BACKGROUND: There are those (I don't understand them, but it appears they exist) who don't "get" sci fi/fantasy. Or maybe they want to dip a toe in, but aren't sure where to start. So, I thought it might be helpful to talk about a few factors I think might've influenced my addiction interest in these genres.
- Constantly moving and/or unusual environments: When I was young (ages 0-5), my father was an officer on a nuclear submarine. So, as navy families do, we moved. A lot. That meant constantly adapting to new places, people, food, music, etc. I see parallels with sci fi planetary colonists, etc. The last place we were stationed was Hawaii. I'm not talking downtown Waikiki with its tourist traps and high-rise hotels. We were in the boondocks (if an island can be said to have boondocks) and it was the late 60's. TV was limited to "Felix the Cat", we were dependent on the timely arrival of supply ships, and we weren't exactly a welcome addition to the neighborhood. Dad would be gone 3 months at a time on the sub. I was 3-5 and my brother was 0-3. Mom was alone with us. There was quite a lot of crime (some serious). At the same time, we were surrounded by tropical plants and animals and I only had to duck my head under the water to see a completely different world via the coral reefs. If all that didn't leave me wide open for tag lines like "...explore strange new worlds..." and all the wonders and dangers attendant thereto, then nothing would.
- History: Mom's side of the family lived in Santa Fe, NM. We visited a lot and my grandmother (a teacher) exposed me to a lot of the art, culture and history of the Southwest. She gave me a whole set of books with each book devoted to a different Native American tribe and what their daily life was like from how they built their homes to how they dressed and what food they hunted or planted. I have no idea who the author was, but I loved those books and read them until they fell apart. My recollection is they were quite detailed and while I'm sure they wouldn't hold up to today's standards, I can still remember (among other things) the descriptions of how to use all the parts of a buffalo or how to carry a water jug up the side of a pueblo. I especially loved descriptions of beading and decorations on clothing - probably why I got into beading and jewelry-making later in life. We took many side trips around the Southwest to places like Bandelier and Silverton.
- Mysteries, Westerns & other Sub-genres: Early on, many of the sub-genres shared various tropes like the mysterious stranger with no past, etc. While I was never a huge straight-up mystery fan, I do like the formula and if you mix it with fantasy goodness...well, yumm! In addition to spending a lot of my childhood in the Southwest, I had other Western influences in my life. I met Western author Louis L'Amour on the train to Silverton. I read some of his books and Dad and I always bonded over movies like "The Magnificent Seven" (original only...sorry Chris Pratt) and "The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly" (nothing better than vintage Clint Eastwood). Like most girls at the time, I couldn't get enough of the "Little House on the Prairie" books. While they aren't fantasy themselves, to a 20th century girl, they smacked of time travel or settling on another world and trying to survive. In fact, I'm sure there's a whole host of sci-fi books that could be re-titled "Little House on the 7th Alien Moon" or whatever.
- Archaeology & Marine Biology: Give me a good episode of "Wild Kingdom" or a Jacques Cousteau film any day. The home we moved to in California (after Hawaii) where I grew up was on a pre-historic reef. I used to hunt for fossils and shark's teeth. Dragons, anyone? Ancient civilizations? Ancient aliens? Other worlds? You see where I'm going with this...
- Weekend Movies: I remember a whole series of movies both in the theater and on the Channel 5 Family Film Festival with what, for the time, were probably cutting edge special effects, but now, they'd be laughed at. Still, "Sinbad the Sailor", 'The Thief of Baghdad", etc. certainly impacted me and don't even get me started on the rich vein of the darker/horror side of things that was Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and the movies she intro'd (in a great programming move, she was on right after Family Film Festival)
- Reading in General: I'm a voracious reader. Always have been. Mom taught me to read above my grade level well before even kindergarten and by 5th grade, I'd tested out of the entire rest of the elementary school reading program and the teachers didn't know what to do with me so I was put on "free" reading. Translation: go read whatever the f*** you want because you're already reading above the teacher's level, too, and we want you to go away and stop bothering us, you freakish little girl." I immersed myself in a lot of mythology - when I ran out of Greek & Roman, I moved on to Welsh, Arthurian, Norse, etc. I will give a special shout out to my 3rd grade teacher who, whenever it was rainy day schedule or he just didn't feel like teaching, he would get out this old Madeira wine jug (not a tall bottle - the short, fat, round kind) that had different colors of candle wax dripped all down the side from the various candles he'd used in it over the years. He'd turn off all the lights, light the candle and read out loud to us.
- Other Early Influences: Chretien de Troyes, Sir Thomas Malory (Le Morte D'Arthur), Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, etc.) Jules Verne (Captain Nemo & the Nautilus), Alexandre Dumas (best character name ever - D'artagnan AND knightly French dudes with swords!), and Edgar Allan Poe (love me some Raven).
Now, this is not to say that you need all or, indeed, any of the above to enjoy sci-fi/fantasy. I'm just saying that some of this kind of stuff might make you more open to it and/or make the first foray easier. For example, you don't need to care about art, culture, architecture, history or even speak French to enjoy visiting Paris. But...you might have a deeper, more profound level of enjoyment if you also had an appreciation of any of those things (or maybe just drank a lot of wine...) Now, imagine how much you'd get out of the trip if you liked all that crap AND spoke the language...just a thought.
However, let's say you've never touched sci-fi/fantasy, you don't speak the lingo, you can't tell the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars and you're not familiar with Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. What do you do? Have an open mind. Suspend your disbelief at least a little bit. Try a bit of everything (hard sci-fi, soft sci-fi, space opera, high fantasy, urban fantasy, fantasy/romance, grim/dark, even horror if that's the kind of thing you think might appeal to you) until you see what fits. It's kinda like trying on shoes...or being Goldilocks. Which reminds me...if you know your Brothers Grimm or your Hans Christian Anderson, you'll have a leg up. And, please...appreciate the Disney versions (if you must), but don't rely on them. Although, I do have a soft spot for "Maleficent" - that was pretty well done.
Next, a few caveats as to why I'm leaving certain things OFF the list...
KJ
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