What sparked your Sci-Fi love affair?

Turner is playing 2001 uncut and as a pristine theatrical release, which made me remember when my father and I first watched it on network TV (sometime in 1979ish days) when it was broadcast in simulcast (that is, a radio affiliate played the soundtrack in stereo and you listened to the radio through your hopefully kick-ass stereo system {8-track!} while watching the movie on TV).

That was when I realized I loved Sci-Fi.

What did it for you?

Btw, I'm posting during the Intermission - they actually had such things back in the day...

Back in the day Dad recorded The Menagerie on VHS, the weight he gave it made me realize it was something important. It was probably one of the first things he recorded with his new miracle machine.

Star Wars

Reading Rendezvous with Rama. After that I started on all the Clarke I could find, then moved on to Asimov and others.

I saw Forbidden Planet at the Grand Lake theater, in Oakland,
in June of 1956; a few days before my 9th birthday.

Santuary

Science fiction?
Why, that would be Star Trek. Back in 1984 (I was 4), on a little color television in our living room, my mom introduced me to the original series. I believe my first episode was "The Devil in the Dark". I remember the horta scaring the hell out of me, but I started watching every episode religiously. That is how it all started for me.

J.

I'm sorry you had to read any more Clarke after Rama got your hopes so high.

Star Trek

I started watching it when I was about 7 or 8 years old (back in the early 70s).

My parents religiously watched Star Trek and its spin-offs, as well as The X-Files and Babylon 5 - I quickly grew out of my cartoon phase and started watching their sci-fi shows with them.

A book called "Little Fuzzy" by H Beam Piper. I was maybe 11. My father was a big reader of sci fi, and that was the book he gave me when I asked him for a science fiction book.

A combination of Back to the Future, Red Dwarf, Star Wars and Star Trek.

Oh, Terminator too. Must be the first sci-fi flick I ever watched.

Star Trek, afternoon reruns at 4PM beginning sometime around 72 or 73, followed, in a couple of years, by the short stories and then novels of Robert A. Heinlien.

Star Trek TOS
Space 1999

Following shortly thereafter by the writings of R.A. Heinlein.

I'm sure it was some 50s sci fi movies I saw on TV when I was a tiny tot, like Conquest of Space or This Island Earth. Too long ago to remember.

I remember when my dad had the VHS tapes for Star Wars and I watched them constantly. After that, there were probably a lot of Sci-Fi movies that I watched and can't really remember, but while still a preteen I watched a show called Reboot about this living thinking programs inside of a computer. That series was more sort of inadvertently Sci-Fi, the situations and plots were all more everyday sorts of things, but there were overtones of Science Fiction.
Then X-Files. I fell in love instantly, it also propelled me further into occult, mysteries and conspiracy theory.

Initially, ST:TOS, plus the juvenile SF books that Isaac Asimov wrote under the pen name "Paul French"...the "Lucky Star" series.

Somewhat later, it was the Foundation Trilogy and the LOTR trilogy.

For me, it was The Hobbit at age 6.

One day in 1973 I came home from school (1st grade) to find that, instead of the usual afternoon cartoons, one of the teevee stations (the one I currently work for, in fact) was showing some space show called Star Trek.

I loved it and apparently so did many of my classmates. Before that week was over, we were all playing "Star Trek" during recess, using phasers we made from popsicle sticks.

The station ran Trek in strip syndication for a few years and I used to beg my mom to let me stay up "late" on Saturday nights to watch the episode they ran after the 10pm news. IIRC, the first time she let me do that was the first time I saw "Devil in the Dark".

Scared the shit out of me.


I wasn't interested much in other sci-fi/fantasy until Star Wars was released. I actually read the novel before I saw the movie because I had missed seeing it when it played at my little small town theater (one screen). I didn't see it until the 1978 re-release.

And even then, I remember thinking, "Where's Fixer and Camie? And what about the conversation between Luke and Biggs on Tatooine?"

Can't really remember, I was quite young.

Star Trek movies
Land of the Giants

And then of course, after the parade of 50s sci fi films I saw in the early 60s, plus the first anime incursion of Astro Boy, Gigantor and Eighth Man, it was all cemented in place by Irwin Allen and Trek.

I was born in 1957, so I grew up through the greatest days of the Space Age. The astronauts were real American heroes, and there were some great sci-fi movies and shows. When Lost in Space and Trek premiered, I was right there watching. Shows like The Twilight Zone and Thriller were awesome.

Lost in Space and TOS in the afternoons with a brother who loaned me all his sci-fi books. Good times!

I liked TOS and Starblazers as a child, and had read some of the Heinlein juvenile series such as Have Space Suit, Will Travel.

What sealed the deal was when I was about 10 and was sick for a month. VHS was pretty new (we had a beta!) and we only had two tapes, one was a chick flick and the other was The Wrath of Khan.

I must have watched TWOK forty times that month.

After that I was a convert.

TNG and ST IV:TVH in the mid-late 80's.

TNG was the first thing scifi for me when I was a kid. Then TOS which I didn't like until years later, then DS9 which I didn't like until years later either. Now I think DS9 is by far the best Trek ever got, and TNG and TOS both have great episodes spread out all over the series'.

I almost forgot! Add Ultraman and Johnny Socko & the Giant Robot to my list!

I grew up watching Dr Who, TOS, Blakes 7 and Sapphire and Steel, so that may have had some bearing on it

Dr Who. It started in 1963, when I was four. It was closely followed by Lost in Space (I was a kid, forgive me!) and TOS.