Childhood sci-fi/fantasy

[DotCommunist]

The very earliest I remember was A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle, I loved that. Most of my childhood reading was sci-fi/fantasy ... all of the Alan Garner books (as mentioned), Tolkien, collected as many Star Trek books as I could find second-hand. Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelany, Frank Herbert, Ursula Le Guin; then later Gene Wolfe, Stephen Donaldson. I kept the books as well, some of these covers look very old/dated compared to the modern editions

fuck I remember that! she went on to do Tesseract and others iirc.


cannae remember who did them but 'Dark is a colour' and 'Hoverlight' where great sci fi.

Shout out to my man Brian Aldiss for the first 'epic' sci fi series I ever read, the Helliconia cycle.

 

[cesare]

fuck I remember that! she went on to do Tesseract and others iirc.


cannae remember who did them but 'Dark is a colour' and 'Hoverlight' where great sci fi.

Shout out to my man Brian Aldiss for the first 'epic' sci fi series I ever read, the Helliconia cycle.

I'm now inspired to get the Madeleine L'Engle ones, I remember looking it up a while ago and it was written really early like 1961 or something but it must have been about 1968 when I read it, heh. Tesseracts Try AbeBooks for really good prices, that's where button found that copy of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia that Mentalchick told us about on the Doctor Who thread.

My first epic sci fi series was Dune I think, but I was reading sci fi before I discovered Frank Herbert e.g. Asimov

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Childhood: The Secret World of Og, about a land underground that you got to through twisty narrow caves.

After that, I remember the librarian giving me a card to the adult library, and then it was Brian Aldiss, Asimov, Foundation and Empire, Heinlein throughout, Poul Anderson, Piers Anthony; then, after a couple of years, Phillip K Dick, Michael Moorcock, Ursula LeGuin, etc.

Basically anything I could get my hands on. Twelve books at a time from the library.

 

[El Jefe]

When i was a kid, it was most of what I read: all of what JC2 has listed (especially Moorcock), plus Philip Jose Farmer, Anne McCaffrey, Steven Donaldson, etc etc etc.

Can't touch the stuff now

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm now inspired to get the Madeleine L'Engle ones, I remember looking it up a while ago and it was written really early like 1961 or something but it must have been about 1968 when I read it, heh. Tesseracts Try AbeBooks for really good prices, that's where button found that copy of the Science Fiction Encyclopedia that Mentalchick told us about on the Doctor Who thread.

My first epic sci fi series was Dune I think, but I was reading sci fi before I discovered Frank Herbert e.g. Asimov

bookmarked

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

It wasn't This Time of Darkness, was it? The cover my copy has isn't exactly the same as the one on Amazon, though; it had a similar drawing of two kids running, but against a dark blue background and face-on.

That's my favouritest kids' scifi book ever, anyway.

Asimov edited a few great kids' sci-fi anthologies, too, which I loved.

Louise Lawrence had some great books in this field, too, including Children of the Dust.

Sadly no, that is not it. It was set in some sort of police state and I think the police were androids or people with bits of their brains taken out (or am I thinking of Halo Jones now?)
The cover had three of the police people/things (with helmets) on the front and it was all a bit purple and red.

 

[cesare]

bookmarked

It's my new favourite site, fantastic service. That Encyclopedia was exactly as described and unclipped - really well packaged for posting, quick arrival and amazingly good price (same as Mentalchick's plus p&p).

Adding to the list so far; Marion Zimmer Bradley, Janet Morris, Larry Niven, E E 'Doc' Smith

 

[The Groke]

Futuretrack 5

Like 1984 but for kids. With a cool motorbike.

Anyone remember Dragonfall 5?

That was ace - spaceships and stuff.

One I had was really scary - it had matter transporters in the cellar and someone who had gone through and ended up all backwards.

I also liked the Last Legionary series.....um......Douglas someone who wrote it I think?

 

[The Groke]

I also liked the Last Legionary series.....um......Douglas someone who wrote it I think?

Douglas Hill's 'Galactic Warlord' trilogy. Lots of Dune-ish elements, plus violence, genocide and cool ass spaceships ahoy.

Sorry - should have read thread better.

 

[DotCommunist]

It's my new favourite site, fantastic service. That Encyclopedia was exactly as described and unclipped - really well packaged for posting, quick arrival and amazingly good price (same as Mentalchick's plus p&p).

Adding to the list so far; Marion Zimmer Bradley, Janet Morris, Larry Niven, E E 'Doc' Smith

I re-read one of the Lensman books last year. Truly awful writing.

 

[DotCommunist]

Futuretrack 5

Like 1984 but for kids. With a cool motorbike.

well, by the same author but not sci-fi (having it anyway cause its cool as fuck) The Machine Gunners

 

[cesare]

I re-read one of the Lensman books last year. Truly awful writing.

Dire They're in my 'keep for sentimental reasons but never read' pile of books

 

[The Groke]

O yeah - lots of Alan Garner, LOTR of course and the excellent Earthsea trilogy.

 

[kyser_soze]

Sorry - should have read thread better.

I'm just happy I've found someone else who's read them!!

Someone else mentioned Dragonlance...I please guilty to that one as well...

 

[Mrs Magpie]

www.thechestnut.com/bleep.htm

 

[cesare]

John Wyndham was another obvious one I forgot earlier.

I liked The Malacia Tapestry by Aldiss.

Another for 'the list' - Piers Anthony

 

[ViolentPanda]

Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" sequence.

A sci-fi book called "Children of Morrow" by H. M. Hoover. It's set in a primitive post-apocalypse world, and has a similar telepath theme to "The Chrysalids".

Joan Aiken's "Alternative Empire" stories (The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts in Battersea etc)

 

[Buddy Bradley]

I remember getting some of the Stainless Steel Rat books out of the library - god knows what they were about now, but I enjoyed them at the time.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I remember getting some of the Stainless Steel Rat books out of the library - god knows what they were about now, but I enjoyed them at the time.

Slippery Jim DiGriz, the galaxy's best thief.

 

[cat107]

"Children of Morrow" by HM Hoover - brilliant post-nuclear holocaust thriller. Read it as a kid and finally tracked it down again about five years ago.

Really enjoyed Nicholas Fisk (anyone remember the BBC adaptation of Starstormers?) and Robert Westall as well - I remember feeling quite queasy reading Futuretrack 5 about a future where basically you get lobotomised and have your nose and ears cut off if you fail your A-levels!

 

[seeformiles]

One that always creeped me out was "The Changes" (scary BBC children's drama from about 1975)

but remember reading some odd stuff like "The Secret of Moon Castle" by (don't laugh!) Enid Blyton, "The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea" by Eric Linklater and a couple of of series of books from the local library called "Space 1" (2, 3, 4, etc.) and "Spectre 1" (2, 3, etc. - but the stories were more supernatural and very scary)

 

[seeformiles]

well, by the same author but not sci-fi (having it anyway cause its cool as fuck) The Machine Gunners

Probably my favourite book when I was about 10 - imo every normal boy's fantasy was to own a machine gun!

 

[cesare]

Bleep and Booster freaked me out when I was a kid That's how I discovered the mysteries and refuge of behind the sofa.

The Tomorrow People - there was a really scary episode where someone got aged to death then cobwebs that stuck in my dreams for years.

Addictive though

 

[upsidedownwalrus]

I've just had my memory jogged about a book i read when i was younger called Trillions by Nicholas Fisk. My memorys are quite hazy but i remember being fascinated by these aliens who landed as a fine dust across a whole town. Does anyone else remember this book?

what other childhood books do you remember or wish you could read again?

I remember them

A little scary for kids books weren't they?

 

[scifisam]

Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" sequence.

I re-read that recently - it's still good.

A sci-fi book called "Children of Morrow" by H. M. Hoover. It's set in a primitive post-apocalypse world, and has a similar telepath theme to "The Chrysalids".

That's the same person who wrote my favourite book, This Time of Darkness, that I mentioned above. Children of Morrow is great, but TTOD is better, and hardly anyone seems to have read it.

My local library had a decent scifi section back then (it seems to have about five books in total these days), but charity shops were the best source of speculative fiction for me then. I hadn't even heard of sci-fi or fantasy, but I thought the stories were fascinating.

 

[strung out]

a bit of a weird one, but i remember loving Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator when i was really young. anything that had aliens and spaceships in it was cool for me

 

[El Jefe]

Captain Cobweb's Adventures

 

[seeformiles]

a bit of a weird one, but i remember loving Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator when i was really young. anything that had aliens and spaceships in it was cool for me

That was the first Roald Dahl book I ever read - beat "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with a big stick ("Vermicious Knids" anyone?)

 

[May Kasahara]

Futuretrack 5

Like 1984 but for kids. With a cool motorbike.

Loved this, it was one of my favourites. So sad.

Also was mildly obsessed with Meredith Pierce's Darkangel and a very weird book called Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones, both of which share an eerie, dislocated atmosphere. Read the first six Dragonlance books many times, although having read them again recently the writing is pretty awful. We had all the Fighting Fantasy books up to about 22 - I'm sure a few of them were constructed so that you couldn't actually win (yes, I'm looking at you House of Hell ).

There were also numerous random sci fi novels that I can't remember the name of now, just a few details. One where people live in a city under a huge protective bubble and kids learn by having knowledge modules plugged into sockets in the back of their heads. Everyone is bald, overweight and pasty. They fear the outside world. Then the protagonist gets accidentally trapped outside the bubble and taken in by some of the rogue element who live among nature (obviously these are all lean, tanned and happy). He gradually adapts to life on the outside, loses the fat, gets a tan, grows some hair and falls in love with some fit hippy chick, and also learns a lesson about the power of propaganda as he comes to realise that they are not in fact the enemy. At the end of the book he volunteers to go back inside the city to work as a double agent for them, even though it means giving up everything about life that makes him happy (hippy girl, being thin, having a tan).

The other one involved some sort of ghost on the moon and featured Welsh speaking. No idea what that was about but it was quite a sweet romance.

 

[DotCommunist]

oooh how could I forget Jean Ure's Plague cycle: Plauge99, Come Lucky April (frightening matriarchal post apocalypse dystopia) and The Watchers at The Shrine

Powerful, well written stuff. Fuck this thread is going to bankrupt me on payday