BS: Growing Up SF

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: GUEST,ClaireBear
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 10:03 AM

Okay, in roughly chronological order (and my definition of SF is pretty broad here):

Madeleine L'Engle
Ray Bradbury
Zenna Henderson
C.S. Lewis
Mervyn Peake
Pierre Boulle
John Hersey
J.G. Ballard
Harry Harrison
John Brunner
Clifford Simak
Philip K Dick
Larry Niven
Jack Vance
Roger Zelazny
David Lindsay
Marion Zimmer Bradley (I hate to admit it, but it's true)
Poul Anderson
Keith Roberts
Robert Silverberg
Keith Laumer
Fritz Leiber
John Wyndham

...and lots of others, plus a ton of fantasy, but I don't call that SF

Skip ahead about 30 years to my second childhood, and I'd add these as major influences:

Greg Bear
Richard Grant
Tim Powers
Charles de Lint
Gene Wolfe
Jasper FForde
Diane Duane

...and lots of others, again

That was fun! Thanks!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 09:18 AM

Spider Robinson: not SF? The Callahan stuff? The "Dancer" stuff he's written with his wife? Mindkiller? His Hugo?

Dana Stabenow: better known for mysteries, for which she's won an Edgar. But her first novels were science fiction, and she wants to get back to it.

Pat Frank: wrote Alas, Babylon, one of those post-nuclear-war novels.

And how about

Cordwainer Smith
Edgar Pangborn
Harry Turtledove
Anne McCaffery
Madeline L'Engle

and even

Kurt Vonnegut.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Den
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 09:06 AM

Ha Ha Paul. That's what I thought when I fisrt saw the thread title. Weaned myself of the SDLP and grew up Sinn Fein;-) I kind of liked the first Terry Brooks books.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 07:54 AM

William Gibson changed my life, but Clive Barker and Neil Gaiman put their arms around me and told me it'd be o.k. until I believed them.....

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Pied Piper
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 07:45 AM

Jack Vance
Jack Vance
Jack Vance

PP

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Paul Burke
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 06:34 AM

Oh, science fiction, Ursula Leguin and all that. I thought you meant "Sinn Fein".

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: mooman
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 05:33 AM

All the above plus the writer who first got me into the genre as a young lad. I remember it to this day... Hal Clement "Mission of Gravity". Also "Needle" by the same author.

Now I'm heavily into Iain M.Banks and Peter F. Hamilton ("The Algebraist" from the former and "Pandora's Star and its sequel "Judas Unchained" from the latter are corkers).

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: GUEST,DB
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 05:00 AM

My Dad introduced me to SF by lending me his copies of the ER Burroughs books (I inherited these when he died last year).
I then discovered that my local library was full of SF - first the Heinlein and Blish juveniles in the childrens' section and then the Heinlein and Blish novels for adults in the adult section. Of course, there were many other SF writers featured in the adult section: Anderson, Sheckley, Galouye, Sturgeon, Herbert, Aldiss, Ballard, Simak etc., etc., etc. Anyone remember the Gollancz hardcovers with their hideously dull and inappropriate yellow and magenta covers?
Next I discovered that, about 20 miles from my home town (Peterborough, UK), in the small Fenland market town of Wisbech, there was a shop devoted to SF (what joy!). The shop was called 'Fantast (Medway) Ltd.' (I never did find out what the 'Medway' bit represented) and was run by a couple called Ken and Doreen Slater. Their shop was a treasure trove - full of all the latest American SF paperbacks ('Ace', 'Pyramid', 'Lancer' etc., etc.). These all had very striking covers painted by such worthies as Ed Emsh, Jack Gaughan and Gray Morrow - a distinct improvement on the Gollancz covers! I used to save up my meagre pennies and make monthly (or bi-/tri- monthly, depending on how many pennies I had!)pilgrimages to this shop on the bus.
It was in this shop that I discovered such diverse writers as Jack Vance, Roger Zelazny, Samuel Delany, L. Sprague deCamp and Philip K. Dick.
I have been an SF fan ever since those far off days but don't really read as much as I used to (I'm much more selective now).
If it's of any interest to anyone, the contemporary writer who still rings my bell as much as those 'Old Masters' used to do is Walter Jon Williams. Try his extraordinary urban fantasy 'Metropolitan' and its sequel 'City on Fire' and if you like Space Opera who have to read his trilogy that started a couple of years ago with 'The Praxis' - brilliant!

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Morticia
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 02:53 AM

all of the above plus Orson Scott Card......but what's this about being a kid? I still read Sci fi......

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: michaelr
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 01:24 AM

When I was a kid, I gobbled up the whole gamut from utter crap ("Perry Rhodan" anyone?) to thinkers like Asimov, but Frank Herbert was the first SF writer I read whose work seemed to go deeper: he was ecology-minded, and interested in comparative religion study. Reading "Dune" really opened up my mind in several ways.

Chers,
Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Cluin
Date: 25 Oct 05 - 01:12 AM

Robert E. Howard wrote the Conan stories for pulp mags among other tales of that ilk.

I liked Asimov, Tolkien, Niven, Clarke, Anderson,...
...and when I was a hormonal sex-obsessed teen, a pervert called John Norman.

As I became the hormonal sex-obsessed adult, I quit reading Norman when I realized what a shitty writer he is.

Read a lot of shitty stuff over the years too, most of which I've forgotten. Hey, how else do you recognize the good stuff unless you have something to compare it to?

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Bill D
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:47 PM

Murray Leinster & Cordwainer Smith were classics...Spider Robinson is not exactly SF...the others escape me.

I will add John Brunner and Larry Niven and Marion Zimmer Bradley (Darkover series) and Roger Zelazny....and one of the best ever, James Tiptree, Jr....who was actually Dr. Alice Hastings Bradley Sheldon (1915-1987)

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Peace
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:15 PM

Funny. Just when I think that's it, there y'all are with more. Yes to the above, also.

Not familiar with these from Rapaire's list:

Spider Robinson
Dana Stabenow
Murray Leinster
Cordwainer Smith
Pat Frank
Robert Howard

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: bobad
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 11:11 PM

I'll add a few that I recall:

John Wyndham
J.G.Ballard
Arthur C.Clarke
Frank Herbert

I remember really enjoying "A Canticle for Liebowitz" (I think that's what it was called) humour and post holocaust - can't go wrong with that combo.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Peace
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:55 PM

Harlan Ellison--that man, well, nothing short of genius.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Peace
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:49 PM

Most of the above, Rapaire. Also fell in love with The Mars series AND the Venus series by ER Burroughs. Read "Tarzan at the Earth's Core" to see if it jived with another Pelucidar story Burroughs wrote, but was never much of a Tarzan fan after a few of the books.

Subject: RE: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Amos
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:49 PM

Yes to all the above.

It was the Great Escape into possibility. Just what I needed as a vibrant young over-imaginative teenie boyo.

Still brings out the best in me! :D


A

Subject: BS: Growing Up SF
From: Rapparee
Date: 24 Oct 05 - 10:35 PM

The thread about Azizi's location got me thinking -- who were the science fiction/fantasy authors you read while you were growing up (assuming that you did -- I'm still not through, myself)?

Mine included

Robert Heinlein
Isaac Asimov
Murray Leinster
Cordwainer Smith
Theodore Sturgeon
Jules Verne
EE Smith
Robert Howard
HP Lovecraft
Andre Norton
Edward Miller
Pat Frank
James White
Robert Bloch
Ray Bradbury
AE Van Vogt
L. Sprague Decamp
Poul Anderson
Jerry Pournelle
Spider Robinson
Dana Stabenow

and a bunch of others, the names of whom will come to me.