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What Was Your "Gateway" Book to SF, F, H Moderators: Admin Jump to page : 1 2 Now viewing page 1 [25 messages per page] | View previous thread :: View next thread |
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Badseedgirl |
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Uber User Posts: 369 Location: Middle TN, USA | R.L. Stine recently put out his first work of adult fiction. Mr. Stine wrote the famous "Goosebump" series of Children's Horror novels. I would consider these books as my gateway into horror. It got me thinking, we all come to the genre in different ways, but there is always one book that draws us in and makes us life long readers. Here is your chance to tell the world what novel hooked you into the different genres..... Horror - As I have stated I can't really say which Goosebump book but the entire series in general was my intro to horror. Science Fiction - This one is easy, it was "The Girl Who Owned A City" by O.T. Nelson. I read it when I was 8-9yo, and to this day I still sometimes have nightmares about it. For those of you who may not know the novel, it is a post apocalyptic novel about the world after a disease wipes out everyone over the age of 12. I look back at it now, and realize that it was not all that terrifying, or well written, and isn't even that great of a description of how evil children can be when left to lead themselves with out adult guidance. That award would have to go to "Lord of The Flies" There was just something about this novel read at such a young age where the idea of my parents leaving my sister and I to fend for ourselves was truly terrifying. And I loved it!!!!! Fantasy - This one was a hard one for me, because I'm not a huge Fantasy fan. As a kid I read The Narnia collection, and I enjoyed it, but I think, I would have to say the Fantasy Novel that sticks with me the most was Stephen King's "The Eyes Of The Dragon". Not because it was the best, but because I had to fight to read it. In NY where I grew up 6th grade (10-12 yo for our non-american friend) students were given reading, and math comprehension tests and in reading I scored 12th grade 9 months, so in 6th grade I was reading a graduating high school senior level. My parents demanded that I allowed to check out books from the high school library to match my reading level. it was a big deal because k-6th grade were housed in one building and 7th - 12th were housed in another building about a mile down the road. Once a week I had to be driven to the high school to be allowed to check out books. Needless to say I was not well loved by the elementary school librarian assistant, who drove me back and forth each week. I was so nervous, that this was the first cover I saw with a cartoon like picture on it, so I took it. So how about you??????? | ||
justifiedsinner |
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Uber User Posts: 794 | I got into reading SF when I was 11. My first two books were: Arthur C. Clarke - Earthlight Jack Vance - The Dying Earth | ||
Scott Laz |
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Uber User Posts: 263 Location: Gunnison, Colorado | My first fantasy was also the first book I sought out to read on my own, when I learned that my favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz, was based on a book. That was at age 8. While continuing on with the Oz books, my 4th grade teacher read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe aloud to the class, so then I went to work on that series, and figured out that there was more out there like that. So I guess I started as a fantasy fan. When my dad saw my interest, he gave me dog-eared copies of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and The Illustrated Man, when I was 10. Looking for more Bradbury in the library, I noticed little stickers on the spines labeled "science fiction", and I was on my way! | ||
theman |
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Member Posts: 24 Location: Virginia | The Hobbit in 5th grade. Been a geek ever since. | ||
Administrator |
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Admin Posts: 3940 Location: Dallas, Texas | My gateway book into fantasy was Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melnibone. I was 10 years old and at Boy Scout summer camp of all places. One of the older buys in our troop, Mike O'Brien, had brought the whole Elric saga with him which I thought was excedingly strange. Who wants to read when there's hiking and swimming and sailing to do? Anyway, it went something like this: "Dude, books? Are you crazy? Why are you wasting your time reading?" And love them I did! In fact, after I read the first one I convinced another guy to read it and went on to volume 2. He passed it on to another scout and so on until we had a summber camp book club with everyone nagging everyone ahead of them to hurry up and finish. The scout master thought it was strange before we tried to explain the plot. Afterwards he just shook his head and walked away. It was an amazing experience that really opened my eyes to whole new worlds of imagination and started me off on a life-long love of reading. I mean up until that point books were something my teachers and parents made me read. I had no idea that books like that existed and that people actually chose to read when they didn't have to. I think it's wonderful and forturnate that another kid got me hooked. I'm not sure I would have believed an adult wasn't just trying to trick me into something. Thanks for that trip down memory lane, Badseedgirl! | ||
Fantasybear |
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Member Posts: 17 Location: near Skegness, Lincolnshire, UK. | For fantasy, it was being read 'The Hobbit' out loud by my headmaster at primary school. I`ve since read most of Tolkien`s books, including the 'unfinished' items. Soon I was reading Ursula le Guin`s 'Earthsea' series, Susan Cooper with 'The Dark is Rising', etc. I can`t be sure for horror, probably a classic like 'Dracula' by Bram Stoker. For science fiction, I was aged about ten, with 'Voyage(or Rocket?) to Infinity' by Lester del Rey. It really opened my mind up to the vast vistas of the the literature. Much of my early reading was old collections of short stories of science fiction, horror, and fantasy I found in the public library; such as Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, H.P. Lovecraft, M.R. James, Algernon Blackwood, and Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by Fantasybear 2013-04-06 11:06 PM | ||
LarryMedic |
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New User Posts: 1 | HG Wells "War of the Worlds" followed by some Star Wars Han Solo Books (early "80s). Then the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. | ||
risbom |
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Regular Posts: 63 Location: Zagreb | For me it was Russian author Martinov book - "Venus, Sister of Earth" or something like that, it was my first SF title in primary school . It was probably awful book. But real influence toward natural science and than to SF for me was my uncle, when I was before school kid, explaining to whole family Moon eclipse with help of lighter (Sun) box of cigarete generating a shadow (Earth) and box matches (Moon) entering that shadow. That's why I like uncle John Carter from Princess of Mars so much Later, and I couldn't read in English in that time, only translated books except Wells and Verne were some Clarke, Asimov and Lem. And of course, it was that Cubric movie - 2001: Space Odyssey. | ||
chuhl |
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Member Posts: 26 | For me it was The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Tom Swift books, and James Blish's Star Trek novelizations. | ||
Maureen |
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Member Posts: 9 | For me I think the Babysitter books and the Goosebumps series from R.L. Stine really got me in horror. I started reading them when I was around 8 or 9. I had terrible nightmares after that. Then for a couple of years I didn't read that much. We had to read a lot of books for school, and being Dutch, that means reading books in English, French, German and Dutch. In my last year however we had to read a couple of stories by Edgar Allan Poe for my English classes, and my teacher saw that I loved them. So he gave me a copy of his own book, with almost all of his stories in it. He said I could keep it and every now and then I take the book and just open it somewhere and read one or two stories again. When in university I re-discovered Stephen King (I read a couple of books when I was around 14, but they didn't do anything for me back then) and in the last couple of years I read over 20 of his books. For Fantasy I think it was the Hobbit. I already watched the Lord of the Rings several times (it was in my highschool period, so I didn't read much) and my parents always called me Hobbit, because I am so short (and no, my feet aren't hairy haha). So they gave the book for my birthday and started reading it. Afterwards I immediately started the lord of the rings and that got me really going. Still have to find a book to get me into Sci-fi. After I'm done with A Dance with Dragons I am starting The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, so maybe that is going to be the book for me. | ||
francesashton |
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Regular Posts: 96 Location: Cheshire, England | My primary school teacher read us The Hobbit which got my imagination going certainly. I remember being really entranced by the bit with the trolls for some reason. Then when I started going to the library regularly I'd pick up random bright yellow Gollancz books and that got me into SF. I devoured Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke. I've still got my complete collection of Heinlein's though they don't get read any more but can't bear to part with them. So once the SF world was opened up I just moved round the genre until I actually ran out of the science. I don't understand a lot of it now. I still love a great space opera though but I'd say my last truly hard SF was Stephen Baxter's Xeelee sequence. I can't remember how I got into fantasy, which is mostly what I read these days. Just a gradual shift I suppose probably starting with LOTR and moving on from there. I tend to read a lot of fluffy stuff as well as the pressure of time makes it more difficult to spend a long time on something complex. Never really got into horror, though having said that I've got a full set of Christopher Priest which is filed under horror in the bookshop but I don't find them horrific at all. A matter of definition I suppose. | ||
adamdcutter |
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New User Posts: 1 | I read the Hobbit when I was in middle school for an English class. However, for whatever reason, this did not spark an interest in science fiction or fantasy, or for that matter, reading at all. Perhaps this was because of the connection to an assignment. Who can say what goes through the mind of a 7th grader? I began my interest in reading with the Hannibal Lecter series, but really found an interest in SF by reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The combination of humor and ridiculous (but rather well designed) science fiction was enough to hook me forever. I still keep Douglas Adams on my top list of authors, and his books are on my "go-to" list of books that I can read over and over. After H2G2, I found Tolkien once more by reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That's when I realized how great fantasy could be. It's amazing how much one's first real reads can change the way you think about things. These books still inspire me today, especially in story crafting. | ||
crwilley |
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Member Posts: 5 | I've never been into horror (except that I like a well-written vampire novel, but my brain sticks those under fantasy for some reason.) I'd have to say my "gateway book" at all was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - I was 6 or 7, maybe, and the theater club from a local junior high school performed a play based on it at my elementary school. The library had the books out on extra-special display in honor of the performance, and I was hooked. (Or maybe it was The Wizard of Oz, which I think I read at an even earlier age... I know I spent a lot of my childhood reading and rereading anything with L. Frank Baum's name on it.) Maybe the first real "SF" I read was Dragonflight - because dragons, right? It's still a little hard for me to classify the earlier Pern books as SF, but they're equally not fantasy... | ||
katjevanloon |
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Member Posts: 5 | Horror: Goosebumps, definitely. I collected those books. I don't read much horror these days, though. I should pick some up. Sci-fi: I'm thinking maybe Freedom's Landing by Anne McCaffrey? I mean, there must have been other books before that one, but I can't remember a single one. That's the one that sticks in my brain of being my sci-fi gateway. It was certainly the first McCaffrey novel I ever read. Fantasy: The Chronicles of Narnia. My mom used to read them to me every night until I fell asleep to the sound of her voice, and she always gave the characters the best voices. (When I reread the series in adulthood, I discovered I disliked a LOT about it. So I'm just holding onto the good memories of mom reading them to me.) | ||
ricaustria |
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New User Posts: 1 Location: Albany, NY | The Green Brain by Frank Herbert | ||
HRO |
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Uber User Posts: 265 Location: Neither here...nor there | I have to give credit to Anne McCaffrey - Dragonflight for fantasy and The Ship Who Sang for sci-fi. | ||
charlesdee |
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Uber User Posts: 39 | For me it was Conan-Doyle's The Lost World. Quickly followed by H.G. Wells. That was elementary school and early junior high. By 9th grade it was Bradbury and Heinlein. | ||
mlbrennan |
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New User Posts: 3 | My brother is two years older than I am, so when he read his gateway book -- Ender's Game -- I read it a few weeks later. I was 8. When I was growing up I got pretty much all my sf/f books through him, so my early tastes were basically his. The first things I really remember branching out from him were when I read the Pern books when I was about twelve, and then Margaret Weis's Star of the Guardians series when I was thirteen. | ||
floatingstar |
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New User Posts: 1 | SF: 1 Sos the Rope (1968) 2 Var the Stick (1972) 3 Neq the Sword (1975) Piers Anthony Dont do H or F - Although the above kinda has a fantasy feel..but it's been so long, suppose I could read this series again, for old times sake! | ||
mmremache |
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New User Posts: 1 | The Jules Verne books and the Terry Brooks books. Then there was no going back. | ||
ArchangelAlan |
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Member Posts: 18 | "Dracula," by Bram Stoker and some tales of H.P. Lovecraft. Following these, I started reading genre fiction after finishing grad school, when I was tired of the mainstream classics and annoyed at the snob-like attitudes of English professors towards genre lit in general. | ||
dustydigger |
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Elite Veteran Posts: 1004 Location: UK | In the horror genre I probably read Dracula when I was about 12,and I think a lot of it went over my head.I do remember being scared silly back then by the Pan Book of Horror series,edited by Herbert Von Thal,particularly the first two or three anthologies which included some masterpiedes of the genre.I devoured Lovecraft too back then,and Poe,but turned away from horror.For the most part I cant read horror today,it scares me too much! lol.But I love the old authors,and this year I am having a great time reading Poe,Arthur Machen,Sheridan Lefanu.Over the next few weeks I intend to reread some Lovecraft,then on to Lord Dunsany,Algernon Blackwood,and Hodgson's House on the Borderlands.All very enjoyable stuff,and not explicitlygruesome like so much of today's horror.Too much of the gross-out,not enough of the terror and horror for my wimpy tastes. | ||
Deven Science |
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Uber User Posts: 201 Location: Sacramento, California | This is a good topic. The first book I truly fell in love with was The Catcher in the Rye, which made me a lover of reading, but it took me a while after reading this thread to think of the book(s) that turned me on to reading SF, specifically. That would be the Hitchhiker's Guide novels, by Douglas Adams (not that anyone here on this site didn't know the author). They were so funny, and silly, I was hooked. The hard SF came just a little while later, but I think they are the perfect gateway novels. | ||
ed.rybicki |
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Uber User Posts: 6 | This was a long time ago - like 1964 and later. When there wasn't a lot of kid's SF around, but there was enough in the City of Lusaka (Zambia)'s Mobile Library that I could, when it came past once a week, get my fix of Tom Swift - and the SF written by Capt. WE Johns, better known for his "Biggles" books for boys. That led to John Wyndham, whose books were in fact in our local primary school as set works, and then via an SF-loving teacher to an anthology called "Spectrum III" with Theodore Sturgeon's "Killdozer", and John Carnell's "New Writings in SF" series of short story collections, and Asimov's "Foundation" - and I was hooked on mainstream SF by the time I was 12. In 1966! Edited by ed.rybicki 2013-11-21 1:14 AM | ||
Sunscour |
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New User Posts: 4 Location: Loxley USA | I think My Fathers Dragon is what started it all. I always wanted to go to Tangerine Island. I also became obsessed with King Solomon's Mines. Strolling down memory lane..... I was a weird little kid. | ||
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