ago.

Tris

10

It doesn’t count as Sci Fi, but the first book I remember reading on my own and loving was L. Frank Baum’s Ozma of Oz. So, a love affair with fantasy was born.

11

I read all of these at about the same time and I can’t remember which was first; Norton’s Starman’s Son, James White’s Star Surgeon, and Heinlein’s Between Planets. After that threesome, I was lost for good. :slight_smile:

12

I’d forgotten about Mrs.Pollifax. Thanks for the reminder. Time to check out the bookstores for my nephews.

A Wrinkle in Time came firstly to mind because after our class was read it in second grade I switched schools and it was read again.

I remember reading some really horrid BEM (Bug-Eyed Monster) stories and hating them, but then our local station began playing Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and a Saturday afternoon movie that always seemed to be “Them” or something like it (what was the one with Peter Graves and the giant crickets…that one was spoofed wonderfully in the movie "Matinee), and it was back to the books. Always more straight ahead SF tho, never did veer much into Fantasy.

On a side note, anyone familiar with Chris Van Allsburg’s “The Mystery of Harris Burdick”? That is the one I’ve got my nephews into. Just a bunch of twilight zone-ish pictures and captions and you make up the stories. I very highly recommend it to any and all.

13

moonchilde, I loved the “Danny Dunn” books! I read them all many times as a child. Did you know that someone produced an audio play of “Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine”? And it was a musical! (I can still remember the song where Irene is improvising her report on Peru - “Peruvians live in Peru, just like you’d expect them to do. Just like Romans live in Rome…”)

But if you define Science Fiction fairly loosley, the first one I remember was “The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree” by Louis Slobodkin. I’m guessing I read that in 1st or 2nd grade. Does anyone else remember that one?

14

I don’t really know what I read first. We had an old Tom Swift (I don’t remember which one) at home when I was a kid, and my father read a lot of SF, so it was probably the Swift or some of the magazines from the mid-fifties. (I did read early!)

15

As a child I read L’Engle’s Murry family stories (inluding A Wrinkle in Time) as well as C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, although I consider both to be fantasy. A little later I read most of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories, but only a handful (e.g., “The Adventure of Hans Pfaall”) could be considered sci-fi. I also read Tolkien’s works, clearly fantasy, and Lewis’s Space Trilogy, which is sci-fi/fantasy. Perhaps the first of my favorite authors as a child was Roald Dahl, who wrote many stories with both fantasy and sci-fi elements (such as Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which features Willy Wonka in space!). In recent years I have read some of Dahl’s more “adult” works, and they too have both fantasy and sci-fi elements (for instance, “The Sound Machine”).

I mention these not to go into some fantasy novel tangent, but because these two genres often mix, and I am guessing by the prior posts that some people got into one genre by way of the other.

I would say that the first sci-fi novel I ever read was Bradbury’s classic (IMO) The Martian Chronicles, although Bradbury’s writing has a fantasy element to it too. I have enjoyed much of his other work, although overall I have a feeling most don’t consider him a sci-fi author.

The same thing goes for Kurt Vonnegut, whose novels Slaugherhouse 5, The Sirens of Titan, Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick, etc., had sci-fi elements, but some of his stuff, like Mother Night, didn’t.

In the meantime I was reading “classics” and finding sci-fi elements in novels like George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (all utopia/distopia novels), as well as fantasy novels like Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court and the Greek myths, including Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and Homer’s Odyssey.

Once again, these are interminglings of the genres, and not yet quite into the realm of “hard” sci-fi.

In recent years I have been reading more sci-fi, picking the usual suspects, such as Frank Herbert’s Dune series, Orson Scott Card’s Ender series, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Philip K. Dick. Of these authors I find Dick (especially his novel Ubik) the most interesting, and I plan on reading more of his novels.

Much of what I read when I was younger had fantasy and sci-fi elements, and after delving deeply into “classic literature” (e.g., Joseph Conrad, Leo Tolstoy, Twain, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, etc.), I am now looking into the the genres that first started my love of reading.

I am not sure if I’m really a “sci-fi fan”, as one week I’ll be reading Dostoyevsky and the next I’ll be reading Herbert, and my library of “general” fiction is far greater than my sci-fi library. Still, a good book is a good book, and I look forward to finding more good books in the sci-fi genre.

16

was a lot of spooky stories (augmented by such notable comic mags as CREEPY, EERIE & VAMPIRELLA and CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED), mythology (Greek & Roman) & folk tales (the Uncle Remus stories being my favorites)-

Though I’m sure I read lots of other SciFi stories, the first to make a real impact, and I’m pretty sure I was in Fourth or Fifth Grade when I read it (which makes it around 1971), was Ray Bradbury’s I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC- the Sarcophagous design on the book cover got my attention & the tale of a widower providing his kids with a robotic grandmom really got to me, esp when they matured & she had to go back to the factory (but that’s not a total spoiler because it then got even better & more heart-rending after that).

It was an original Twilight Zone episode & also was remade in the 1980s for TV as THE ELECTRIC GRANDMOTHER, which was better than the TZ ep.

17

I was in 6th or 7th grade and just began devouring Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein.

Some of my Bradbury favorites are October Country, R Is For Rocket, and the Martian Chronicles.

A all-time Heinlein favorite is Farnham’s Freehold.

18

Mrs. Pickerell.

Mrs. Polifax is a spy and unless your nephews are in their mid-teens, the Mrs Polifax books may be too violent for them.
And does anyone else remember The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet?

Fenris

19

By the time I was in the 4th grade, I had already read several of the Edgar Rice Burroughs series. If you want to call Burroughs’ work fantasy, then the first true SF book I read was Ray Bradbury’s short story collection “Golden Apples of the Sun”. I was hooked for life after that.

20

I remember it well. I was in the library at school in Grade 3, and I’d read through all the Danny Dunn books and was looking for something else when I spotted a rocketship on the spine of a book. I pulled it out, and it was “Starman Jones” by Heinlein. I read it that night, went back in the morning and borrowed three more Heinlein Juveniles. I was hooked. Over the next month, I read every Juvenile Heinlein wrote, then read them all over again. Then I talked my mom into taking me downtown to the public library so I could get more Heinlein books. Eventually I branched out to other authors, but Heinlein was like my companion all through grade school. By the time I got through grade 12, I’d guess I’d read every Heinlein book written to that date at least four or five times.

Another book that I just loved as a kid was, “The Mad Scientist’s Club”. I don’t know if I’d call it science fiction, but it was about a bunch of wacky kids who went on funny adventures using science. I loved that book because it didn’t talk down to you. Even though it was clearly aimed at younger kids, the author would write sentences about oscilloscopes and radar reflectors.

Did anyone else read that book? I still have my dog-eared copy that I’ve been dragging around with me for 30 years. They even made a ‘Wonderful World of Disney’ episode out of one of the stories in the book.