SF/F that you read growing up

The more I write my own work, the more I realized how the earliest stories that I love affected me.

The very first true SF that I loved was Robert Heinlein's Future History stories, especially the Green Hills of Earth. Heinlein veered in some strange directions later in his career but his short stories are still wonderful.

I also found Isaac Asimov in my high school library and while I didn't connect to his Foundation series, I loved the Robot stories and still do. That led me to getting a subscription to Asimov's magazine, truly a gold-mine for a kid growing up in rural New England. I first read David Brin's The Postman short stories in Asimov, first read Connie Willis there, and loved S.P. Somtow's time travel and then alternate Roman history stories with Aquila.

On the less scientific side, I got a copy of Anne McCaffrey's The Dragonriders of Pern omnibus when I joined the old SF mail order book club. It still has the Cheetos stains on it.

And on the fantasy side, there was, of course, The Lord of the Rings, which inspired my first fan fiction, before it was called fan fiction. There was also Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy, a story so good that it influences Arthurian fiction today.

What are your favorites?

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Permalink Reply by Jenny Williams on October 26, 2009 at 10:35am
A Wrinkle in Time, and the books that followed. I didn't discover too much SF/F until I was almost an adult, but I read a few things when I was young.
Permalink Reply by Corrina on October 26, 2009 at 8:56pm
I did read A Wrinkle in Time but while I liked it, it didn't seem to make a lasting impression on me. OTOH, my eldest daughter loves it.

I forgot to mention the Narnia books as well. Those, I loved.
Permalink Reply by Matt Middleton on November 10, 2009 at 9:45am
A Wrinkle In Time was one of the first books my mom ever gave me - little did she realize she was putting me on the path to sci-fi geekdom. Especially since she "doesn't get sci-fi!"
Permalink Reply by Kirk Leggott on November 10, 2009 at 10:10am
I loved that book. It was one of the first books of its kind that I read, and it deeply influenced both my thinking about the nature of reality, and my reading habits.
Permalink Reply by Joshua Anderson on November 10, 2009 at 12:59am
I got hooked as kid on Robert Asprin's Myth Adventure series through our school book ordering system and was off and running. Like most of us LOTR kind of changed everything, but I am one of the few that don't really like The Hobbit.
Permalink Reply by Charlie Freund on November 10, 2009 at 12:22pm
I was introduced to Myth Adventures as an adult and it really wasn't as impressive as my friends said.... what can one expect from punny humor. J
Permalink Reply by Patrick Dwyer on November 10, 2009 at 9:32am
I also started out with the Madeleine L'Engle books (Wrinkle in Time, Wind in the Door, etc) as well as the Narnia series. Despite a family full of voracious readers I had a hard time scaring up interesting and approachable fantasy, and ended up wandering through the multiple Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms series' before finding a handful of old scifi anthologies in a dusty corner of the local library. Asimov, Heinlein and the like were constant companions for me as a budding geek.

I found Neuromancer when I was 11, and while confusing and emotionally dark for that young an age, it was a life changing book.
Permalink Reply by Corrina on November 10, 2009 at 9:43am
Neuromancer, yes. I confess, though, I'm too old to have read it at eleven. :)

I looked back over my shelf and found all the books from my original Science Fiction Book Club order. They sent five free books with the initial order.

Among them was a classic I should add: Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber.
Permalink Reply by Patrick Dwyer on November 10, 2009 at 10:04am
Alas, my geekiness is not all it could be: I've read embarrassingly little Zelazny, although it is on my personal "to-read" list.
Permalink Reply by Kirk Leggott on November 10, 2009 at 10:09am
Your mention of Isaac Asimov's SF magazine takes me back. That was where I was introduced to many of the SF writers that I would grow to love over the years that followed. Writers that stuck with me were Robert Heinlein (especially Stranger in a Strange Land), Arthur C. Clarke, and, of course, Asimov himself. Unlike you, I found the Foundation series very compelling, but that's probably owing to my lifelong interest in history. The idea of manipulating historical conditions to create a future world was very interesting to me.

In the fantasy genre, three authors stand out. The master of the genre, of course, was Tolkein. My brother introduced me to him via The Hobbit, and I went on to read everything of his I could find. I still go back to those stories from time to time -- in fact, I'm re-reading Lord of the Rings right now. Steven R. Donaldson, and his Thomas Covenant series, was a favorite. And then there is C.S. Lewis, whose Chronicles of Narnia was one of the best fantasy series I ever read. His SF trilogy (Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength) also stood up very well next to some of the other SF writers I was reading.
Permalink Reply by Charlie Freund on November 10, 2009 at 12:20pm
I found the Dragonlance trilogy in my brother's room one day. He got it as part of his free allocation of books working at a publishing factory over the summer. I can still feel the excitement of starting to read it in our basement on the old, left over couch. It consumed almost half the summer and angered my parents -- we went out west to Yellowstone and I had my nose in the book the whole time.
Permalink Reply by Michael Harrison on March 19, 2012 at 9:10pm

Oh, man. Dragonlance. Same with me. Borrowed Autumn Twilight from a friend and consumed it inside of a week. I think I was 10 or 11. Maybe a little young for them, but I ate 'em up.

Best moment? Fizban's first Featherfall spell in Xak Tsaroth. Worst moment? Sturm's death or Tas getting pricked by the poison needle.

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