Your fantasy/sci-fi progession

[Nearly Headless Ned]

My dad read The Hobbit and LOTR out loud to me when I was like 4, so yeah. I guess I started at a young age. :)

Yeah same here. Never had a chance after that.

[Switchback]

i started with my old man reading all the Oz books to me and my sister when we were little. then I was assigned the Hobbit as a school book in like 7th grade? maybe 8th? somewhere around there. then moved from Tolkien to Covenant on my own, and just never stopped.

[Datepalm]

Hobbit Schmobbit. Nyeznaika on the Moon is my vote for genre affection shaping books read to you when you were four. Thanks dad!

[Bronn is God]

I am in the Martin generation. The only fantasy book that I read before was the Hobbit and I thought it was utter garbage.

In a way I am glad. The "new gen fantasy" interests me alot more than the more old school stuff.

[Liadin]

Aha! A review! Proof someone, ever, has read this book in English. It seemingly regards the book as mostly positive, in an id-satisfying cheesy sort of way.

Several people have reviewed it in English on Amazon USA.

Well Kay is gritty. Compared to say, The Belgariad.

You can make a strong argument that Kay's settings are gritty, even though his main characters are often all romanticized and emotional. He does seem to have to come up with some terrible and detailed new way for the baddies to habitually kill people. For every. single. book.

[The Warmth of Winter]

I know where it all started and I certainly know where I am now, but some of the middle bits are a bit hazy (and it wasn't even very long ago :blush: ).

Basically, Harry Potter not just got me into fantasy (/sci-fi?), but also got me into reading books. My parents would read me one chapter of "The Philosopher's Stone" every other night before I went to sleep. Problem was, I eventually wanted more after a chapter was finished. So, I started reading it myself and I was hooked on books from that day. (The Harry Potter books are also one of the factors that made me good at understanding English at an early age, thanks for that)

As I said I'm not quite sure on the timeline and I'm not sure which "real" fantasy series I read first, but I remember reading Donaldson's series about the mirrors pretty early on (perhaps too early, there were a lot of scenes I didn't quite understand. "I mean, why would he bite her nipple?". Ahem...)

Of course Tolkien came along pretty early, aswell, but I think it was Feist that really sparked my interest in fantasy with "the Riftwar Saga". Everybody likes magic, right.

It all developed from there. Though, I have to say I'm far from an experienced fantasy reader, on account of me still being quite young, and all. I hope to change that though. (Not the "being young" part :read:)

Edit: Maybe, I should explain, aswell, that I'm not a native English speaker.

[mjgambino]

I starting reading fantasy when I was really young. I liked things like Narnia and the Hobbit. I stopped reading until I was in my early 20. For some reason that I can't recall, I picked up Game of Thrones on a whim. I liked it so much that I started reading fantasy regularly and never stopped.

I only recently started reading sci-fi. Basically, I watched Battlestar Galactica after a solid year of my brother telling me that I didn't know what I was missing. I liked it and decided that my preconceived notions about the genre were way off. So I got some recommendations from this forum and Wert's blog, and now I pretty much alternate between sci-fi and fantasy

[wolverine]

Elementary: I read a ton and early on I liked Beverly Cleary, Roald Dahl, and other typical kids books. I read a lot of books about animals and YA historical fiction like Silver Chief books, Jim Kjelgard, Farmer Boy, Old Yeller, and others. My dad loves westerns and reads almost exclusively those and about 4th grade I started reading Louis L'Amour and read a ton of his books and I think I read White Fang in 3rd grade (read it again later as I probably did not understand everything then). My first fantasy may have been Lion Witch and the Wardrobe. I liked it but for whatever reason I didn't read them all just watched the old awesome movies they had.

Junior High and High School: Next fantasy was The Giver and then The Hobbit. I liked both of these but I started reading less and less in junior high and high school, mostly sticking to Louis L'Amour staples and some of his more epic works (A Walking Drum, Comstock Lode, Jubal Sackett).

College: My first year my roommate had The Eye of the World, his mom used to read Tolkien to him. Eventually I picked it up and was hooked super fast. It really got me back into reading. I read the first 5-6 that were out at the time and then started looking for more. Found out there were way more books out there than I ever thought and read lots of historical fiction. Read LOTR in anticipation of the movies and looked for more fantasy and grabbed Salvatore's Drizzt stuff. Read a couple and thought it was entertaining but too light for me. Read Dark Tower from King and a couple others like the Stand, have two uncles who read a ton and love SK. Actually read Monarchies of God, The Waterborn, a few other forgettable fantasy books, and lots of reviews on Amazon before getting ASOIF.

ASOIF led me to this board and has helped guide my reading since. Only since coming to Westeros have I really read any sci fi (outside things for school like The Giver, Flowers for Algernon). My dad, my biggest reading influence, does not read any fantasy/sci fi or watch any movies like that (still reads almost solely Westerns).

Currently I read a solid mix of historical fiction and fantasy with an occasional thriller, sci fi, or "classic" book mixed in. While wating for WoT and ASOIF books I went to authors like Erikson, Bakker, Abercrombie, Abraham, etc and have branched into more sci fi mostly reading older sci fi like Enders Game, Dune, Hyperion, Davy (I thought all of those were great).

[Blaine]

I read Lord of the Rings in 6th grade, around the same time I was way into Dungeons and Dragons. Before that I'd mostly read classics and before that I was a huge fan of The Three Investigators Young Adult novels and I read the odd Hardy Boys book here and there.

Anyway, that summer after I finished LotR, I was ravenous for more fantasy and sort of discovered that section at Waldenbooks. My dungeonmaster was a few years older and he recommended Sword of Shannarra, the Belgariad and Feist's Magician. Between those three authors, I read everything I could get that summer before 7th grade. Then came DragonLance, Pern and a ton of other novels that I remember less fondly, Piers Anthony and tons more. I read every Forgotten Realms book I could find along with anything by Weis and Hickman and eventually anything with a sword or a dragon or preferably both on the cover.

I nudged my toe in the water of Sci Fi with Ender's Game and then read most of sci fi classics - Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, but Sci Fi was never really my bag.

Then came a lot of modern fiction, contemporary stuff, Stephen King, college studies with "serious literature authors." I only re-discovered fantasy when I was writing a comic with some friends and got in WoT. Then I found ASOIAF in an airport bookstore when it had just come out in paperback. And that was that.

Now I mainly read whatever I think is good. A great deal of nonfiction mixed in with whatever fiction reviews sound interesting. About the only fantasy I've picked up beyond GRRM in the last 5 years has varied - Abercrombie (very good), Bakker (so-so) and Erikson (god awful). And the only Sci Fi I've read and enjoyed is Richard Morgan's stuff.

[Piltdown]

The first fantasy novel I remember reading - and genuinely enjoying - was A Wrinkle in Time. I also read Ender's Game when my grade 4 teacher recommended it to me. I think it was Ender that really got me into scifi/fantasy. In fact, not only did it get me into the genre, it started me on casual reading in general.

I read mostly scifi until I was given a copy of The Colour of Magic. This sparked me on fantasy and I branched out into reading a number of fantasy books, including The Fionavar Tapestry and WOT (The Great Hunt was on the shelves when I started this).

Stephenson brought my attention to cyberpunk when he wrote Snowcrash, and I retroactively experienced that genre as well. Not to mention becoming a permanent Stephenson fanboy.

When a local bookstore had some big display out for A Clash of Kings, I decided to give ASOIAF a try.

Finally, Mieville wrote Perdido Street Station and I was exposed to what I consider yet another subgenre of fantasy writing.

That probably covers the novels/authors/series that have had the greatest impact on my taste.

[Xenophon]

Childhood: Collections of mythology/folktales -> Narnia, Chronicles of Prydain, E. Nesbit, etc. -> The Hobbit. Also, The Wizard of Oz, Jules Verne, and a bunch of historical fiction.

Teenager: Lord of the Rings -> Shannara Trilogy -> Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. The Foundation Series and some other random sci-fi books. I played D&D and sci-fi RPGs in my early teens, but in retrospect I guess I really didn't read all that many fantasy or sci-fi books. Then girls, booze, and rock and roll became very interesting and took over my reading time altogether. :blush:

College: Earthsea, GRRM, Philip K. Dick

Post College: AFFC, when it came out, Herman Hesse, Umberto Eco, Lord Dunsany, and Patrick O'Brian (if he counts). Oh, and I tried Harry Potter to see what all the kids these days were talking about--not my thing.

I'll read fantasy/sci-fi occasionally, if I run across a book that looks interesting, but it's not a genre I seek out in particular. I like it in movies and tv, but in terms of reading material I'm more into novels and non-fiction works.

[SerArthurHeath]

Narnia and the Hobbit and LoTR- age 7 ( didn't understand a lot of it but enjoyed them all nonetheless)

Then a lot of non fantasy.

Age 11- the Hogfather followed by all Terry Pratchett ever.

Around this time, Harry Potter, Mortal Engines, The Chrestomanci series, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, the Tales of Earthsea. Studied Ovid and Vergil at school for Latin started at age 15 I suppose.

Then I cannot remember the order, but I follower all the above series, read some classic fantasy like Alice in Wonderland, some Jules Verme SciFi then discovered WoT at about 16-17. Then I started on the Sandman, Dark Tower, Elric, some stand alone comics like Kingdom Come and V for Vendetta, the Death Gate Cycle, read Eragon for jokes, read twilight for jokes, read ASoIaF. At 18 hit some classic sci Fi like Divk, Asimov, Welles and things like Frankenstein's Monster and Edgar Allen Poe. Read everything i could find by Gaiman except lthe last volume of the Sandman. Now about 20, read Abercrombie. Read Wolfe, finished sandman, reading some Marquez.

I can't remember all the order. Somewhere in there I read the Baroque cycle but didn't realise it was SF, and read the Cryptonomicron a couple of years ago. I am open to reading anything, good or bad and feel you cannot have an opinion on a book you have not finished.

[williamjm]

In retrospect I did read quite a bit of fantasy when I was a child, but it wouldn't say I was specifically looking for fantasy stories at the time although I did like Prydain, Narnia, The Weirdstone of Bringsamen, various Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf books. I think Prydain was my favourite out of them.

It was Lord of the Rings that really started me reading a lot of fantasy. I started reading The Hobbit at school when I was 10 years old, coincidentally my Aunt then bought me a copy of that and Fellowship which I then took on holiday. I quickly finished both of them and then spent most of the rest of the holiday unsuccessfully trying to find a bookshop in Spain selling The Two Towers. I think I basically just read Lord of the Rings repeatedly for a few months before moving on to Weis and Hickman's Darksword Trilogy (which someone bought me as a birthday present). I really liked Darksword so that lead on to reading Weis and Hickman's Dragonlance, Rose of the Prophet and Death Gate series and Dragonlance lead to me reading what in retrospect seems like an excessive number of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books.

Over the next few years I also started reading Feist, Julian May's Sage of the Exiles, McAffrey's Pern books, Antony Swithin's Perilous Quest for Lyonesse*. I didn't read much Science Fiction at the time (although Pern and Saga of the Exiles obviously have Science Fiction elements), I read some Arthur C. Clarke, some extremely forgettable Star Trek tie-ins and all of Douglas Adams' books but it was mostly Fantasy.

I then went through a phase when I was convinced David Eddings was the best author ever. In my defence, I was 14 at the time.

A short while later I picked up a new release called Game of Thrones which I quickly decided was excellent. However, there was only one book in the series at the time so I was forced back to reading David Eddings again.

I then went off to University. Shortly before I had discovered the Internet and its recommendations. I started to read more Science Fiction (I began reading Peter F. Hamilton, Ken Macleod, Iain M. Banks, Richard Morgan, Frank Herbert, M. John Harrison, Vernor Vinge, Charlie Stross about this time) and also caught up on some of the big Fantasy series I'd missed before (Wheel of Time, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn) and series that were new at the time like Malazan or Sword of Shadows).

* speaking of books that are never mentioned on here, has anyone other than me actually read Swithin's series?

[red snow]

I started with thundercats and transformers from the age of 3-5. I couldn't even read Transformers at first - I just enjoyed the pictures (comics are an excellent reading tool, especially when it's of a cartoon you love). I think those two comics formed a foundation that lasts until this day.

From 5-10 I was lucky enough to get a school teacher, who although she only taught a single year actually moved through the school at various stages resulting in her being my teacher for 3 years. She'd always read a book out to us before the end of the day. Books I remember being read out to me were "the iron man", "the black Cauldron", "the hobbit", various Norse/greek myth collections, the "weirdstone of brisingamen" and one other which i can't remember/find the title of*. She clearly had an agenda.

Between the ages of 8-14 I was a reading monster. Highlights were anything by colin Dann (farthing wood), the redwall books, Dr Who TV adaptations (terrence dicks in particular) Aterix, Douglas Hill's "last legionary" and "Poisoner" and the "lone Wolf" novelizations (not the game books). The big influences were the "redwall" books (combined anthropomorphism with , Dr Who novelizations (Terrence Dicks always wrote the best ones) and Douglas Hill, who wrote the "last legionary" and "posioner" books. What stood out for me with these books was the slightly darker edge or sense of loss (Dr who was usually just dark) and Hill and Jacques weren't afraid of killing important characters off (Colin Dann was also ruthless in Farthing wood too), which while it was emotionally devastating, made the whole thing more memorable and enjoyable. The perfect marriage of "darkness" and fantasy was encapsulated for me when I read the "lone wolf" novelisations - I was absolutely blown away by the scale, the characters and the violence (this is clearly what would drive me towards Abercrombie and Bakker later in life). On the other hand I read Pratchett's kids books which I enjoyed but found too whimsical (I tried discworld but found them inferior to Truckers/carpet people).

At 15 something went awry. I think it was probably a mixture of hormones, TV, computer games, hanging out with friends and comics but books started to fall by the wayside. To be fair there was a lot of good sci-fi on at the time with X-files, Babylon 5, Deep space nine, sliders etc and I'd ran out of Dr Who books, so felt that was being filled. I also discovered a comic shop that sold US comics and I became an x-men addict. Comics were easier to dip in and out of with my "busy" schedule and books were just taking too long to read. The nail in the coffin was probably "tom bombadil" in "LOTR" where I thought "if this is the best fantasy written, I give up" and "Martin the warrior" by Brian Jacques where I was saddened to discover I'd grown out of the redwall series.

Off to uni and most of my time was spent drinking, playing games and watching TV (I did some studying too). Reading was very much comics oriented but I at least started reading some vertigo trades such as "Preacher", "the sandman", "V for vendetta", "watchmen" and "100 bullets". I still had a clear leaning towards fantasy but I also read a few crime novels - usually the Puzo ones (and I'm determined to start getting back into crime/noir properly at some point). I did manage to read most of the Neil Gaiman books and thought "Stardust" was amazing and "american gods" a damn good yarn. The release of "Lord of the rings" got me to steal my flatmates copy of the trilogy and I made another stab at it - this time knowing it got better once they arrived at rivendell. I finished the book and stood corrected - I'm still not convinced it's my favourite fantasy (mainly because the writing style/focus is perpendicular to what I like) but I knew it was the grand-daddy which everyone else emulated.

When I started my PhD I had a new flatmate, who had just spent 2 years working in Ottakers/waterstones bookstores and was a dedicated book fan. His first course of action was to get me to read "his dark materials" by Phillip Pullman which ticked all the boxes. He then gave me "altered Carbon" by Richard Morgan which blew me away in terms of sci-fi/noir and "the arabesk" novels by Jon Courtenay Grimwood.

After my PhD, I moved down to London and knew i was going to be spending at least an hour a day on the tube so I went down there armed with some fantasy books. I'd become a big fan of HBO over the years and I'd heard there was a book called "a game of thrones" that was possibly being adapted by them. I figured a HBO style fantasy was exactly the kind of thing I'd like to read so i ordered it. While I was searching on amazon I noticed a lot of positive things about abercrombie's "the blade itself" and Lynch's "lies of Locke Lamorra". I also decided to buy the "gunslinger" by King as I was curious to see his take on fantasy and there was a finite numnber of books in that series. Needless to say AGOT met my expectations and more and I devoured the rest of the series. The fact that abercrombie and Lynch were excellent companions made me realise that Fantasy was still pretty damn good.

As i get older I realise I like things that are good moreso than being in a specific genre. This happened to me first with music (whereas I used to be an exclusive rock fan) and then TV. I strongly suspect my favourite SFF books are mainly because of the strength of writing and the characters present within and that the SFF elements are just dressing. So I do intend on grabbing some good westerns and noir over the next couple of years - Blood Meridian is high on the list as I loved "the road" (which i still insist is SF) and probably some historical fiction (when I can confidently sort wheat from chaff). I think my reading bias is still firmly in the fantasy and sci-fi genre though which is still not that far from the transformers comic.

*The book was about 2-3 kids who were staying out in the countryside with an uncle/family. They went walking around in the countryside and encountered a dwarf and there was reference to a villain called "old nick" (devil). The striking memory is a section where the kids are potholing and they have to go through a section with water. It was very Alan Garner/Narnia ish but I can't find a book that matches up. Any ideas are much appreciated :)

[emberling]

I distinctly remember that my first non-childrens' novel (in reading level and length, anyhow - YA wasn't really a thing back then, at least not at my library) was Dragon on a Pedestal by Piers Anthony; looks like it was in 1991 when I was 8. Before that I had probably read L'engle, Cooper, Duane, and I remember this weird series about humanoid robot pals that had some kind of stiff walk?

Anyway, Dragon led to more Xanth, that led to Apprentice Adept and Incarnations of Immortality, and then on to Eddings, Brooks (Landover), Pern, Death Gate Cycle, and MythAdventures. And the Hobbit, but LOTR was too boring.

At 1996 or a bit earlier (13) I was reading Goodkind and Julian May. I also remember about this time that I had vague memories of a fantasy series with a storm and a mysterious ship arriving and some other stuff, and I eventually tracked it down: Feist. Apparently I'd read Magician very early on and completely forgotten about it, despite liking it. Also at this time, I read The Golden Compass, only to completely forget it and end up tracking it down later when that Pullman guy that was liked on this board sounded familiar. Finally, I managed to read LOTR, despite all of Tom Bombadil's efforts.

1998 was when I started on Jordan; Jordan led to Martin, Martin led to this board, and this board led to good enough recommendations that I realized just about everything I'd read previously was shit.

I'll note that I had this really bizarre blindness to reading horrific things (sexual and violent) that lasted until... I think it was Temple of the Winds that shocked me out of it with the Drefan Rahl PoVs and their parodically insane mysogyny.

[megs]

I read a small amount of what is probably considered fantasy in elementary school, but I just read a lot in general and it all kind of blurs together. I read Harry Potter & His Dark Materials in middle school, but I didn't really read consistently any science fiction until early high school, and I only started reading fantasy in a serious, regularized manner about 6 months back. I am still pretty bad about predicting what books I'll like/knowing my tastes in the genre though, and learning to trust my instincts over recommendations, despite whether or not I may in general have similar tastes to the recommender. My younger brother always read fantasy and started Martin when he was probably 12 or so, but he read fantasy and I read science fiction and there was intentionally very little overlap in our reading selections.

[Grack21]

Well, this is the really embarrassing part of the Sara Douglass story: only the first one was actually out in the U.S. when I started reading them (recommended by a friend who also read weird and often crappy fantasy; at one point she was reading Newcombe although she said she only read the scenes with the villains). So I ordered them from a bookstore in Australia. (Er, at least it wasn't Goodkind?)

Don't feel bad. I read all of her books when I was old enough to know better. Plus by not reading the second part of the wayfarer redemption you probably saved yourself some deep mental scarring.

[Larry.]

I like to think of my reading as an echo.

Self-taught how to read; was reading histories and biographies by the end of 1st grade. Went on to earn two degrees in history and to teach it (and language arts) for most of the past 12 years.

Read little fiction growing up, outside of that assigned in school. Enjoyed what I read, but much of it wasn't as interesting as the histories.

Read C.S. Lewis at 10 and Tolkien at 12-13. But they were virtually the only "core fantasy" books I read until I was 23, in 1997.

Was introduced to Ray Bradbury at 13 when my grandmother gave me her copy of The Martian Chronicles. Also read issues of OMNI in the school library around the same time. One memorable story in that magazine was "The Pear-Shaped Man," but I couldn't remember its author until I looked it up a few years ago.

When I began to read fiction outside of summer reading lists, I stuck mostly to realist fictions and works that might be considered "cross genre" today: Poe, Swift, Dickens, etc.

Was introduced to Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner my freshman year at the University of Tennessee. They are still among my all-time favorite authors then.

Many outstanding works of literature I had to read for my history classes (Remarque, Hardy, Flaubert among them) and having learned about them through history professors rather than English ones has influenced how I read novels even today.

From 19-24, I was hell-bent on educating myself in the "world classics," so I read hundreds and hundreds of books published in the Oxford, Signet, and Bantam Classics lines. Several of those had fantastical elements, ur-fantasies, I suppose.

First "core fantasy" book I read besides Tolkien (including all of his posthumous works) was the seventh WoT book. It made strange sense, actually, enough that I decided to read the other six and then I read a couple others similar to it.

Joined the old wotmania site in late 2000 and became an Admin at its nascent Other Fantasy section in October 2001 despite having virtually no experience in all those so-called "gateway" series (minus Lewis and Tolkien). So I proceeded to self-educate myself, reading works by Gaiman, Miéville, Erikson, VanderMeer, MJH, Morgan, and a few others emerging at the time. Needless to say, I had little to no attachment to "traditional" fantasies.

After several years of this, including doing all sorts of interviews, reviews, and the like on both wotmania and its then-spinoff blog, The OF Blog, I grew weary of this sort of thing. Things began to collapse inward. More cross-genre, more non-English speculative fictions, less core-genre works, and a return to reading (and re-reading) those classics in other literary traditions.

Today, I'm not the sort of person you would ask about how the "next _______ in fantasy/SF" reads, but rather the person who will highlight things that underscore the need to not read so much in a particular (sub)genre. Certainly can be beneficial if people would read Nabokov, Faulkner, Ligotti, Glavinic, Eco, O'Connor, Thomas Wolfe, Gene Wolfe, etc. and not worry so much about how their works are classified or how one should read them. The Speculative is but one of a myriad number of ways writers attempt to explore the totality of perceived human thought and existence and it certainly doesn't behoove someone to narrow their focus to the exclusion of a goodly part of the spectrum of human literature.

[Guinevere Seaworth]

Let's see...

I read Chronicles of Narnia and Watership Down in elementary school but neither of those books spurred me to read more fantasy.

It wasn't until I picked up Edding's Pawn of Prophecy in gr 7 school library that I became a passionate fan of fantasy. After devouring the Belgariad, I discovered Xanth, Terry Brooks, as well as few Star Wars novels. Thanks to Willianjm's post I forgot that I was into Weis & Hickman's Darksword, Rose of the Prophet and Death Gate books. I somehow bypassed Dragonlance completely.

High school is where I found some of my favourite authors such as Tad Williams, Raymond Feist, and Robert Jordan.

While at University I remember distinctly waiting for the next Robert Jordan book (I believe it was A Crown of Swords) and tired of re-reading the books I had and wanted to try something new. I saw A Game of Thrones paperback at the bookstore and Jordan's quote sold me on the spot. I also recall not having long to wait for A Clash of Kings. During that time I also "discovered" Terry Goodkind. The best and the worst.

Post University was discovering this forum in 2005 and LOTR and Harry Potter. It is interesting to read LOTR so late and see how influential Tolkien to the above authors, notably Jordan, Brooks, Eddings, Williams and Feist.

Through this board I found G.G.Kay, Brandon Sanderson and Joe Abercrombie as well as some great historical fiction, a genre I've never read before.

It is interesting to see how fantasy grew. As a child of the 80's there wasn't much selection of fantasy to read, but now the scifi/fantasy section at my local bookstores is massive thanks to Harry Potter, LOTR and Twilight movies.

Thanks to this board I have no shortage of book recommendations.

[peterbound]

I read a shit load of comic books when i was younger.

around 13 i read some piers anthony books (the incarnations of immortality i believe) and then, for some strange and unapparent reason, moved on to the Chronicles of Tomas Covenant.

I've been hooked ever since. Had to hid my geeky addiction throughout my teenage years. My peers would not have looked kindly on that pursuit, being a sports fellow and all.

Still read comics, still read Donaldson, and am happier for it.