Back in the sixties, we all figured we'd have moon colonies by now . . .
Yep. I remember watching the Apollo landing - not the first one, as I was 6 and in July I would have been on holidays in British Columbia with my grandparents at the cabin and we didn't have electricity there. But one of the later ones happened when I was in school, and I remember how the Grade 2 and 3 kids were all gathered into the same classroom to watch it on TV.
Science fiction wasn't anything I was into at that time unless it was in cartoon form. If memory serves, one of the first science fiction stories I read was in Grade 6, about a teenage boy going to the Moon to spend a school holiday with his father who worked in an office there. The story took place in 1985, and was (I am possibly misremembering this detail) by Lester del Rey. I remember New Year's Day in 1985, feeling quite put out and wondering where all the Moon colonies were that we should have had by then.
Bradbury was on the reading list in Grade 7, with "There Will Come Soft Rains"... which scared the hell out of me (I'm old enough to remember "duck and cover" drills in school).
Honestly, I think that if it weren't for Star Trek, I might not have become a science fiction fan. It was the first non-cartoon science fiction program I saw, and it wasn't even my idea to watch it.
In the early winter of 1975 (in November), we'd just subscribed to cable TV. My grandfather was trying out the smorgasbord of shows we could get, after having been used to just 2 channels for so many years.
One night he decided to watch Star Trek. I took one look at Spock's pointed ears, said, "This looks dumb, I want to watch something else" (I was into cop shows at that time, and my preferred reading included various juvenile mystery series; I still enjoy Alfred Hitchcock and The Three Investigators).
My grandfather told me to sit down, shut up, watch the program, or go to my room. So I sat down, shut up, watched the show... and found it more interesting than I'd expected. The episode was "By Any Other Name" and I remember thinking, "That wasn't so bad."
Star Trek was on 5 days a week, on two different channels at that time, the start times a half-hour apart. So I decided to try the next episode to see if it was any good. I don't remember what it was, but it must have been. On November 28, 1975 I bought my first two Star Trek books - Star Trek 4 and 6 by James Blish. And I had to admit that I was hooked.
That was the beginning of a lifelong love of science fiction. I was 12, and discovered that my school library had a wonderful selection of science fiction. So I read stories and novels by The Big Three, plus numerous others, and then I also discovered Asimov's essay collections. I remember my teachers being flabbergasted at a girl reading science fiction, and my classmates being flabbergasted that I'd read Asimov's essays. "What class is that for?" one of them asked. She couldn't believe her ears when I told her, "It's not for any class. It's for fun."
I also became more interested in astronomy. I'd always been interested in stargazing, but hadn't known much about them. That changed when I found the library's copy of
The Concise Atlas of the Universe and spent a lot of noon hours learning about star formation, stellar evolution, and so on.
And all through this Star Trek was a constant. That half-hour offset between the two channels was a little annoying, though. It took over a year and a half to finally see the first half of "Conscience of the King" - the last episode I saw in its entirety back then, since I'd seen the second half twice and didn't have much idea of what was going on.
Fast-forward through the years, and my grandfather got pretty annoyed. "I'm tired of hearing about dat damn silly Star Trek!" he exclaimed one day. So I reminded him that it was his fault - if he'd let me change the channel that day in 1975, my TV and reading habits wouldn't have turned around so abruptly from cop shows and mysteries to science fiction and science documentaries.
Funny thing, though - my grandfather was pretty omnivorous in his reading, and liked a lot of my science fiction books. I don't think he ever read any Star Trek, but he liked Arthur C. Clarke and some of the TV shows like the Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, and Wonder Woman.
Star Trek really did change the course of my life. There are so many things I would never have done, places I would never have gone, and people I would never have met, if not for that show. Reading
The Making of Star Trek prompted me to apply for a job working backstage in musical theatre, and a chance glance at the author's afterword of one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels mentioned some organization called The Society for Creative Anachronism. I joined that in 1986, after finding out that we had a local branch in my city. Most of the people in that group were into science fiction (including Star Trek), fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons, strategic boardgames, and computers. So I learned a lot - everything from medieval dancing and calligraphy to how to deal with Aztecs with nuclear weapons (in the Civilization computer game).
It's been quite a journey over the last nearly 42 years. I'd hate to think what life would have been like otherwise. Undoubtedly a lot more boring.
I remember watching Tomorrow's people and Blake's 7 as a child. I had no idea what was going on but still enjoyed it. The same with Star Trek reruns. I liked the Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy as a teen. read the book and watched the BBC series.
(I was a 70's child and an 80's teen)
Do you mean the 1970s version of
The Tomorrow People? There's some really good fanfic around based on that original series. I had such a crush on Stephen...
I made the mistake of watching
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (the TV series) when my grandmother was home. She walked into the room during the "Pangalactic Gargle-Blaster" scene, and was promptly horrified. She didn't think that show was at all suitable for kids (keep in mind that I was in my 20s when this happened, but she reacted as though I were about 10). I wonder she'd have said if she'd walked in on the scene of the naked man walking back into the ocean?
I may as well add in my 2 cents for this. Although I had seen Star Trek TOS as a kid and then the animated, what actually got me into science fiction was books. My earliest was taking the White Mountains books to read when I was 8 years old, and thus having tripod nightmares for a while. Then the L'Engel books and then Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert, and it bloomed into books, TV and movies. So yeah, even if TOS hadn't been there, I'd still be a science fiction fan.
There was a TV series about the Tripods. I don't think it was completed, though. As I recall, they only did the first two novels.
, but overall it was an entertaining film to me.
