How Did You Get Interested In Sci-fi/Fantasy?

We all have our beginnings we can crossed that imaginary line and became of fan of fantasy or science fiction.  It could have happened a number of ways: a book, a movie, TV, or even an old radio show.  Now, it may not have happened all at once, but once you realized you liked genres, you were hooked.  Admit it.  I did, a long time ago.  I grew up with my family watching westerns, campy sit-coms like the Brady Bunch, and even cop shows.  SWAT and Adam-12 were my favorite at one point, even though I was only in the second grade. But weekends had the escape shows that enhanced the imagination.  I was exposed to shows like Lost in Space, Star Trek, big Japanese monster movies, and of course, The Six Million Dollar Man.   At that age, I spent more time watching TV for fun than reading and when movies like Star Wars arrived, I was already entrenched.

Those early TV shows spring boarded me into the 80s and 90s.  I was ready to uncover new shows like Buck Rogers,  Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Movies with cool special effects were on the rise, but now I wanted to read the stories behind them and books became a focus.  I also think the 80s time period saw the real rise of the modern day fantasy novel genre.  So many good books came out in the mid 80s and into the 90s that attracted readers who wanted to go beyond what we had experienced from J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  Some of my earliest reading was the entire collection of Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  To me, those stories weren't detective mysteries, they were fantasy, set it a Victorian age.

You see, it's hard to pick just one point where we leap over the line and declare ourselves sci-fi/fantasy geeks.  The experiences I've had over my 45 years on this planet have led me to new worlds, far off planets, different dimensions, and distant times.  Take a moment and think back on what first got you interested in these genres and post it.  I bet it brings back some great memories.  For me, it already has.