[SFRA-L] Question for the Hive Mind
Edward James
edward.james at ucd.ie
Fri Mar 11 13:19:38 EST 2011
That's Eleanor Cameron. You seem to have missed out on Andre Norton,
whose books were way superior to the "Paul French" books, I thought --
though not to Heinlein, of course!
Edward
On 11 Mar 2011, at 18:00, Cindy Smith wrote:
> 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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