The first science fiction work I can remember reading is Philip Jose Farmer’s “The Maker of Universes” in the 5th or 6th grade.
However, my interest in imaginative fiction began in the 3rd grade when I began reading ghost stories, Edgar Allen Poe, and Doc Savage novels (“The Other World” was the first).
I got hooked into sci-fi by reading the old paperback short-story compilations of Asimov and Clarke, then devouring all of their old short novels/novellas. I love Half-Price Books, because the cover price on these old paperbacks was only $0.50 - &1.50. Take half of that and you’ve got one hell of a deal on some great sf stories.
By 5th grade, I was hooked on Tom Swift, Jr. I remember bringing “Tom Swift and the Visitor from Planet X” to our classroom when we were asked to lend books to the class library. That meant I was probably reading him in 4rd grade.
However, what really got me hooked was a cartoon series on TV about a boy searching for his father (I think). His dad was lost somewhere in the solar system, and the series was primarily an excuse to visit the planets and teach the kids in the audience about astronomy. I have no idea what the name of the series was (it would have to be in the late 50s). Sound familiar to anyone?
Probably the first true SF story I ever read was All the Weyrs of Pern by Anne McCaffrey when I was in 6th grade. I’m not sure what the first fantasy story was, but I remember reading LOTR when I was about 8. I really didn’t discover sci-fi/fantasy until I was in 6th grade, though. First, I was finally at a school with a decent library, and second, we read one of the Susan Cooper Dark is Rising books (it was the second one, I don’t remember the name of it). That really got me into the library, and probably the next thing I read after finishing the DIR series was Anne McCaffrey.
The very first? I remember the day and place. I had just moved to SF ( San Francisco in this case 
) for the first time ( I’d later move away, then back a couple of times over the course of my life ) from NYC. It was the summer before third grade, my folks marriage was on the rocks and I was a wee bit stressed. A couple days after arriving, I was out with my father and we stopped in a drugstore, where he bought me two books. The first, that he picked out, was Heinlein’s Red Planet. He let me pick the second one and based on the lurid cover I picked out Michael Moorcock’s The Runestaff ( lucky pick, that ). It was the Heinlein that hooked me ( though Moorcock eventually got me going as well, especially when I got old enough to appreciate the themes and background a little better ).
All hail RAH’s juveniles, the very best gateway drug into SF ( the other one ) :).
I first encountered science fiction in other forms – TV (Men into Space, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, comic books (a lot of noted sf writers also wrote for comic books. Titles like Mystery in Space were about as close to pulp sf as you can get), and esecially movies – Forbidden Planet, etc.
It was a long time before I actually read written sf. I tried to read Poul Anderson’s The Enemy Stars, but I was too young at the time, and couldn’t get into it. The first few sf books I read were:
Vault of the Ages – Poul Anderson, again
The Status Civilization – Robert Sheckley. I was too young and unfamiliar with SF to realize how much of a sophisticated put-on of the action genre this was, and read it as a straight yarn, which it also works as. I’m convinced that they stole this book to flesh out the film Total Recall, which they exhausted the Philip K. Dic portion of near the beginning.
An Edgar Rice Burroughs imitator named Otis Adelbert Kline, who wrote swashbuckling swordfighting novels set on Mars.
The Star Trek adaptations by James Bish.
Sam
I still have my copy, too. Just mentioned this book in another thread,what a coinky-dink.
Yes, indeed. It was one of my earliest. One scene stands out – for some reason, they have to pass through a very narrow gap between rocks. (In a cave, maybe?) They eat some mushrooms and it changes their body’s structure to something spongelike so they can squeeze through without a problem. At least I think that’s how I remember it - that’s over 40 years back now.
Oops, I forgot another sci-fi series: The Tripods trilogy by John Christopher. I read the novels and also enjoyed the comic version in Boys Life magazine. I never read the later released prequel, When the Tripods Came (I was a bit too old by the time it was released), but the original trilogy was pretty good.
Well, now that the OP has already read my mind, is there any point replying ;)?
It makes me feel like my childhood was incomplete, reading this thread. Aside from L’Engle, Danny Dunn, and a few others (Mushroom Planet comes to mind), I didn’t end up reading much SF until I got to high school (or at least, not enough that was worth remembering), although I was a pretty avid fantasy reader (I think I had The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe memorized before I even started reading). Oddly enough, also, I was writing science fiction in sixth grade. I’ve since gone back and read most of them, though (my copy of The Mad Scientists Club is on the bookshelf right next ot me).
Quoth Linus van Pelt:
I think I do… Something about how the ship could navigate more accurately over long distances than short ones, and it would be ruined by any Earthly liquids?
Fenris. The book I mentioned was the sequel to “Mushroom Planet”, although I didn’t read it for several years after I read the second book.
Tris
There was another sequel to Mushroom Planet? I read The Wonderful Flight to Mushroom Planet and Return to Mushroom Planet, but I don’t remember reading Mr. Bass’ Planetoid.
One of the first ones I remember (though doubtlessly not the first I read) was ‘When HARLIE was One’. David Gerrold has apparently re-written this book many times, the first time I read it the book ended with HARLIE printing hundreds of love poems and then self-destructing, while I read a later version which ends with them speculating on what the next AI was going to be like.
Hmm, when I think about it, I may have read ‘Orn’ by Piers Anthony before then.
The earliest SF book I read that I can definitely pin down is Star Circus by Alice M. Lightner. I had read that book multiple times (courtesy of the Pentwater Public Library) no later than third grade - we moved away the summer afterwards. By that time I also read a bunch of the Oz books and probably some SF books my mom had. (Along with Mother Earth News and anything else I could get my eyes on!)
I’m not sure when I got my very own copy of A Wrinkle in Time but it’s probably about the same period. I am pretty sure I was reading Andre Norton in the fourth grade - I distinctly remember the cover of The Jargoon Pard from the school library.
I comisserate with Fenris’s lament about The Invisible Man - tho not a bad read in and of itself, rather a dissapointment when you’re expecting SF.
Drat! Someone mentioned the Tripod series by John Christopher before I could. But I will also mention that Mrs. Clawson read all three books to our 5th grade class during reading time and I was hooked by the middle of the first book! Checked out part 2 and 3 and read them before she was done with book 1. Bless you Mrs. Clawson! She also read us a “Wrinkle in Time” and a slew of others. A wonderful way to show a kid that it was more than TV spaceships and robots.
There was a kid’s book I remember called “the Run-a-way Robot” about a robot who searches the solar system for his little boy master after he is sold. I refuse to do a google search for it because some things are best left as a vauge, warm, fuzzy childhood memory.
My first was “From the Earth to the Moon” the summer after first grade. I then went through many Jules Verne and HG Wells books. I also read Danny Dunn (which isn’t really sf in my opinion) and Mushroom Planet. I was a bit old for Wrinkle in Time when it came out - I actually never read it until my kids were old enough for it.
Anyone remember the series of juvenile books from Scribners, I think, with a rocketship on the spine? I know at least one was from Lester del Rey. I read a lot of those.
In sixth grade I bought Revolt on Alpha C by Silverberg and Challenge of the Spaceship by Clarke. The latter was not sf, but it sure boosted my sense of wonder, and I started reading adult level sf after that.
And now I have 5500 of the damn things!
I remember getting it from the BookMobile and reading the sequel, but I don’t remember the story. IIRC, it wasn’t very science fictiony.
The first SF I read might have been the Classics Illustrated versions of Wells’ “The Time Machine” or various Verne stories. Other than that, the earliest book I remember reading was Every Boy’s Book of SF, an anthology of stories mostly from the 30s. I thought the most compelling story in it was “The White Army”, kind of an early “Fantastic Voyage”, but from the viewpoint of a sentient white blood cell. At the climax is becomes involved in a great battle against microbes in an inflamed appendix.
Later I read the Tom Corbett books, written by Heinlein under a pseudonym.
Nope. Not by Heinlein. I’m not sure who it was, but I know it wasn’t Heinlein. (Though the TV show was certainly “inspired” by Space Cadet)
Fenris
2nd grade–The Hobbit. My sitter told me the story and I had to read it.