What was your first? Follow

In the 5th grade, I had an operation that required a 2-week stay in the hospital. I was given 3 of Baum's Oz books. That's when I started reading longer books and reading a lot of them.

The next fantasy and sci-fi I remember reading were The Hobbit and Dune in the 7th grade, not sure which I read first.

Then I found out my older brother had a wall full of fantasy and sci-fi ... this was a long time ago -- (before D&D! :)

Lord Foul's Bane



I was very young, and had somehow never really noticed what all the books were about, that my mom had on the shelves. I always knew she had tons of them, and her book collection was always setup first with pride whenever we moved houses.... but for some reason I never paid much attention to them.

She had the above mentioned book in hard-cover, and it definitely hooked me instantly to the Fantasy genre. I of course went on to find other gems she owned, such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings..... and later when I hit high school I burnt thru soft-cover fantasy books from the library like they were going out of style.

Was never a big science fiction fan, but I will second a nomination that someone else in this thread mentioned: Foundation Trilogy.

hells yes.

Might have been a tough one, but has there ever been an anti-hero like him? Made a lasting impression on me. I would say the 2nd Covenant trilogy is worth reading at least once, but it definitely isn't on par with the 1st. I can't even get more than a few chapters into the first book of 3rd series, no matter how many times I try and revisit it :(

Especially when you consider the fact that he's basically just re-writing the same outcomes in each trilogy, haha.

The 1st one was epic, an effective molding of an anti-hero into the needed solution. Only the deleveling of Foul at the end, into a baby no less and then poof! really turned me off. ( I was half expecting to hear the sound from ffxi and see "Foul falls to lvl1!")

Then the 2nd series just had the same eventual end. Worth one read, but I was a little shocked he would consider just milking the story over again like that.

By series 3, I was like "no way... I can't sludge thru this again. Why do the characters even bother to try? They know in the end they can never fully dispose of Foul." sigh

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 11:34pm by Knarl

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 11:35pm by Knarl
*maybe I should learn to proofread before posting

Edited, Jul 4th 2008 11:38pm by Knarl

When I was six, my mother was reading The White Dragon, by Anne McCaffery and I insisted, repeatedly until she read most of it to me. I've been hooked on the Dragon's of Pern ever since. Asimov, and others I've read & enjoyed. Why did I come to Wow? To ride a dragon of course, why else?

When I was in the 4th grade, my teacher played the NPR radio play of The Hobbit for us, for 15 minutes each day. A year or two later I read The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time.

I didn't really get into sci-fi until the 8th grade when a friend got me hooked on TNG toward the end of its first season.

Perdido Street Station hasn't been out for that many years. I take it you are still a teenager? Yeah, I don't think most 11 year olds would handle it. It has a cool name and cover though, I wonder if that's what attracted your parents? They both attracted me. I loved the start of the book, but in the end found the rest of it depressing.

"Barlowe's Guide to Extra-Terrestrials" when I was about 9, if that counts.

There are two others (The Scar & Iron Council), though I'm not sure if you mean "more" in addition to them. I think he's moved on, though his other books are stylistically similar. Yeah, Perdido Street Station was pretty unrelenting, but I wouldn't have picked Yagharek's plight as the worst part.

To the original topic, I believe the first science fiction book I read was "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" What attracted it to me was not the story itself, which was unusal for me at the time and at present, but the ideas the book explored, which is normally a secondary interest.

The first fantasy book I read (that is, read myself) was certainly "The Hobbit". I was aged around seven, so I suspect parts of it went over my head. Then again, perhaps not; people tend to underestimate the perception of young children. In any case, it was a good book. It reminded me of a fairy tale, but interesting.

Luckily, I dodged the problem you described, Ari (that of being unable to reread my childhood favourites at a later age) as my parents seem to have conspired to put me in the way of good fiction throughout my young life; Tolkein, Pratchett, Douglas Adams etc. I daressay I read some pretty terrible stuff at school, but I didn't much care for any of it, so that was fine. I have had the problem of being dissapointed time and time again by the genre for being mostly rubbish, though.

Edited, Dec 14th 2008 9:35pm by Kavekk

Magic Kingdom For Sale by Terry Brooks...I was a young kid. ^^

I've been reading Sci Fi for as long as I could read. Though I can't for the life of me tell you which was my first. Probably 10 or so books that have the possibility of that distinction.

It is an outstanding series. I picked up A Spell for Chameleon when I was 11, and it was in those pages that I found my incomprehensible attraction towards fiction.