What was your gateway?

[Thanos]

What was the one thing that sparked your interest in SF?

For me it was TOS Star Trek. One of my earlist memories is of the Enterpise in orbit arround an orange planet. I would have been 6/7 at the time. Hind sight tells me it must have been durning the third season. I remember I was up late and we were running an errand to my grand parents house and I was allowed to turn the tv for a few minutes while my mother did what ever it was she was doing. It was a treat because I was up late and COLOR TV!

I think originaly I was attracted to the action/adventure aspect of it but man I loved the heck out of it from that point on. In many of the Trek articals and books (not the novels) I read referanced other SF/Fantasy works and I followed the path as it lay before me.

 

[Ran Targas]

The moon launches started it followed by Star Trek on the old black and white then Star Wars in '77; it was all down hill from there.

 

[Thanos]

The moon launches started it followed by Star Trek on the old black and white then Star Wars in '77; it was all down hill from there.

Thanks for ending my thread, man.

 

[mike wightman]

Dr. Who was the first sci-fi I remember.

 

[leo knight]

The Gemini space launches, "Jonny Quest", "Supercar", "Fireball XL5", "Lost in Space", all at the age of 3-4. Later came "Stingray", and of course, "Star Trek".

 

[Timerover51]

For those who have not had the privilege of seeing some of the Gerry Anderson shows like Supercar and Stingray, check out the following. I grew up watching those on Saturday mornings.

Supercar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8m9Z010pM4

Stingray intro and ending:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E06cNv55jTs, intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD96RQ1-wnY, ending

I found both the intro and ending for Stingray on iTunes.

But the first thing to get me into science fiction was reading about the launch of Sputnik 1 in October of 1957, just before my sixth birthday, and going out with my Dad and brothers and trying to spot it. That got my oldest brother interested in science fiction, and I started reading his paperbacks when he was not looking. Grew up with the early Heinlein books and Andre Norton, and then Analog magazine.

 

[darue]

one word: Apollo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phQXvbPqJNM

 

[malchya]

Well, I do remember Star Trek TOS during its first run, (I was 6 the year it premiered), but it didn't really grab me save for the Enterprise herself. I was always a ship fan, but never really a science fiction fan until my government teacher in middle school (or Junior High, as it was then known) got me to read Stranger in a Strange Land by telling me that Jubal Harshaw was probably just like me as a teen!

 

[aramis]

ST TOS and watching the last couple apollo lunar launches and moon landings on TV.

 

[Vargr Breath]

Hi
Forbidden Planet my folks took me to see it at the Drive-In when it first came out,it's the first movie I remember going to I would have been 6 or 7.Then Rockey Jones and Flash Gordon on TV in the 50s.

 

[McPerth]

The first contact I remember with Science Fiction was having an astronaut costume taht the Tree Wise Men brought to me, I guess in 1971-72...

The first books I remember to have rread about it was a Catalan written boys novel that we worked on in class. I was no older than 10...

The first Science fiction film I remember to have seen was Star Wars...

The first Sci-fi TV serial I remember to have seen was either Space 1999 or Quark. I'm not sure...

But when I really began to like Sci-fi was when a wargame club mate brought a game named Traveller.

 

[Hemdian]

What was the one thing that sparked your interest in SF?

I guess for me it was my Dad. He is into SF and for as long as I can remember it was always in my life. As a family we'd watch Doctor Who, Star Trek, UFO, Space:1999, et al on the TV. (My parents strongly believed that children should not watch TV alone, even if it was a children's show.) An interest in science and SF just grew from there.

And my Dad had a large library of paperbacks ... Asimov, Clarke, EE Doc Smith, AE Van Vogt, Pohl, Leinster, and many others. So when I caught the reading bug I devoured that library.

But it wasn't just passive. I was into world building before I discovered RPGs.

(The other influence in my life came from my Mum who was a member of the local amateur dramatics society. She'd act in various plays. I remember me and my little sister being roped in to help paint sets, etc. Made me aware, not just of storytelling, but what goes on behind the storytelling. Meanwhile, she could transform long and boring car journeys into adventures by getting us kids to pretent to be secret agents trying to be covert and not draw attention.)

Lego, hiking, fishing, camping, and church rounded out my childhood extra-curricular activities.

Getting back to the original question, thanks to my Dad SF was always there in the background. It would have been strange not to have been interested.

 

[HiverLord]

Definately the first moon landing (I was three going on four), followed by japanese rubber monster movies (if you can call that serious sci-fi ), star trek, etc.

As an embarrassing side note, I hadn't heard of Star Wars, nor seen it until at least a year after it came out (and it was still running in theaters somewhere.)

 

[Limburger59]

Watching the Apollo missions on TV.

Star Trek.

Robert Heinlein's books such as "Farmer in the Sky" or "The Green Hills of Earth"; plus other books during Jr. High and High School.

 

[LiamKerrington]

Hi there.

I think there is not a single event, but a small collection of things that drew me "into" it.

In my childhood one of the most important things to watch was the anime "Captain Future".

Besides that I also watched the "Fun Factory" provided on weekends on the free Sky-Channel. Although I did not understand "English" back then (I was too young for that), I enjoyed watching all kinds of childrens' tv-shows - like "Transformers", "M.A.S.K.", "Macross", "Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors", "Thundercats", "Silver Hawks", and many more.

During the week I watched Star Trek a lot; but I remember that I was only half-hearted with that compared to how I nearly devoured the animated tv-shows on weekends.

One key-moment in my life was when I watched "Dune" in cinema as an eight year old boy; in Germany the movie was releazed for children at least 12 years old; but I wanted to see this movie so hard that my parents did anything to get me into cinema. That was awesome.

As a child and later young youth I was in the library often in order to read books about space travelling. And I guess since I grew up in the years of the Space Shuttle this almost iconic item of spacetravelling kept me in touch with the topic. But I need to confess that the drag was not hard enough to pull me into that direction. Too bad - especially since I rediscovered spacetravelling and science fiction a few years ago ...

Best wishes!
Liam

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

What was the one thing that sparked your interest in SF?

I was practically born into it.

One of my first toys when I was two or three was a wind tunnel test model of a Minuteman III missile that my Dad brought home from work (he worked for Boeing on the guidence avionics for the missiles). Then it was watching Space:1999 and other movies on the Late, Late Show or Sci-Fi Saturday of TV. Star Wars came at age 8 and I read my first science fiction novel the same year I got into RPGs (Have Space Suit, Will Travel by Heinlein at age 12).

Dad encouraged all this because it was his love of WW1 Flying Ace pulp stories that helped get him into the aerospace business. He loved that I was playing Classic Traveller at age 13.

 

[Vladika]

Tom Swift & Tom Swift Jr. books.

 

[Jame]

The earliest that I remember is watching Star Trek TOS and TNG back-to-back on TV when I was 6 or 7, about when TNG first came out. Combined with watching Star Wars Ewoks and Droids cartoons, plus ThunderCats, Transformers and GI Joe about the same time (I had a much more innocent view of cartoons at 5 than I do most of 30 years later).

 

[ShapeShifter]

Hi
Forbidden Planet my folks took me to see it at the Drive-In when it first came out,it's the first movie I remember going to I would have been 6 or 7.Then Rockey Jones and Flash Gordon on TV in the 50s.

I truly envy you. FP is one of my all-time fave SF movies.

My 1st contact was likely either a show called UFO (?) or Space 1999. Then SW. My parents are Trekkies, but I didn't get a chance to see the whole TOS from beginning to end until about 2 years ago.

 

[Shonner]

Silent Running.