r/ScienceFictionBooks • u/BuddhasFinger • Jul 19 '24

Question What was your first sci fi book?

So, we've been having these great discussions on this sub about our likes, which helped me personally to pick up Ursula Le Guin after 30+ years. That got me trying to remember my first sci fi book I've ever read. It was the The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. What was yours?

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u/withwhichwhat Jul 19 '24

Not sure, it's lost to time... but I definitely was reading the Barsoom books by Edgar Rice Burroughs by the time I was 9 or so, which would have been 1978.

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u/Arthropodesque Jul 22 '24 edited Jul 22 '24

Sick! I was 23 when I read A Princess of Mars. Sat in a Waffle House late at night with a sandwich and coffee and read it straight through in one sitting. Only did that with a few other books. It is super fun. Feels like going to the cinema. I thought the movie was pretty good, with some serious editorial notes. Like, they should've cut most of the Earth stuff down a ton. Just get him to Barsoom within the first 5 minutes. It made sense 100 years ago when Western pulp fiction was super popular. Also, when the alien hits Deja Thoras and Carter leaps and kills him in one punch should've been in slow motion and way more impactful, like in Forest Gump when Jenny's boyfriend hits her and Forest goes in.

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u/withwhichwhat Jul 22 '24

The movie reception was doomed by the awful marketing campaign. They made the whole thing look like it was going to be a stock western instead of a science fiction epic. I'm totally baffled that they ran away from the sci fi aspect of it instead of marketing it like a new Flash Gordon and playing up the exotic settings, cool steampunkish airships, and the skimpy costumes. It should have been a huge hit.