Who introduced you to science fiction?

[scotthm]

I was thinking back to when I first got introduced to scifi and I was wondering who got all of you hooked on it.

That's a tough one. The first science fiction movies I can remember seeing were Planet of the Apes and 2001: A Space Odyssey. My parents took me to see them both at the theater (I was seven years old when these films were released) and I think I was hooked on sci-fi because of that. However, my parents hated both movies (and sci-fi in general), so I think I got "hooked" in spite of them.

---------------

 

[DrkMatter]

Hmmm, it was that little show 'Star Track" or something like that. The show with the guy with the ears. You know.........

 

[Fenris]

It was my mom who introduced me to sci-fi. She took me and my sister to watch Star Wars and Star Trek when we were kids. The reason for her wanting to watch those movies? I think she had a crush on Shatner (series days) and Ford.

 

[Unlucky Berman]

Since I grew up behind the "Iron Curtain" in the GDR I came to know the early SciFi you all mentioned at first in 1990 or so. But before that I came into contact with it through the novels of Stanislav Lem. When I was seven years old I borrowed The Invincible in some library on a campground. In general the novel is better understandable for older youths but it infused me with the idea of people travelling to space finding strange civilizations and the like, so I began to read more novels of him and others.
Well and then after 1990 i saw Star Wars, Star Trek and all those things, read a lot more books from different authors and I am still fascinated with this kind of litarature and media. The lates I really like a lot are the space operas or kind of pulp science fiction novels of Charles Stross. His ideas are very intriguing and looking closely while they are far beyond our capabilities right now, some of them aren't that fictional at all.

 

[Wes R]

Since I grew up behind the "Iron Curtain" in the GDR I came to know the early SciFi you all mentioned at first in 1990 or so. But before that I came into contact with it through the novels of Stanislav Lem. When I was seven years old I borrowed The Invincible in some library on a campground. In general the novel is better understandable for older youths but it infused me with the idea of people travelling to space finding strange civilizations and the like, so I began to read more novels of him and others.
Well and then after 1990 i saw Star Wars, Star Trek and all those things, read a lot more books from different authors and I am still fascinated with this kind of litarature and media. The lates I really like a lot are the space operas or kind of pulp science fiction novels of Charles Stross. His ideas are very intriguing and looking closely while they are far beyond our capabilities right now, some of them aren't that fictional at all.

I was going to ask if you had access to the old turn of the century silent scifi stuff since i know stuff wasn't always accessable during the cold war. Fritz lang probably would have been really hard to come by after WW2 sadly.

 

[Unlucky Berman]

Honestly I am not sure how hard it would have been, but then since there wasn't something like video cassettes and only two TV stations which weren't showing much movies I think it was nearly impossible to see older stuff. Ok many of us got "West TV" from stations in Western Germany and they sometimes may have shown things but as far as I remember they had this Dallas stuff (my parents were fond of this like many others) and their own shows. And I remember that I saw secretly late in the night while my parents slept something scary with an excavator shoveling humans . But then with grewn up there I really meant that I was at that time still a child and a youth when the the iron curtain fell. So I did not know much about scifi movies or movies in general back then.

That interest came all afterwards in the 1990s when these things were much easier available and after I saw Star Wars and Star Trek for the first time in TV. So at first I was more interested in similiar things like SW but later also in older movies when I myself became older (gosh time flies by where have the last 20 years been?) and began to like some other things and even styles I never comprehended or regarded as interesting during my youth.

 

[MrSinistar]

My parents (especially my mom) really helped me get into sci-fi. I remember watching MST3K when I was about 4 or 5 years old on Comedy Central with mom and dad and my mom got me into Tron after I asked her to explain that Tron joke from the Simpsons. XD

Mom and dad also got me into Fifth Element after we watched a VHS rental from Blockbuster.

My dad at first was a bit annoyed with my fanboy stuff that I would do during my early teens but now my dad thinks it's cool that I'm making Tom Servos, Tron helmets and stuff. LOL

 

[Pat Regan]

Yup. I've gotta blame my dad, too. :cool

I was 5-1/2 years old when he showed me that February 1954 issue of LIFE with Disney Diver Bill Stropahl on the cover wearing a Nautilus Crew Diver rig. That's where it started; then, Operation Undersea and 20,000 Leagues set me on my path. As a kid I was into everything Jules Verne, Sci Fi, FMOF-oriented. But my main interest was always underwater technologies, and when it came around to the point where I could finally do it, I built my own Nautilus and Leagues rigs.

VBR,

Pat Regan
Vulcania Submarine
Hawaii

http://www.vulcaniasubmarine.com

 

[bbl]

My dad is guilty as charged. Though not accually science fiction (a long time ago ), the first one i saw was empire. I loved it. Can't wait to do the same with my son. Hope he likes it. It'll break my heart if we couldn't share this too haha.

Come to think of it, the jones movie a saw was the second one as well. Mmm gotta call my father on this :lol

 

[Cyber]

No one else in my family was into science fiction, it was watching the original Star Trek, Doctor Who and Blakes 7 as a child that got me hooked.
Then I saw Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica and was well and truly hooked.
And when I first saw Alien I thought it was amazing, and indeed it's still one of my all time favourite films.

 

[Mola Rob]

My brother and I discovered it on our own. My father thought science-fiction was drivel and preferred the intellectual purity of Hee-Haw and the fabulous insomnia curing magnificence of The Laurence Welk Show.

 

[Guy Cowen]

George Lucas

 

[Jaina]

My mom when I was 9 years old because Star Wars: Episode I came out. Well, not really. I was playing w/my hair and wound up doing something similar to Princess Leia's buns and my mom thought it was adorable so she showed me the original Star Wars trilogy and I fell in love with it. The Phantom Menace came out two months later.

The rest... was history.

 

[Hocky]

Gerry anderson with Captain scarlet and then six million dollar man.
My 2 childhood heroes

 

[micdavis]

The book, A Wrinkle in Time. Read it in the second grade while I was home with pneumonia. Picked it off the shelf in the library. So I guess I did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wrinkle_in_Time

 

[v137a]

Star Trek TOS re-runs, E.T., American imports of japanese cartoons - (Robotech, Tranzor Z) in syndication, and Star Trek novels being sold cheaply at the record store my folks frequented.

 

[CutThumb]

Easy answer, the Television!
Longer summary, Gerry Anderson (Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet ,UFO ,Space 1999) Irwin Allen (Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea) and of course Gene Rodenberry (Star Trek) and that continually regenerating British staple of Sci fi, Dr Who. Then there were all the comics that went with them, the annuals and the toys.
Then there was a period of about four years as a teenager when I just didn't find it at all interesting because it was all so predictable and boring and frankly looked rubbish.
And then I saw Star Wars. And was given "Dune" to read.
And the whole world changed.

 

[JMChladek]

Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic woman started me on the SF path at age 5. By age 6 it was Space 1999. At age 7 it was Star Wars and Star Trek the Motion Picture at age 9. While I recall my older brother and sister watching Star Trek on TV in those years, I didn't quite warm up to it until after TMP came out.

 

[captain avenger]

My brother got me into the comic book ends of things, like spider-man and Captain America, he also got me interested in Douglas Adams, and the rest was up to Marty Mcfly

 

[MooCriket]

My Dad when he drove me to the drive in to see Star Wars