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 Chris Rumore on April 16, 2012 at 11:27am

My favorite Character is Drizzt Do'Urden, (the Dark Elf trilogy and other stories)

As a kid, I enjoyed reading 'older' books - one series I liked was the Rick Brant books - "Rick Brant was a high school boy who lived on an island off the coast of New Jersey. His father was a world-famous scientist. Rick and his  best friend  had adventures all over the globe. usually involving a secret science project of some kind." He lived on the island and had his own plane... I don't recall too many details, but they were fun adventures...

As I got older, I read Madeleine L'Engle(the Time Quartet),Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), William Gibson, etc.

Haven't done much reading since my son was born. (other then reading to HIM) but, I have started cracking open books again, during my commute...

The latest book I read TOTALLY blew me away - "Foreshadows: Ghosts of Zero"  http://foreshadows.net/  it's an anthology of short stories and accompanying music tracks - it reminded me of Gibson prior to his switch to "soccer-mom" SciFi stuff. It was great because I was able to read it in little bites - during my commute or when I had 5 minutes to myself, I could read one story. I also enjoyed it because one of the stories was written by a friend of mine, and I'm KINDA in it...'sorta"... ;)

I'm sure I've read more SciFi as a kid, but don't recall it at the moment... ;)


 

 

Permalink Reply by Troy Bird on August 1, 2012 at 2:35pm

I am really surprised that only one other person mentioned the Chronicles of Prydain series by Lloyd Alexander.  I loved that series and honestly still love it.  I never had really been into any fantasy or sci-fi before I read them.

If you had the opportunity, the five books are not very long reads, but weave together a wonderful story.  I know that they are geared for more of an older starting audience, but I can sense that I will be reading them to my young boys soon (kind of as a preview)

Any other Assistant Pig Keepers out there?

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