What was your childhood favorite science fiction?  The ones that got you hooked?

I clearly remember discovering Andre Norton's science fiction and Robert Heinlein's juveniles in 5th grade.  Later in high school, my favorites turned to Arthur C. Clarke, H.G.Wells, and Jules Verne.

-Tom Hl.

I didn't really read much science fiction when I was a kid.  But I read Dread Companion by Andre Norton back then and always for some reason remembered the character names Bartare and Oomark, even though I didn't remember the story.  (I had to track down the Bartare and Oomark story once I got older!  *grin*)

When I was  a little older, I started enjoying Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and Orson Scott Card's Ender series.  <== These got me into SF.

Definitely Heinlein, especially Have Space Suit - Will Travel and Citizen of the Galaxy, which I must have ready dozens of times, sometimes I'd finish and start right over again.  Fahrenheit 451 was another I read when I was very young (probably the first "adult" book I ever read) and I also remember reading A Wrinkle in Time and some of L'Engle's other related books at that age.  later in high school I read a lot of Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, and also Dune, which has to be my #1 pick.  I guess Michael Crichton deserves a mention, since I read Jurassic Park as a teenager, and then all his other novels, some science fiction, some not.

These books were the ones that hooked me:  Farnam's Freehold, Tunnel in the Sky, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, On the Beach and Alas Babylon.

I read and loved A Wrinkle in Time as a child, but not much beyond that that I'd identify as SF. It wasn't until middle school, when my mom made me read Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern as a punishment for returning my library books late, that I got into the genre -- went from there to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series, and then my dad got in on the action and gave me Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and Kurt Vonnegut to read as well, and I was hooked. :)

The full list of the "Heinlein juveniles" is:

1. Rocket Ship Galileo, 1947
2. Space Cadet, 1948
3. Red Planet, 1949
4. Between Planets, 1951
5. The Rolling Stones aka Space Family Stone, 1952
6. Farmer in the Sky, 1953
7. Starman Jones, 1953
8. The Star Beast, 1954
9. Tunnel in the Sky, 1955
10. Time for the Stars, 1956
11. Citizen of the Galaxy, 1957
12. Have Space Suit—Will Travel, 1958

I would also consider Podkayne of Mars (1962) as one of Heinlein's juveliles, though I realize it was not part of the initial sequence of "books for boys."

Martian Chronicles,

Star Trek,

The John Tripod series

The Chanur Series

Tom Corbett books, Lucky Starr books, The Mastermind of Mars and a Wrinkle in Time.  I also loved one of Andre Norton's, I think it was Beastmaster.  And I read all the Heinlein juveniles.  Can't say which one got me hooked.

I got hooked on SF very early.  Would listen to "Tom Corbett - Space Patrol" on the radio Saturday morning (This was in 1951, and I was about 6).  Started reading short stories in magazines such as Amazing and all the anthologies that were around  then graduated to novels.  Had an understnd school librarian who actually made an effor t to stock SF even it was considered "trash" at the time.   Still recall slogging my way thru "Pebble in the Sky" in 4th grade.  

As an aside, when I went into the Navy my ESS (evil step sister) destroyed my large collection of 40's and early 50's pulp SF.  I am still sure there is a special cirlce of Hell awaiting her. 

Oddly,  the Tom Swift books (Tom Swift and his Flying Lab, etc) were part of what got me hooked on science fiction.

Isaac Asimov, especially I, Robot, and the Foundation series.  Also Frank Herbert's Dune, and then later, the Dragonriders of Pern, which I can't believe hasn't been made into a movie yet!

Come on Peter Jackson, I know you can do it!

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Just posted some great new books on my bookshelf - check it out!

I was an avid reader from an early age. When I was nine, I rode my bike down to Morse Park in the middle of town where the Winter Park Memorial Hospital auxiliary was holding it's annual White Elephant Sale.  While rooting around one big tent, I came across a cardboard box full of old Sci-Fi magazines like If, Astounding, and Galaxy Science Fiction.  It might have been the lurid covers or perhaps just the wonderful titles, but I had to have that box!  My mother was a member of the hospital auxiliary and was working in that tent.  I only had a dollar and the price on the box was two dollars,          so I had to borrow a dollar from her against my next week's lawn mowing money to buy that box of magazines.  I remember that she was a little sceptical of the content, but after all, I was reading!  I read every magazine cover to cover, sometimes after bedtime with a flashlight under the covers, and I was hooked!  Then I moved to the Science Fiction section of the school library and the local public library.  A couple of years later, I and a friend used to take the bus to downtown Orlando to watch movies at the Beacham Theater and then shop the used paperbacks at Mcvickers, a big bookstore around the corner from the Beacham.  I still have a lot of the Ace doubles I picked up there!  Oh, I should mention it was 1955 when I picked up that box of magazines that changed my life forever!

I still think about The Mile Long Spaceship, all of Zenna Henderson's books, Level Seven and there was a book about a space ship carrrying settlers and it had mechanical troubles and everyone had to evacuate the ship by getting in small life pods (like clear bubbles) that held two or maybe more and a man and his wife where separated and she was placed in with another man and bad things happened to her.  All of the pods where radio connected and her husband (and everyone else) could hear her and I don't remember what happened but I know it wasn't good.  I also liked anything about catastrophies that ended the earth as we know it.  If anyone knows the title of this book, I would really like the info.

Besides Jules Verne, what got me interested in "science-fiction" was the serials that were shown, chapter by chapter, at the kids' Saturday afternoon programs at a local movie theater, in particular, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon.  Then I found a "Big Little Book" at a second-hand book store, about Flash Gordon.  This was the early 1940s, friends!