How It Started

I grew up on Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers on primetime TV, Star Trek in syndication, and Flash Gordon on the big screen. Once Star Wars broke the mold in 1977, everyone in Hollywood and Burbank wanted in on the money train. We were awash in ray guns, space ships, and bikini tops that looked like Jiffy Pop. For the most part, it was enjoyable dreck, but some things worked. To a point, anyway.

I honestly can’t remember a time when I didn’t watch Sci-Fi TV and movies.

But as for written science fiction, well, I have only four memories of how that habit got started.

First, there was the novelization of The Empire Strikes Back. I got it from one of those “Mom, can I have five dollars to buy books?” flyers Mrs. Torkelson passed out once a quarter. Luckily for me, the books arrived the day before a fine spring day in 1980 turned into a four day blizzard. One thing about growing up in North Dakota, you got a lot of time to read for about 8 months of the year.

Over that extended weekend, I read that thing from cover to cover four or five times. After we went back to school, I was raiding the little library room in the school basement next to the lunchroom/fallout shelter for more. All they had was Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which started a lifetime of arguments with fellow geeks.

Next came 1982, and an overnight railroad trip with my father. He was working on Amtrak at the time, and took me to Williston, North Dakota on the train. Basically, I got told to sit in an empty cabin in one of the sleeper cars, was given a pop and some crackers from the bar, and told to stay quiet and not let anyone see me.

Now that I think about it, that little jaunt may not have been entirely kosher with Burlington Northern.

Anyway, while we were waiting to get on the train in Minot, I spent some money I’d made doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to buy a book. The Wrath of Khan was coming out, and being a budding nerd, I got the novelization.

I learned several things during that trip.

First, I learned that I should never sit backwards on a train and try to read. Thank goodness for that warm can of Sprite.

Second, I learned that my father kept a crash pad at one of the no-tell motels in Williston. This became important that evening when I had a quiet place to sit and read while he went out to visit some ‘friends’. This also became important later that year when my mother’s lawyer had a nice, friendly chat with me about that trip.

Third, I found a whole new Star Trek world to slip into when I wanted to. I had no idea that there were so many Star Trek books. Eventually, I think I read all of the novelizations of the TV episodes and most of the novels that expanded on the show and movies.

Next came my introduction to fantasy. I had seen the Rankin-Bass Hobbit on TV at a quite young age, and I liked it. To be honest, their depiction of Gollum scared the bejeezus out of me, but hey, I was six. Also, honestly, I was more enchanted with Luke Skywalker than I was with Bilbo Baggins. If only I had known what would happen to poor Luke once Mickey got his hands on him…. My boy, look what they did to my boy…. Anyway, long story short, I’m an oddity for Gen X in that my intro to written fantasy was not The Hobbit.

My intro to fantasy was The Elfstones of Shannara, a tome of a book by Terry Brooks. Yes, I introduced myself to a new genre by slogging through 500 pages of elves, demons, sword fights and all that, smack dab in the middle of a trilogy. I got it as payment for watching my mother’s drinking buddy’s kids while she and Mom disappeared for a weekend in 1983. I wasn’t paid for watching my brothers and sisters, of course, but Mizz Whateverhernamewas must have felt bad that I was going to spend 48 hours responsible for 7 kids, and her ex had left the book behind before heading for the hills.

In order to figure out what Elfstones was about, I chewed my way through the other two books in the trilogy when I found copies over the next couple of years. That pretty much quenched my love of fantasy, at least for a time. Brooks is a fantastic writer, but I didn’t stay up late turning pages on those.

Thank goodness for the sorry state of California’s educational system in the 1980’s, because when we moved to the Bay Area in ‘87, I got put into what they considered an ‘advanced’ literature course and read The Hobbit. Since I could read without moving my lips, I finished that one over a weekend instead of the six weeks the teacher spent on it.

Come to think of it, that class was also where I first read Lord of the Flies, and suddenly my upbringing started to make sense.

Hobbit led to The Lord of the Rings and just about everything else that Tolkien wrote. I did learn something from all this, which is to read The Hobbit to your kids when they’re little so that fantasy doesn’t feel like a slog unless they get lucky and stumble upon a ring in a cavern somewhere.

Finally, of course, we come to Heinlein. It was 1985, and I had been relegated to sleeping in the overcab bed of my stepfather’s RV while my mom and he slept in my Nana’s house in Minnesota. He had a milk crate of books up there, some of which were actually appropriate for my age. I read Starship Troopers from cover to cover by the light of a flashlight and a full moon before one of those early summer thunderstorms, complete with lightning, hail, and tornado sirens made it altogether too loud to read or sleep.

That sent me down the rabbit hole of juveniles, not so juveniles, and “Wow, I can never talk about this book with Mom” stories. Out of all of the authors I read in this list, I’ve reread Heinlein more than anyone else.

Anyway, that’s how I stumbled into reading science fiction and fantasy. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.