What Hooked You into the Genre?

[Meek]

Anime and video games started me into the idea of a fictional world working under its own conceits and how entertaining it can be to explore it. I played games like the SNES final fantasy games, and watched slayers, evangelion, saber marionnete (and j to x), and other animes I can hardly remember via Satellite TV in Spanish. I only really started to read books about fantasy when I was 14 or 15, where I got The Lord of the Rings, hated it, read The Hobbit, loved it, read the Silmarillion and was confused and yet mesmerized by it. Since then I've read a lot of other fantasy books.

I still really consume more anime, manga and video games than I do any other kind of fiction, but I always appreciate all the books I read (particularly because little Meek grew up to be an English major ).

 

[JediSoth]

I think it was my first or second grade teacher reading "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" to us during class. She's always take time in the afternoon to read a chapter. I'm sure she read other books to us, but that's the one I remember because I liked it so much, I started reading the other books in the series, and sought out similar stories, like The Hobbit, James and the Giant Peach, etc. In second grade, we had to get special permission for some of those books, because they were in the section reserved for higher grades.

By then, I was already a fan of sci-fi, having seen Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, plus all those Star Trek re-runs on TV. I loved all the old monster movies, too. I remember spending entire Saturdays in my PJs in front of the TV when The Movie Channel would have "Monster Movie Marathons". Fantasy just seem like a natural fit with all that.

It was about that same time a friend of mine, who spent mornings with us (his mother was a divorce nurse who worked the early shift, so she'd drop him off at our house around 5AM and he'd catch the bus with me), brought over this game in a red box. It was a new type of game a kid in his neighborhood showed him how to play. There was no board, and a bunch of funny dice. I made a Fighter and he started exploring this place called the "Cave of Chaos" (which we pronounced Cha-Ows) near this Keep on some Borderlands....

 

[Mercurius]

Like many of the above, it was a combination of things. My mother went through a big specfic craze when I was little, and has always loved myths and fairy stories. The first series I read on my own was the Chronicles of Prydain. It was based upon those works that I started drawing my own (highly derivative) maps of fantasy worlds.

Not long after--this must be around '81 or '82--that some friends of my older brother gifted me with four intriguing hardcover books: the 1st edition DMG, PHB, MM, and Deities & Demigods (evidently they had lost interest in D&D when they discovered computer games...their loss, my gain!). Game over for me.

Other fantasy series' solidified my interest in the genre - the Dragonlance Chronicles, the Belgariad, the Shannara books - and some movies as well, Star Wars, Star Trek (especially Wrath of Khan), Dragonslayer, and most of all, Excalibur - still one of my all-time favorite movies.

But then I discovered Tolkien. I devoured The Silmarillion at age 12 and there was no looking back for me at that point. The pure joy of exploring fantasy (and science fiction) worlds, in various forms and contexts, has been a focus all of my life and manifests in different forms. I am still working on a long fantasy series that I hope to finish and publish some day; I have been role-playing--mainly D&D--on and off for the last almost 30 years; I just started teaching a class on World Building at a small private high school - the kids are loving it!

So to speak of getting "hooked into the genre" is really a misnomer, a reduction of something much more important and vital than mere interest in a hobby (as I expect it is for many here). It is a discovery of my passion - most primarily for the imagination, and the worlds that the imagination can explore and create. I may not be playing D&D in twenty years (although who knows!) but I will certainly be exploring and creating imaginary worlds.

 

[Azgulor]

At the ripe old age of 7, the thing that hooked me as a sci-fi junkie was Star Wars (I wouldn't make the distinction between Sci-Fi & Sci-Fantasy until much later). It opened up a whole world of imagination that translated into a love of science, in general, physics in particular & a slow shift from space opera to grittier sci-fi (though I still love space opera). Although I greatly expanded my view of sci-fi over time, I can trace it all back to Star Wars Ep IV. I blame/thank George Lucas for my eventual pursuit of undergraduate & masters degrees in Physics.

On the fantasy front, it all started with Terry Brooks' Elfstones of Shannara. Yeah, I know about the Tolkein-re-tread criticisms, but at that age, Brooks was much more accessible than Tolkein. While perhaps not a great book, it's a good book, and one I try to read at least once a year for nostalgia's sake. For all my love of science fiction, the introduction to the fantasy genre was a milestone in my life -- at least in terms of my preferred entertainment & the ongoing drain to my wallet. It was a short walk (about 4' actually) from devouring fantasy novels as fast as I could to reviewing books with red & blue covers labeled Dungeons & Dragons...

 

[steeldragons]

Honestly, D&D itself.

I was completely enamored with the idea of a fantasy world with magic...this led to research in mythologies and legends. Arthurian and otherwise sparked me...As pedestrian as it might be, Professor Tolkien gets most of the blame as reading the Hobbit when I was...I dunno 10? 11?

Being an animation junky, the Lord of the Rings and Rankin/Bass Hobbit animated films REALLY caught my imagination.

Outside of a direct "D&D" connection, anyone remember "The Last Unicorn" animated film? LOVED IT when I was a kid (possibly more nostalgia than anything else as it was one of the ONLY times I remember from my childhood that we actually went TO the movies)!

Also, in school, had lots of "required/summer" reading options that involved Sci-Fi and Fantasy options (with the obligatory Biblical readings). But it allll fed an interest in ancient civilzations, religions, culture, mythology.

But anything involving magic/sorcery/wizards...I didn't have to look/read/watch twice.

Totally hooked from the get go of the original OD&D Basic box...on the Sci-Fi side, you can blame the release of the Star Wars movies (and resulting TOYS! TOYS! TOYS! hahaha.

-Steel Dragons

 

[kitsune9]

What got me into the arena of speculative fiction was D&D itself as that came first in my life and then after that I read the Dragonlance Chronicles. From there, I read more fantasy novels and such.

 

[jonesy]

Narnia in the school library with the candlestick.

Then it was The Naked Sun, The Hobbit, Neuromancer, Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends, Wizard of Earthsea, The Brothers Lionheart, Dune.

Mom introduced me to Alice and Oz, and dad to Dunsany and Lovecraft, so that was interesting.

 

[Umbran]

So, how about you? What work or small body of works would you point to as "the one" that got you hooked into the genre?

For me, I don't believe it was a single work, or even a small body of works. I got hooked by my brother's library. Several shelves of classic sci-fi paperbacks: Asimov, Niven, Heinlein, Anderson, Pohl, and so on.

 

[Stormonu]

I can't point to any work that got me into fiction, seems like I was always interested in it, but the work that does stand out for one that I feel to be the work closest to my heart from "way back when" was actually the Rankin Bass cartoon version of the Hobbit. Don't ask why, but every time I think about it, I want to sing out "Fifteen birds in five fir trees..."

 

[The Shaman]

The genre that drew me into gaming wasn't speculative fiction so much as it was adventure fiction: Treasure Island was the first novel I read, and King Solomon's Mines, The Sea-Hawk, and Black Vulmea's Vengeance, which I first read in my tweens, sealed the deal.

My first 'speculative fiction' was Bulfinche's Mythology and The Arabian Nights - the latter continues to define 'exotic' for me and heavily influenced by fantasy gaming experiences. My parents were both RA Heinlein fans, so by my tweens I was reading those stories as well; they were my gateway to the 'sci fi' section of the bookstore, where I discovered Dune and Fritz Leiber.