The show/movie that got you into Sci Fi?

[Aragorn]

In the afternoons after coming home from grade school, my local stations ran reruns of Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers. Probably have to throw in Star Wars, especially since there were toys to go along with it. I could swear I saw Star Trek II in theaters, but I would've been way too young, so maybe it's a misremember (which is a real word despite everyone who is snickering at Roger Clemens).

 

[captcalhoun]

early 80s reruns of TOS, BSG (the real one), Larson's Buck Rogers and Doctor Who.

comics/superheroes is solely the fault of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.

 

[Hermiod]

Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

 

[Roshi]

Star Trek, UFO Robo Grendizer and Captain Harlock.
'twas in 1978.

 

[Silent_Bob]

For me it was reading H.G Wells War of the Worlds when i was ten. Read it all in one night and i still have vivid memories of doing so thanks to the absolute terror i experienced later that night. The Central heating packed in, so i awoke at 4 in the morning to the sound of loud, banging water pipes. I was absolutely convinced that there were Martian Tripods outside my house, and spent the rest of the night cowering in the corner of my bedroom listening to them "stomp past".

 

[Steve Roby]

The CBS evening news, covering the Apollo program.

That led to THE RELUCTANT ASTRONAUT and IT'S ABOUT TIME, IT'S ABOUT SPACE, and of course 2001: a space odyssey and then books like THE RUNAWAY ROBOT and TUNNEL THROUGH TIME.

Eventually wound up seeing Trek in syndication in early 70s, but 2001 was the big decider for me (I'd already seen it 6 times by then.)

That's the closest to my own experience. We used to get the Random House Beginner Books series by mail, and one of them was called You Will Go to the Moon, which I was fascinated by. That was maybe a year before the first moon landing (in 1969; I was 6 then), and space was big news for the next several years.

First SF movie? A bit of 2001 at the drive-in, but my Dad got bored and we left early. TV -- probably Star Trek, which my mother liked, or maybe Ultraman. I got a few SF kids' books as presents.

But it wasn't until 1972 that I became aware of science fiction as a genre; that's when a school teacher told us we should read all the cool SF books in the school library. And I did.

By 1973 or '74 I noticed the Star Trek books in the stores and tried one of them out not long before the reruns came back on the air locally, and suddenly SF seemed to be everywhere. Or I just became aware of it. I was also still seeing stuff like Apollo/Soyuz on live TV. It was a great time to be interested in space and SF.

 

[barnaclelapse]

That would be Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek VI. I saw VI in theaters roughly around the time I started watching TNG.

Though really, you could technically go back to my love of comic books (which are a little more fantasy than science fiction) and even Ghostbusters (which had science fiction elements to it, I think) when I was around three or so.

 

[JustKate]

TOS on its first run. Yes, I am that old. After that, it was repeats of Twilight Zone and repeats of TOS. I sense a theme here...

 

[backstept]

Star Trek TNG

 

[Pindar]

I just found mine is out on DVD!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Star-Fleet-Complete-DVD/dp/B00171EE9E

I loved this show when it first came out. I was hooked, week after week following the crew of the X-Bomber in what was an early (1982) story arc-driven series.

That and Doctor Who, but this show came first for me.

What got you hooked?

I had the album by Brian May.

Send a message out to earth control.

 

[Mysterion]

First-run episodes of TOS and Heinlein's "juvies".

 

[Mistral]

First-run episodes of TOS and Heinlein's "juvies".

This ^ and R Is For Rocket by Bradbury, I, Robot by Asimov and A Wrinkle In Time by L'Engle. Then I read the Tripods trilogy by Christopher and there was no looking back.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Been a long time, but I think it was a Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, or Lost in Space. Or a combo thereof.

 

[Silvercrest]

My earliest scifi memory is reading the book The Forgotten Door in 3rd grade.

Ha, I just ordered that book from Amazon last week, along with Escape to Witch Mountain. I first read them in 5th grade (1978 or thereabouts). I finally decided it had been too long, especially after I found that my library doesn't have either one.

As for what got me started: "Star Trek" reruns in the mid-late 1970s. And then "Star Wars" really cemented it.

 

[trevanian]

The CBS evening news, covering the Apollo program.

That led to THE RELUCTANT ASTRONAUT and IT'S ABOUT TIME, IT'S ABOUT SPACE, and of course 2001: a space odyssey and then books like THE RUNAWAY ROBOT and TUNNEL THROUGH TIME.

Eventually wound up seeing Trek in syndication in early 70s, but 2001 was the big decider for me (I'd already seen it 6 times by then.)

That's the closest to my own experience. We used to get the Random House Beginner Books series by mail, and one of them was called You Will Go to the Moon, which I was fascinated by. That was maybe a year before the first moon landing (in 1969; I was 6 then), and space was big news for the next several years.

First SF movie? A bit of 2001 at the drive-in, but my Dad got bored and we left early. TV -- probably Star Trek, which my mother liked, or maybe Ultraman. I got a few SF kids' books as presents.

But it wasn't until 1972 that I became aware of science fiction as a genre; that's when a school teacher told us we should read all the cool SF books in the school library. And I did.

By 1973 or '74 I noticed the Star Trek books in the stores and tried one of them out not long before the reruns came back on the air locally, and suddenly SF seemed to be everywhere. Or I just became aware of it. I was also still seeing stuff like Apollo/Soyuz on live TV. It was a great time to be interested in space and SF.

NASA used to respond to mail requests in the 60s by sending out huge packets of NASA FACTS, that you could cut and fold into nice little documents. I had so much NASA stuff in 67 it was insane. By 70, I had stuff like LIFE SCIENCE IN A SPACE AGE SETTING, a 400 page book from them that was as far over my head as the Saturn V ... and that was all just from writing to ask for an autograph of Schirra or somebody a couple years earlier. Your tax dollars at work I guess, but man, I ate that stuff up.

 

[zakkrusz]

The original Transformers.

 

[Count Zero]

Star Trek TOS in reruns when I was a kid in the 80s.

 

[DanTheGrey]

Hard to say really. Late 70's could have been any number of things. Star Trek re-runs, seeing Star Wars, even re-runs of Wild Wild West, Thunderbirds or Buck Rodgers. Basically I grew up in the late 70's when there was a lot of weird and wacky shows.

 

[MrAtoZ]

The CBS evening news, covering the Apollo program.

Exactly, followed by Star Trek on Friday nights at 10PM in color

 

[shivkala]

Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Encounter at Far Point," did it for me.