What Hooked You into the Genre?

[Hussar]

I was listening to Episode 20 of the SF Signal podcast and they were having a round table discussion about what works hooked the panel into the genre. Not what books they read and thought were great, but that one (or a few) work that really stands out in their heads as being the thing that made them come back to the genre of speculative fiction.

I'm going to be a bit selfish here and open things up for the whole genre of spec fiction, not just fantasy, mostly because I am not a particularly big fan of fantasy. I tend to read a lot more SF. So, we'll go with the big umbrella of Speculative Fiction, just cos I say so.

I guess for me, the work that really stands out would be Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld series. I read it in third or fourth grade and just devoured it. The idea of this whole world created out of our collective history even today still fires my imagination.

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?

 

[Love of Awesome]

I'm a major alternate history nerd, and not "What would happen if napolean won the battle of waterloo?" sort of alt. history. I mean "WW2 was fought with Germany's robotic drones, Britians wizards, and America's T-Rex brigade" sort of alternate history.

The book that probably really sucked me into all of this was probably Scott Westerfield's "Leviathan", an ongoing series about an alternate ww1 scenario, where the ally powers use an Edwardian Darwinist Superscience that completely redifines the term "biological warfare". Whilst the imperial powers use hyper advanced mechanical engineering to create animal like mechs. Think "Zoids" meets "Steamboy".

Another series that got me hooked to the genre was The Ring of Fire books by Eric Flint. a small town from west virginia is sent back to 1632 germany.

 

[Dioltach]

I never had a chance, really. I'm the youngest of four children, and every winter my dad would read one or more books to us, a couple of chapters every night before bedtime. These were always books like The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia or The Dark Is Rising.

The first book that I read by myself and that I was unable to put down was The Minnipins (called The Gammage Cup in later editions) when I was seven. Next was probably The Book of Three and the other Chronicles of Prydain. By the time I came across a copy of The Sword of Shannara when I was 10 or 11, I was hooked for the rest of my life.

 

[Mark Hope]

A few things stand out. My dad used to tell me awesome bedtime stories when I was very little - some were reinventions of fairy tales, while others were made up stories about friendly monsters going on adventures. I was also interested in myths and folk-tales from a very early age. I remember being fascinated by The Snow Queen and the Orpheus and Euridice myths when I was 5 or 6 years old. I recall watching early Star Trek episodes (on a black and white tv) and not really understanding what was going on but finding it thrilling all the same. And then my mum lent me her copy of The Hobbit...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I can't actually give a definitive answer.

My Dad is a big SpecFic nut, so the short answer is that he got me started...but that's not entirely true. He's also big on Westerns and Mysteries, but I don't love those like I love Horror/Sci-Fi/Fantasy.

And in addition, the picture is murky because I started off reading VERY young, and had some interesting reads from early on. In 2nd grade, besides comic books of all kinds, I had readers that included excerpts from The Hobbit and from an Anne McCaffery Dragonriders of Pern novel, collections of Aesop's Fables and books about Greek and Norse mythology. By the time I was 8, I had read the Odyssey...and LotR wasn't far behind. But I was also reading my Dad's sci fi books too, usually Del Rey collections of writers like Fritz Lieber, C.M. Kornbluth, and James Blish, etc.

Soooooo...no one work of fiction hooked me. I was surrounded by it from early on.

 

[Merkuri]

Like a few others here, I have liked scifi/fantasy since before I can remember.

I do remember reading one children's novel about a boy who received a dragon's egg and had to raise it. I do not recall the name of it, but it was part of a series of books that were all connected by the existence of this magical shop that would appear out of nowhere, give children random magical items, then disappear.

After I finished that book, I remember telling my mother that I decided that I really liked dragons. She told me that she knew I liked dragons ever since we read the Dragons of Blueland, which was a book for much younger kids. I had read it (or, more probably, it had been read to me) so long ago that I didn't even remember it. So you could say I liked fantasy before I realized that I liked fantasy.

I worked for my college's information center, which included the library (though I worked in the technology section of it), and when we graduated they allowed us to pick some book that was not already in the college library and the school would go out and add it to the library for us. It was our chance for us to leave something of ourselves behind when we left college. I picked the Dragons of Blueland to honor the book that made me love dragons before I knew I loved dragons.

 

[Ryltar]

First, The Hobbit hooked me as a child - I came to love fantastic stories.

Then, there was the Warlock of Firetop Mountain, followed by the entire series of Fighting Fantasy books. A transition phase through MERP was directly followed by AD&D.

It all went uphill from there .

 

[Gilladian]

Mom read the Hobbit and the LOTR out loud to me and my brother starting when I was 3 and he was 5. We were doomed from then on! But I remember devouring Lang's Fairy books, the Chronicles of Prydain, Edward Eager's books, Andre Norton and so much more. By the time I found DnD, I was long since a fantasy/SF addict. I even remember reading the John Norman Gor books (the first 5 or so, anyway) and being fascinated with them.

 

[Raven Crowking]

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

In 1st grade, I got it from the Bookmobile. My dad said "Why did you get that? You're never going to read it!" So I did, just to show him. And I learned to check the dictionary when I encountered words I didn't know. And I've never looked back.

Following that, The Hobbit.

Before too long, I discovered Conan. And Susan Cooper.


RC

 

[chaochou]

For me it was a combination of two things that happened around the same time, when I was about 9 or 10. Reading The Hobbit and finding my older brother and all his mates in the front room playing Car Wars.