[SFRA-L] Question for the Hive Mind
Cindy Smith
cms at dragon.com
Fri Mar 11 13:00:16 EST 2011
The first science fiction book I read was _The Wonderful Flight to
the Mushroom Planet_ by Eleanor somebody (I think). It was a
children's book that got me hooked on science fiction. The sequels
were pretty good, too. The first fantasy book I really liked was
_Harold and the Purple Crayon_ (really). Heinlein's young people's
novels were also excellent. I read _Starship Troopers_ in the third
grade and loved it. Among my favorites are also _Podkayne of Mars_,
_Between Planets_, _Have Spacesuit, Will Travel_, and _Tunnel in the
Sky_. Asimov's _Lucky Starr_ books are also very good young people's
science fiction (he was writing as Paul French).
Yours,
--
Cindy Smith
cms at dragon.com
Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni! "All your base are belong to us. You
are on the way to destruction." "What you say?" "You have no chance
to survive make your time." Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
The Federation will be destroyed. "Ubi est mors victoria tua? ubi
est mors stimulus tuus? Stimulus autem mortis peccatum est: virtus
vero peccati lex. Deo autem gratias qui dedit nobis victoriam per
Dominum nostrum Ieusum Christum" (1 Cor 15:55-57).
A Real Live Catholic in Georgia!
Quoting "Curtis, Silvio L" <curtissi at Grinnell.EDU>:
> Until I started college three years ago, I lived in a rural
> community in Costa Rica with a mostly English library (lots of
> people moved there from the U.S. in the 50s) and had no significant
> Internet access or skills until I was into high school. The library
> has lots of science fiction and I got started reading it probably
> before I was 7. It hadn't occurred to me before that I'm lucky to
> have had any sf and fantasy around, but I guess maybe I was. Not
> much was written for children, though. In fact, I still haven't
> encountered very much science fiction written for children, and less
> that I've liked very much. That last experience contrasts pretty
> strongly with fantasy, and I often wonder about it.
>
>
>
> Certainly I'm one more for which the statistic under discussion
> doesn't ring true at all. I read a lot from as soon as I knew how,
> and though my tastes have broadened a little since I was 13 what I
> liked then is basically what I like now.
>
>
>
> Silvio Curtis
>
> ________________________________
> From: sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu
> [sfra-l-bounces at wiz.cath.vt.edu] on behalf of ecbogle
> [ecbogle at juno.com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 2:58 PM
> To: sfra-l at charlemagne.cddc.vt.edu
> Subject: Re: [SFRA-L] Question for the Hive Mind
>
> I spent my first four years of elementary school in a town of 500,
> and grades 5-12 in one of 2700 in NW Iowa. Both had libraries, but
> I don't think either of them knew anything about science fiction.
>
> But Everly's library had all, or nearly all, the Oz books, and I
> think they were what got me started on "speculative fiction" in the
> very broadest sense. Nobody tried to guide my reading, and it
> wasn't till I was in college kid lit courses that I read such
> classics as The Wind in the Willows, but Oz was an early favorite,
> and I read some books more than once. Then, in Sibley, there was
> a Carnegie Library and I read a non-fiction, an adult fiction, a
> fiction book suited to my age group, and a volume of Harvard
> Classics each time I went, plus, of course, everything in the few
> shelves of books in each classroom. There was no real local
> bookstore, but there was a magazine and paper-back book shop, and
> that's where I found my first real science fiction, Astounding, and
> later F&SF. After that I saved whatever money I could from my
> allowance and from odd jobs for the paperbacks that began appearing,
> like Ace Doubles.
>
> I wonder how many children today are growing up in rural areas
> without access to libraries? There even are places without easy
> access to the Web, and if a family is as poor as ours was, the only
> access to a computer may well be at school for very restricted time
> periods.
>
> How lucky those of you were who grew up in larger places where there
> actually was access to real sf. I wonder how many of the cuts to
> the school systems and libraries currently going on are going to
> restrict other children to not much more than Oz. Of course, tv
> makes a big difference now, but so many of the tv series and the
> current films are based on special effects rather than plot or
> character, let alone ideas.
>
> Edra Bogle,
> Retired from Univ. of North Texas where they'd let me teach a class
> in sf maybe once every three years.
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 19:17:55 +0000 "McKitterick, Chris"
> <cmckit at ku.edu<mailto:cmckit at ku.edu>> writes:
>> I think A Wrinkle in Time got me looking for SF when I was very
>> young, though I loved books on speculative science and the history
>> of science and technology - it feels like SF! The SF that really
>> hooked me at around age 13 appeared in the DAW collections and,
>> later, James Gunn's Road to Science Fiction. Collections such as
>> those led me to the novels, though subscribing to Asimov's and
>> Analog satisfied my love of the short form.
>>
>>
>>
>> Best,
>> Chris
>>
>> Chris McKitterick
>> http://www.sff.net/people/mckitterick
>> http://www.ku.edu/~sfcenter
>> http://www.aboutsf.com<http://www.aboutsf.com/>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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