It is the 80th birthday of Science Fiction Fandom
Science Fiction and Fantasy are…(is?) Something near and dear to my heart. It is the genre I love most, one that seems to be able to break the bonds of fiction and do whatever the heck it wants to do. I think every good writer is a fan of what they write, or want to write, before they even put pen to paper. Or fingers to keys…
Here are a couple of articles on the history of Science Fiction Fandom:
Click here for one from Tor.com
Click here to read a memoir from one of the original SciFi club members. The article is about the early days of fandom and written in 1961.
As for me? I’ve been reading Science Fiction and Fantasy for as far back as I can remember. I don’t know of a time when I wasn’t a fan… It helps that my brother is 3 or 4 years older then I am, so I used to read his hand-me-down books. As soon as he read a book, I’d pick it up and start reading it. I made it through many classic adventures that way…
The first “real” science fiction book I remember reading is “Have Space Suit, Will Travel” by Robert Heinlein. I don’t know what age that was, but I know I had to be in first or second grade. By the
time I entered fourth grade, I started to make my way through the Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. I quickly adopted a stable of authors I adored, populated by such authors as Asimov and Clarke as well as Niven, Lewis, Tolkien, Bujold, and many others. My mom let me have an ‘adult’ library card when I was but a lad of 11, when I started complaining that the children’s section of the library contained no new scifi or fantasy. In fact it came to pass that I ran out of books to read in the adult section as well.
At that time my friend and I begged our mothers to let us have our own, joint, Post Office box. We didn’t use this PO Box for regular mail, mind you, but instead we ended up subscribing to the science fiction book club. In fact we subscribed under our own names…then under about 10 other different made up names. Pretty soon I had a science fiction and fantasy book collection that rivaled the local library.
This lead to me starting to write SciFi and Fantasy. I can still remember my first attempt as a writer, a story for my freshman english class. (High School Freshman, fyi.) It was a story that had more to do with fantasy then science fiction, about a boy seeking revenge for the murder of his family and seeking the ethereal will’o'wisp.
Since then I have been delighted, frustrated, angered, excited, in love, and many different other emtions with both my own fiction and the fiction of others. In all that I tend to keep to the genre that fascinated me so long ago and helped propel me in to writing. (Not yet professional writing…but soon.) No matter what happens, I will always been a fan at heart. Those that are a fan of our genre tend to be a unique lot and I am glad to be part of that multi-hued and motley mass of humanity.
I hope you have a good Dec. 11 and remember: All professional sci fi and fantasy writers started out as fans first. I am sure there are those that didn’t, but you can usually tell them from the ones that hold the genre near and dear to their hearts.
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