How the SpecFic Monster Ate My Brain...

Stolen from fiddlersgreen... I've been into the general sci-fi fantasy thing as long as I can remember. My parents both enjoy it, so it was only natural that I did too. Mostly, this was through television. Star Trek, mostly, but a lot of varied stuff that was on, and cartoons, always appealed to me. Around the time I was in kindergarten, or maybe a little before, I got into D&D, with my brother. We found an old boxed set (the old red basic) set my dad had but never really played. And got started. One of my earliest memories is when my brother had to go to a full day of school and I was only on half days, waiting for him to come home so we could play. We'd play all the time during lunch and after school. We'd read the books in class, despite them being well-above our grade level. This naturally lead us into reading books based on the stuff. The one I think got me started in reading entirely, at least in-depth were the Dragonlance novels. They were just so fantastic at that age, funny and
tragic and full of magic and adventure and all that I wanted out of life. For much of my early life, up until something like the 2nd year of high school, most of what I read was fantasy, and was of the D&D tie-in fantasy no less, although there were some exceptions (I recall reading Neuromancer in Jr. High, when we were branching out to Cyberpunk RPG.. specifically because there was _one_ graphic sex scene in the book, and for some bizarre reason, whenever anyone picked up the book and turned to a random page, it was always _that_ page. Teachers too, but luckily they were fairly cool about it.) At any rate, I still read an awful lot, but it was mostly restricted to that. Then, one day, on almost a whim, I decided to look into sci-fi books, and one that caught my interest (I got a couple, but this is the one that stuck out) was Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. I read it, and just couldn't stop. It was amazing, and I still rank it as one of my favorite books. I realized that if such an amazing story
was in the Sci-Fi section rather than the fantasy one, then I really needed to be reading more Sci-Fi. And so I crossed the threshold. Since then, I've probably read less than 10 pure fantasy novels. I tore into SF, trying to track down the classics, anything that won a Hugo or a Nebula or was mentioned on Prisoners of Gravity (a Canadian TV show about comics, sci-fi and fantasy books, talking to authors about various topics).I've read an awful lot of great books, from Ender's Game to Dune to 1984 to huge short story collections to Heinlein to many others,and am still reading. I joined the SF book club. I think if I hadn't crossed the fantasy/sci-fi divide, I'd probably have mostly stopped, fantasy was beginning to lose its interest for me anyway. With Sci-Fi, though, there are so many different universes out there, whereas most fantasy is just telling slight variations on the same basic ideas and themes.
With comics, once again, my brother got me into it, mainly. He started in them with his friends, and so me, wanting to be like him, wanted to find out what it was all about, so I kept pestering him for one. I remember the one he gave me, for me. One he figured I'd like more, I guess, because the people were my age. Power Pack, #17. I didn't understand it all (it was, after all, a part in an ongoing series with plots-in-progress), but I really liked it, and started following the series on my own. The other comic I specifically remember is Psi-Force #12, which might have been the first comic I actually _bought_. It was part of New Universe and I later got involved with that and it's still one of my favorite universes (I play Scuzz, who's from DP7, another New U title. Actually, DP7 holds another special honor, it's the only comic series I've been able to get my Dad to read. It was right after or during the divorce, and he was pretty depressed so it was my childish effort to cheer him up and bond with
him, and he seemed to enjoy it). Power Pack and New Universe all still hold a very special place in my heart. I read others, too, my brother was a bigger collector than I was and I often read isolated ones he had. I liked the X-Men characters but not always the comics. Sometime in the 90s, though, after both of Power Pack and New Universe were gone, I slowly left comics entirely, although I kept in touch with many of the events cause I always played on Comic MU*s. I came back due to Ultimate X-Men, which I read online and it excited me enough that I started picking up the issues, which lead me to get interested in the other comics out that time and soon boom, I was back into them again full swing, buying TPB collections and a whole bunch of serieses.
TV-wise, still, most of what I watch has some SF or fantasy or horror element to it. I'll sometimes watch other shows for various reasons, like some courtroom dramas (and I have a strange weakness for occasional well done sappy high-school teen dramas), and of course non-fiction stuff, but the stuff that gets me really excited is the SF. Right now, there's not a whole lot of it that's good and still going, unforutnately. In the past, of shows no longer on, my favorites have been Buffy, DS9, Farscape, Firefly, early Sliders, Quantum Leap, early X-Files, Nowhere Man, the Prisoner (of course) and a couple others.