The First Sci-Fi/Fantasy Books I Read

“Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.” — J.R.R. Tolkien

You all know how I like to wax nostalgic at times, right? Well, I’ve been thinking about how I got into sci-fi/fantasy, action/adventure, and related stuff. Sure, there were all the comic books, which were in turn related to the “Superfriends” and other superhero shows I watched Saturday mornings as a kid. Later, there were TV shows like “Star Trek”, “Batman”, “The Six Million Dollar Man”, and some cop shows. But, besides comics and TV shows, what sorts of books did I first read in those genres?

Well, as a pre-teen in middle school, the earliest ones I can think of were the “Sugar Creek Gang” series by Paul Hutchens. Those were really more in the mystery genre within Christian children’s literature. They were about a small “gang” (really just a group of friends) of teen & pre-teen boys in a midwestern town who investigated local mysteries and such. Good stories, good lessons, etc. Naturally, reading those led to the “Hardy Boys Mystery Stories” created by Edward Stratemeyer and written by Franklin W. Dixon (actually a pseudonym for various ghostwriters). They had a similar format, in which amateur detectives Frank and Joe Hardy — usually with an assist by a couple or so friends — investigated mysteries and got into dangerous situations. Quite a thrill!

I never got into the “Nancy Drew Mysteries”. But, I discovered yet another series created by Stratemeyer that I thought was really cool — namely, the “Tom Swift” books by Victor Appleton (yet another collective pseudonym). Since I was reading these in the 1970s (and maybe early 1980s), they would have been from the second (and maybe third) such series. (There have been six series of TS adventures.) So, the actual hero was Tom Swift, Jr., son of the original protagonist, who was created by Harriet Adams and written by “Victor Appleton II”. Young Tom, of course, got into various situations and investigated mysteries, etc. What made him different, though, was that he was an inventor with innate gifts in science, math, and engineering. He was always experimenting and building cool stuff based “on scientific fact and probability,” whereas his father’s were mostly “adventure stories mixed with pseudo-science”. He developed things like a diving seacopter and a nuclear-powered flying lab, while looking into extraterrestrials and helping to defeat America’s Cold War enemies.

By the time I got to high school, I was reading Star Trek novels. First, there were the novelizations of various TOS episodes by James Blish and TAS (i.e., The Animated Series) episodes by Alan Dean Foster. Then, I expanded into the original novels by Blish and others that had begun being published in the 1970s and early 1980s. Those were a lot of fun, and I remember discussing them with a couple other students. In later years, I read many more of the numbered (and some non-numbered) ST novels.

At some point in there, I was introduced to C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy. I know I read some of the Chronicles, but I don’t think I ever finished them. I read the first two books in the Space Trilogy but couldn’t get into the third. I may have mentioned in another post that I recently re-read those first two from the trilogy, and I am determined to read the final book, That Hideous Strength, next year.

I believe it was also during high school that I discovered and was transported away by The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I remember having book-of-the-month club editions of the trilogy with boring covers and no illustrations, much like the omnibus I had of Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy. Yet, as much as I enjoyed the Tolkien books, I don’t remember ever reading them a second time, and certainly not a third. Strange. I intend to remedy that, however, since I now have a nice set of the hardcovers (with beautiful Alan Lee paintings) of all four Tolkien books. Eventually, I’ll have to give The Silmarillion another shot, too, and various other Middle Earth-oriented tales.

I read a few other sci-fi/fantasy novels in those years, as well. I’m not sure, but I may have been introduced to some works by Asimov, Clarke, Pohl, Farmer, Niven, et al. But, the one other series I am positive belongs in my “early years” collection is Anne McCaffrey’s The Dragonriders of Pern. If you are unfamiliar, it takes place on another planet (i.e., Pern) in a sort of “medieval” setting that includes dragons and swords but no sorcery. I first came across it when in my mid-teens. My family was visiting relatives at their part-time orchard farm, and I was bored, so I started looking through their bookcase. I found and began reading Dragonquest — second in one of the trilogies within the overall series — and was hooked. I later bought that trilogy and would get up an hour or more earlier than necessary so I had time to read it before school. I read several more Pern books I found in the library, but there are many Pern books by McCaffrey and/or her son that I have never read, so that’s another mountain I’d like to tackle… some time.

That’s about it from me. If you’d like to share your first SF/F books (or other genre), feel free to do so in the comments below!