The First Science Fiction Novel I Read

I was an avid reader from the age of five onward, but oddly enough, I started out as reader of children's mysteries. I was particularly fond of the Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and a few other lesser knockoffs. Encyclopedia Brown inspired me to found my own detective agency at the age of seven. We had a couple of small cases, nothing major. Lost cats, dolls, catching an adulterer out with his mistress. Then I discovered The Great Brain and decided that everyone should call me Wiz Kid in the new tiny town that my mother was living in. I remember telling the neighborhood kids that this was my name, and then I remember being in the grocery store later on, and coming to the realization that one of the kids had seen me and was trying to get my attention with my new name, and I hadn't paid any attention to him. So that was the end of that.

Those Great Brain books were fantastic, by the way. Set at the turn of the century in Utah, they detailed the adventures of a con artist and schemer extraordinaire, the middle of three boys, who called himself the Great Brain. I remember in particular being fascinated by the story of their father ordering their first toilet from a Sears Roebuck catalog. And the candy scheme in private school. Lots of great stories in those books. But back to science fiction.

Now, my father was a science fiction fan, although as we were poor, most of his collection were books with the covers torn off that someone had given him, perhaps a sympathetic friend who worked in a book store. Or maybe he dug them out of dumpsters. That's a sad image I don't really want to contemplate right now, my young father scrounging for paperbacks behind some cheap book store. It wasn't until I was in high school that I learned about remainders and the idea of publishers taking covers as evidence a book hadn't sold, and that the book seller was supposed to destroy the books themselves. I never knew there was anything "wrong" with his books, other than that someone didn't like covers on them.

So I grew up on library books, and the only books prominently displayed in the house were missing their covers. I think that if the books had had their covers intact, I might have discovered science fiction books a little earlier than I did. I liked fantasy and science fiction movies. We used to watch Godzilla and Star Trek every Saturday afternoon after the chores were done. I just didn't know they made books like that. It wasn't until I was in 3rd grade that I stumbled across a copy of Dragonsong by Anne McCaffery. It was the cover that hooked me. Here was this pretty girl, and she had all these little miniature dragons flying around her? This could be good. Sure, there wouldn't be a mystery for me to solve probably, and it had a girl in it, but I liked dragons. They ate girls.

The setting of Pern haunts my dreams, now that I think about it. I remember how it slowly dawned on me how everyone lived in caves underground, and how the surface was dangerous. Underground settings are common in my nightmares especially.

The idea of ravenous Thread falling from the sky and eating everything in its path terrified and excited me. And then the fire lizards? Are you kidding me? As a kid who regularly rescued and tried to rear abandoned starlings and robins, who made a pet out of everything from snakes to spiders, this was what did me in. I wanted, more than anything in the world, to find fire lizard eggs and have the little things imprint on me. Now I have two fat cats that are about the same as having fire lizards, only they can't fly, teleport, or communicate empathically, but those are just minor details.

It hooked me. I read more. For a long time, all I read were the works of Anne McCaffery. I wrote her the only fan letter I have ever written. I don't remember what it said, and I can't recall ever having received an answer, but I seem to think that she did. Lost like all my old toys, I suspect. I was never good at keeping my belongings in order.

I know some folks like to make fun of Anne's work, something about horses and all, but for me, she was the first, not Heinlein or Asimov or any of the stuffy old men who wrote about robots and space ships. My introduction was a group of little flying dragons of many colors, and a sad girl living in a cave by the ocean. That's what I think of when I think of science fiction and fantasy literature.

What was yours?