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The
very first science fiction book I read was War of the Worlds by H.
G. Wells. I was immediately hooked on the genre and off I went to
the local library where I couldn’t find a Science Fiction section;
this was Manchester 1958 and everything in the local library was
found from knowledge of the Dewy decimal system with numbers
relating to authors but my problem was that I had no idea who were
the Science Fiction authors!
Asking the librarian was not much use;
she looked at me down the glasses poised on the end of her nose as
if I was a mutant from another galaxy and said ‘why don’t you read
the classics instead of that kind of rubbish’?
Science Fiction became my kind of
rubbish ever since. Don’t people like that make you want to prove
them wrong? Eventually I found out that the publishers GOLLANCZ were
printing lots of Science Fiction novels and even if the library had
no section or classification for them, they did have one distinct
advantage; they were in bright yellow covers and could easily be
located by their jackets, as often I had no clue to find them by
title or author in those, now, far off days. So my method in the
library was to seek out all yellow books.
Thank You Mr Gollancz!
And guess what Science Fiction these
days has a section in the library and better still one author has
been awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, yes a Science Fiction
author! Doris Lessing. Her book called Shikasta probably stopped her
getting this prize sooner as Science Fiction is still not regarded
as good literature by the ‘hoy palloy’.
The following books are in no particular
order they are all a great and worthwhile read.
Also I have included some films, TV
shows and other related items. |
