SYNERGY – Back in the Day Gems?

    

    

Synergy is back! This is the third installment of the feature, and the first under the BSCreview banner! For newcomers, the basic gist is that one of our contributors offers a single question for our other contributors to give answer to. Beyond that, we go out and adopt talented outsiders who choose to become BSC la familia to participate.

The question fielded this month was given to us by Brian, and we are taking it back today rekindling memories of our favorite childhood gems; be it movies, books, TV, comics whatever. We have a great field today full of award winning and hot new talented writers that include Charles Stross and Ken Scholes, to one of my all time favorite comic creators in Colleen (A Distant Soil) Doran, and we get Trekkie (and Fifth Element) credentials with Sonita Henry joining us who most recently was in the Abram’s Star Trek movie, that’s just taking over box office bragging rights!

If you missed our prior two installments of Synergy, go check them out. If you’ve already read those, take the jump and read our latest!

I hope you all enjoy . . .

    

Charles Stross - I’d like to start by saying that I’m not really a visual person — I watch barely any TV or movies these days, and wasn’t big on them when I was a kid. I was bookish: a trait encouraged by growing up in a home with about a thousand books in it, and a black-and-white TV with no remote and no VCR.

At first, I’m told, I didn’t show much interest in reading; in fact, my parents were quite worried. Then, when I was four years old, they took me to an afternoon matinee production of The Wind in the Willows (based on the book by Kenneth Grahame. When they got home they lost track of me for a couple of hours — only to discover me in my bedroom, about a hundred pages in.

I never had much use for the children’s section of the local library, which just happened to be at the end of our road: I was into the adult section by the time I turned seven. When I was nine, I saved up all my pocket money for nearly three months to buy my own copy of The Lord of the Rings — the multi-volume one wasn’t always available when I wanted to re-read it. I read voraciously, with a marked lack of discrimination, mostly focusing on genre material, and I can’t tell you anything much about my favourite childhood books because they were all my favourite books. Except Crash, by J. G. Ballard. (I borrowed it from the library when I was ten, realized fairly quickly that it wasn’t for me, and took it right back. Loved it when I was in my twenties, mind you.)

I mentioned not doing much in the way of movies. Star Wars came out when I was 11. I saw it twice; I was going through E. E. “Doc” Smith as fast as I could find his books at the time, and the first Star Wars movie … well, I knew where it was coming from. The Empire Strikes Back, however, was disappointing when I was 14, and as for the third episode … no, for me the golden age of Star Wars is 11. I haven’t bothered to seek out Phantom Menace and sequels; I’m fairly certain I won’t get on with it.

By my teens, I’d already drained the local library of stuff that interested me. But I lived in a big city, and there are advantages to that: second-hand bookstores. I used to get the bus across town to and from school (not a school bus), and if I walked I could save the bus fare; over a week, that was a book or two from the small, ramshackle, hole-in-the-wall second-hand bookshop that was on my walking route around the edge of the university campus. I ploughed through what was available in the genre in the 70s in the UK: the classics (Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke), the new wave (Silverberg, Dick, Disch, le Guin), the pulp (from Piers Anthony through E. E. “Doc” Smith to translated Perry Rhodan) and so on. Harry Harrison, Frederick Pohl, C. L. Moore, Larry Niven. I read them all — and to a greater or lesser extent I’ve forgotten them, because I wasn’t a terribly discriminating reader, my memory has always had sieve-like characteristics, and it was thirty years ago.

But if you want my stand-out? It would have to be Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama, first encountered when I was 11. Total sense of wonder overload, delivered sparingly in very dry, measured prose. That was what I was hooked on then — and I still am, to this day.

_{Charles Stross is a Hugo award, multiple Locus Award winning author of novels and short fiction whose fiction include Accelerando, Singularity Sky, Iron Sunrise, Halting State, Saturn’s Sky, and Glasshouse. He’s also been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke award, The Nebula, John W. Campbell Memorial Award, the BSFA award.}

_{You can visit him at his site Antipope.org.}

    
Sonita Henry - I actually find it fascinating to read the books from my childhood throughout different stages of my life. The things I took away from them as a child are different than as a teenager, a young adult and now a (supposed!) fully-fledged adult! No one ever told me that The Chronicles of Narnia were in any way religious or indeed written by a religious writer. I found that out later on. Picking up “Lord of the Rings” at 8 years old didn’t seem a daunting project at the time. Admittedly I don’t think I fully understood what was going on, but then again I STILL don’t! The Hobbit was read in our household until the glue holding the pages together fell apart. Magic Kingdom For Sale: Sold, David and the Phoenix, Alice in Wonderland, Charlotte’s Web, The Secret Garden, The Railway Children, Beezus and Ramona, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, The Phantom Tollbooth are all books I read then, and now as an adult I own (and still read!)

I like to think I grew up at the height of movies, but I’m sure each generation feels that way! The 80’s was the John Hughes decade, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, these were the movies of my childhood. “Teen Wolf” to this day still holds a special place in my heart (“Today you just get me, not the wolf” – I mean COME ON!!!!!) Dark Crystal and Labyrinth (yes, I can still sing the lyrics to Magic Baby – David Bowie’s finest work!) The Goonies, E.T – there are too many to name. Luckily (or maybe unconsciously?!) I’ve surrounded myself with friends that still watch these movies, still remember their childhood books.

As far as TV goes I grew up in England. The childrens’ shows we had there are different to the ones here. I’ve lived in the States for 12 years and feel every part an American, but have always felt a part of my history missing when I talk to American friends about our childhood. Other than British cake and candy (very important!) the shows I watched as a child (Button Moon, Pigeon Street, No.73, Going Live, Mr. Ben, Danger Mouse, Magic Roundabout, Willo the Wisp, Postman Pat, Bagpuss to name a few) definitely shaped who I am as a person, especially my humor. Maybe that’s why I married a British man – we share the same history!

It’s not a fluke that I ended up in a profession that is based on imagination. My escapism was, and still is movies and books. Now, instead of just watching and reading them, I get to be IN them…..and that’s all I ever wanted as a child.

_{Sonita Henry is an English actress of Scottish and Nepalese heritage who has a small role as a Starfleet doctor in 2009’s Star Trek.}

_{Hailing from Dover, Kent, England, Henry moved to the United States in 1997. She made her film debut that same year, playing the aide to President Lindberg in the hit science fiction adventure The Fifth Element.Henry later appeared in Woody Allen’s 1998 comedy Celebrity, which also featured Famke Janssen, Bebe Neuwirth and Winona Ryder. She more recently guest-starred in an episode of the CBS Paramount Television series Without a Trace. Henry filmed her scenes on Star Trek in November and worked closely with actress Jennifer Morrison, who plays Winona Kirk (mother of James T. Kirk). Before Star Trek opens, Henry will be seen in the independent film Garden Party. In addition, she is currently in talks for a regular role in a new science fiction series.}

_{You can visit Sonita at www.sonitahenryonline.com}

    
Jay Tomio - Collectors have this time frame where we can kind of bank on a popularity surge of past favorites. It’s no coincidence that you are seeing the development of major motion pictures around properties like Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Robotech. Even Spider-Man 3’s chief marketing feature was around Venom and the black suit, which occurred around the same time. It is also why there is enthusiasm for more Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movies and there is always talk about another He-Man movie. While the big Marvel franchises like X-Men and Spider-Man pull from much older material for content influence, it is the tide of popularity from my era that they are hoping for to actually watch the films – an era when top selling books sold millions of copies with names like Lee and McFarlane attached to them. It is that generation that is coming into an age that usually equates to having disposable income.

With this in mind – and as somebody from that generation – it is rather easy just to look to what sense of nostalgia draws (or drew) me the most when I came into such income. Before I get into that I want to touch on the chief difference between my generation and the next (the generation that I’d describe as the real inheritors of the web – we were told it was us, but we were slightly too old for training). We didn’t have instantaneous realization of shared interest. There weren’t chat rooms, message boards, or twitter. We truly liked what we liked (though I admit direct interaction/friends had influence – at the very least it was more localized). I didn’t know when new kicks were out until the new Eastbay catalog came out. Because of this, I like to think that there is some kind of even personal attachment to our likes.

Now, back to what was headlining my want list when I was able to relive my childhood (mid-life crisis)?

Coronation Starscream? This is bad comedy . . .

Don’t let anyone lie to you. Cats cried when they watched this movie. Even today it’s making related news due to the announcement of a remake of the classic You Got the Touch song being included in the next live-action film by Bay. This is a rare cartoon in that while you were devastated by the death of Optimus, you rooted for the return of his killer (Megatron/Galvatron) as he committed another murder. I still smile when I rewatch it, and as Prime arrives to repel a full-blown invasion by the Decepticons, he doesn’t bring an army. He just brought the Dinotbots! I know cartoons often get based on technology/animation level, but that’s rubbish, Transformers the Movie (animated) had heart and it kicked ass.

A friend of mine from middle school and high school who I hadn’t seen for some years came to visit me and among other friends said, “you know why I know Jay is still real?” I come in here and look on his shelf and he’s still got Transformers the movie.

Whoa this is heavy. . .

You know how kids want to be these lame ass soft wannabe vampires now? When I was a kid we wanted a damn Delorean and a hover board. Marty McFly, baby. I wasn’t awkward, so all this ”how do I get by in school social circles (vampire or not)” nonsense isn‘t something that I can relate to.. How do you get by? Running from Libyans, travel in time, avoid macking your (hot) mom, and rocking the party. That’s how.

1.21 gigawats for life.

Stop. Hama Time. Every time you see me . . .

… I was reading JOE. Larry Hama practically raised me. I was reading G.I. Joe before we became a bunch of self-conscious about what made us great. When it was A Real American Hero. To this day the first 80 issues hold up remarkably well when you consider Hama was definitely influenced to present certain character and vehicles due to toy line cartoon ramifications. Loved the cartoon, toys, even books (Choose Your Own Adventure goodness!), but it was the comic that really was the bible of my childhood.

You still can’t front . . .

Star Wars pwns all the BS ‘real’ SF writers want to throw at it. To this day, no other SF related creation ever moved more minds and hearts like when you first saw the – at the time – impossibly long hull of a then unnamed Star Destroyer hover over you. Why? Because they’d have to correct me and tell that the Star Destroyer is not actually ‘hovering.’

They just don’t get it. Everybody else did.

Hey you guys. . .

If there is a better adventure movie ever made it’s called Raiders of the Lost Ark. I’m still not sure it’s better than the The Goonies. Movies like this made more real other great movies like The Neverending Story and The Princess Bride that had a much more fantastic, storytelling, facet. When you watched Goonies as a kid, you thought that there was a possibility that hanging out with your friends might leads to something more. We talk about the popularity of Pirates now, and I think this movie should get more credit than it did for probably instilling that in its decade.

From a reading perspective, I actually think I had a bit of a different road. A lot of times you think people move from fantastic reading to more ‘realistic’ fiction as they grow older. For me, it was very much the opposite, or at the very least I never had that kind of distinction. I didn’t have to work my way to the classics, I had already read them before I picked up Tolkien, Brooks, or Zelazny. For me the fantastic was actually progression. In most of my choices you will see that there is a theme of ‘adventure’. My childhood reading is filled with Sendak one day, yet Twain the next. The Bernstein Bears one week, yet Jack London the next. I was still young when I went what thought was next level to the classics (Ben Hur, The Count of Monte Cristo, Tale of Two Cities etc) – I read Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber and Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. They are not the bastards of mainstream (in content) fiction. They are its betters.

As I write all this, I’m not sure if any creation sums up everything I so enjoyed about all of them as does Calvin and Hobbes. I used to buy the collected strips (still have my original copy of Yukon Ho!) and I’d just zone the hell out and read them all at one time. I think in some way that it’s the ultimate drama, comedy, science fiction, and fantasy achievement. Nothing (in terms of our hobbies) bothers me more than knowing I probably won’t be able to get a Calvin and Hobbes piece from Waterson for my art collection.

In my youngest experiences I remember watching Doraemon, a Japanese cartoon about a time traveling robot cat, and while we all have qualities about ourselves that we enjoy, my favorite is that to this day though I’ve read and watched many more creative works that can claim tour de force, I don’t let their (deserved) accolades remark upon the loves that brought me here to appreciate them.

From Yo Joe! to Finnegan’s Wake – there’s no shame in my game.

_{Jay Tomio is a co-owner and contributor at BSCreview, and editor of the BSC produced online publication Heliotrope.}

    

    
Chris Ryall - There are two that really stand out for me, although I do work them both into discussions, especially here at the office, as often as I possibly can.

The first (listed in the order I read them, nothing more) is Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. There have been a lot of books, before and since that one, that function as sort of “edu-tainment,” sneakily teaching kids while entertaining them, but none have resonated as much as this one. Tollbooth is about an aimless kid named Milo who one day discovers a little electric car and a cardboard tollbooth in his room. He drives the car past the booth and is transported into the lands beyond, where he discovers the importance of letters, words, numbers and other such sundry things that previously bored him in school. But as dry as that sounds, it’s the amusing cast of characters and clever wordplay that has stuck with me so long, and made that book something that I still revisit every now and then. And the great, scratchy illustrations by Jules Feiffer only add to my enjoyment of the book.

Incidentally, Juster’s still doing good work into his dotage now–I often read my kid a couple of his newer children’s picture books, and they’re great fun, too. But I’m just biding my time until she’s old enough to be read The Phantom Tollbooth.

The second book from my childhood is one I first read at age 10 but have since read probably no fewer than 20 times. I read it every year for a decade at least, and still revisit it every so often. The book is Ray Bradbury’s masterful tale, The Martian Chronicles. This book features the most amazingly lyrical language I’ve ever read before. It’s at times whimsical, inventive, scary, sad, wistful, and just freakin’ wonderful. The fact that the book is comprised of short stories that nevertheless link together to paint a vivid picture of man’s attempts at colonizing Mars make it even more impressive. That book really kickstarted my love of language and writing and I think if there’s one book I will read over and over for the rest of my life, it’s this one.

_{Chris Ryall is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, and occasional comic book writer, of IDW Publishing, a San Diego-based comic book and graphic novel publisher. Ryall is currently writing Groom Lake a title illustrated by Ben Templesmith, and IDW published properties like Star Trek, Transformers, and G.I. Joe, as well as creator owned properties like Joe Hill’s Locke and Key.}

_{You can visit Chris Ryall at his blog RyallTime}

    
Jason Wood – As I sit down to respond to this question, I’m struck at how generational identity will play a huge role in how people respond. As social media usage explodes, so too is the way we process and consume media. Pop culture today can be shaped in seconds. Something can be posted to YouTube on Monday and 100 million people could be talking about it on Tuesday. With that kind of instantaneous consumption comes with it a downside. We’re always looking at the “next thing.” Where’s the next funny video? What’s the next blog meme? Who’s the new star of the day and how many Google hits can we find about the person so we can become instant experts on someone we didn’t know existed a day before? While that’s all great, I find myself asking more and more, WILL WE REMEMBER THEM TOMORROW?

My opening salvo may have you picturing a curmudgeonly sexagenarian typing away at his typewriter in between throwing tomatoes at children who dare set foot on my lawn. But the truth is, I’m a 34-year old Gen Xer who lives a good chunk of his life digitally. I’m an avid blogger, I read more RSS feeds than I do print newspapers and magazines. I’m always looking for the next cool gadget to try out, have owned 7 iPods and counting, and think the internet will go down as one of the most important inventions in recorded history. So then, why am I griping about the immediacy of information and the expediency of how quickly we let it fade back out of our memories? Because I fear it might make it next to impossible for my own sons to answer this question 20 years from now.

I’m a child of the late 70s and early 80s. And that means I’m a TV kid. Sure, I have always loved books and continue to read voraciously. But TV was my first love. I remember waking up on Saturday mornings giddy to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Superfriends. Scooby Doo. Smurfs. Dragon’s Lair. And then the magic of afternoon syndicated cartoons took over. G.I. Joe. Transformers. Voltron. Thundercats. M.A.S.K. My mind exploded and I was glued to my seat. Long before we owned a VCR I was beholden to the concept of continuity. But it came by being a little kid without a lot of responsibilities. The idea that I would miss an episode, live, when it was aired, never occurred to me. And watching those shows made me want the toys. Which made me create my own adventures with those characters and settings. These things formed my basis for pop culture, fantasy, adventure, and I’m sure shape in many ways the kinds of things I still like to watch, read, and listen to today.

When I reflect on non-cartoons that were memorable, the first two that come to mind are Love Boat and Fantasy Island. So what does that say? Well, that I watched what my parents watched first and foremost, and that being able to stay up late and watch prime time TV on the weekends was more important than what the actual programming was. I remember those two shows fondly, and in my mind hold them up to the very best shows of my adulthood, whether it be The Sopranos or Deadwood or Lost. Now, whether I would still feel that way if I went back and watched reruns of these old 80s classics remains to be seen. But I prefer to remember them for how I saw them as a young child. Other shows that readily pop back into my head include: What’s Happening [Hey Hey Hey!], Happy Days, Buck Rogers, Good Times, A-Team, Knight Rider, Different Strokes, Family Ties, Magnum P.I., Silver Spoons, and Three’s Company. Seems like a lot of TV? Well yeah, I was a TV kid from the early 80s.

Turning my attention to books, I’m proud to say that my memories of childhood are eclectic; which again I have my parents to thank for making me step out of my comfort zone every time we went to the library or a book fair or a Waldenbooks. As a young child, first learning to read, I remember devouring the Dr. Seuss books. In fact, I consider Green Eggs & Ham to be the first book I was able to read entirely on my own. Now whether that memory is more of a psychic imprint of the long process of learning to read, or is in fact a true recollection of a given day sitting on my couch in central New Jersey as a young preschooler we’ll never know. Any reflection on my childhood reading habits would be incomplete without mentioning the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Originally crafted by Packard and Montgomery, these books were interactive in that it allowed the reader to guide the story. Should my conquering hero enter the dark cave or climb up the castle wall? Re-readability became the rage as you tried to discover all the paths the story would take you. It was magical. In many ways, the Choose Your Own Adventure stories were the precursors to MMORPGs like World of Warcraft that dominate so many people’s entertainment hours today. I was always more prone to reading fiction than non-fiction. Stephen King never failed me. Tolkien was a marvel. But no author, today or then, holds a dearer place in my mind than Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams, the British satirist, used the conventions of science fiction combined with the dry witticisms of Benny Hill and Monty Python to construct a wondrous world of Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford Prefect, Trillian, Marvin their question for the ultimate truths of the universe. It worked [and continues to work] on so many levels. It was one of the first modern books that I realized had layers. It was overtly funny, but also smart. You got more from it with each read. Adams found ways to weave political science, philosophy, morality, economics, science and theology into an easy-to-digest, action-packed space opera. Every few years I go back and re-read the Hitchhiker’s Guide and am as entertained and fulfilled as I was the first time.

When it comes to movies as a kid, four things come to mind: Star Wars, Star Trek, Indiana Jones and Steven Spielberg. My father loved taking me to movies as a kid and so we saw lots of films in many genres. But as a kid, the Star Wars sequels were IT. Talk about space opera? It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around the level of obsession/memorization I have of those films, considering how young I was during their theatrical release and the fact we didn’t have DVRs or DVDs to re-watch them in our own homes. Star Trek didn’t hold as strong a place in my childhood heart, but my father and I shared a bond over those movies because of his love of the original TV series. When I think of Spock and Sulu and Bones, I can’t help but reflect fondly on the best memories I have of my relationship with my father. Indiana Jones should speak for itself. Seriously. Pulp adventure on the grandest scale. And Spielberg? Well he was definitely the only director I knew by name as a kid. And it was his brand name that helped me expand my film horizons as I got older. An 11-year old boy from a primarily white suburban neighborhood wouldn’t have been the most likely candidate to watch, much less love, The Color Purple, but that’s exactly what happened. To this very day, that film remains one of the most important to me. And yet, I never would’ve given it a second glance at the time it came out if it wasn’t a STEVEN SPIELBERG movie.

I’ve talked long enough, but I should mention a few other works which helped shape my transition from child to adolescent to young adult. The Big Chill, a movie about people who I’m just now at a point to consider contemporaries, made me realize at a young age the importance of childhood friendships and how the innocence of youth would be fleeting for us. It’s probably the work that best fits with being “14 going on 40” as my parents so often described me. Naughty 80s comedies including Animal House, Stripes, Caddyshack, Porky’s, Trading Places and Stir Crazy were the kinds of “I can’t believe I’m watching this” films that I still love to pop into the DVD player to this day. On the book front, Brett Easton Ellis’ early works were important in helping me get comfortable with questioning the status quo, and taking a sharper eye at what most of us hold as important. Moby Dick remains my pick for best American work every written, and the power of those words helped give me a lifelong appreciation for marine life; I probably know more about whales than anyone without a biology degree should.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I’m looking forward to what everyone else has to say.

_{Jason Wood is a co-host at the 11 O’Clock Comics podcast, and you can visit him at The Ponderings of Woodrow.}

    
Peter V. Brett – Well, I’m a writer, so I’m going to stick with books even though I could talk movies all day if you let me.

I get asked often in interviews about which authors and books have inspired/influenced me, and I usually draw my answer from a short list, but something about the way this question was phrased, “Stroll down memory lane and bring back a friend,” has me wanting to skip the usual answers and touch on something a little more obscure.

So let’s talk about Master of the Five Magics, by Lyndon Hardy, a book that was every bit as influential on my growth as both a fantasy fan and writer as any I have mentioned before. I bought the book in 1988 when I was fifteen, as one of many paperbacks to take with me to Ireland, where I would be staying for a month as escort/valet to my grandmother who wanted to visit her family in her waning years, but was too frail to travel alone.

It was an enriching trip to a beautiful, almost enchanted place, as the New York suburbanite in me tried to adapt to weeks in County Cavan in a house with no phone or television, where cows could (and often would) break free of their pens and stick their head right in the window next to the bed and scare the crap out of you at 6am.

But it was a lonely time, too, surrounded almost exclusively by people 60 years my senior with whom I had very little in common. So I did a lot of walking in the countryside, and I did a lot of reading. Luckily, I had Master of the Five Magics to keep me company.

Master tells the tale of Alodar, born a young noble but stripped of his standing at an early age due to some unnamed indiscretion on the part of his father. Forced to take a job as a craftsman just to fill his stomach, Alodar embarks on an apprenticeship as a Thaumaturge, one of the five schools of magic in Hardy’s detailed setting. Long before Patrick Rothfuss was using sympathy magic in The Name of the Wind, Alodar was using it to try and free the Iron Fist of Procolon from siege.

In a fast-paced story that keeps the reader turning pages long into the night, Alodar’s quest to become a suitor to the Queen and regain his family’s title leads him to apprenticeships in all five schools of magic, each guided by rules and principles as solid as any I’ve seen in a fantasy story.

Alodar exemplifies everything I think a fantasy hero should have: courage, determination, and an unending curiosity. Nothing is handed to him; every accomplishment is achieved through hard work and study, and when success is robbed from him again and again, Alodar does not whine and belabor the unfairness of it all, but moves on to a new plan, stubbornly refusing to be held down.

Oh, and the book has demons; always a plus for me.

Apparently I’m not alone in loving this book, because it inspired the song “Five Magics” by Megadeth.

Bad ass.

_{Peter V. Brett was raised on a steady diet of fantasy novels, comic books, and Dungeons & Dragons. His novel, The Warded Man, is the first in a series, and was released in March from Del Rey books after receiving considerable acclaim overseas where it was released last year as The Painted Man.}

_{Visit Peter online at www.petervbrett.com}

    

    
Ken Scholes - This is a great question. I’ve talked a bit in other places about being ambushed by Story at a young age.

My first exposure was Speed Racer when I was three or four years old. And Batman showed up at about the same time, starting a life-long love affair with all things Batman. Between the ages of four and eight, a lot of other shows grabbed me: Space 1999, UFO, Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, Land of the Lost, Tarzan, Valley of the Dinosaurs, Flash Gordon. The stories that wowed me most were the ones about lost and displaced people finding their way home, I think. In Space 1999, it was Moonbase Alpha hurtling through space on its displaced moon. In Time Tunnel, it was Tony and Doug hurtling “toward a new fantastic adventure, somewhere along the infinite corridors of time.” And then you had the passengers and crew of the Spindrift, stranded among the giants and avoiding capture in each episode of Land of the Giants while Marshall, Will and Holly’s routine expedition left them stranded in the strange new world of sleestaks, pakuni and dinosaurs in Land of the Lost.

I was hooked.

And in 1976, I discovered a new form of Story — one that was portable and lasted for hours. My first two “chapter” books were Runaway Robot by Lester del Rey and Trapped in Space by Jack Williamson. My stepfather brought them home from a second hand store and I climbed into a tree with one of them, started reading, and fell utterly in love. I still have them both. Those books were my gateway deeper into Story and from that time forward, I was never without a book nearby. On trips, I’d pack half the suitcase with books and the other half with clothes. Some of the earliest books that grabbed me were The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper, Baum’s Oz series, and Burrough’s Tarzan books. At some point, I branched out and started reading mysteries alongside my regular diet of science fiction and fantasy — I added the Hardy Boys, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, the Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew to my growing buffet of words. Then, in 1979, I discovered Ray Bradbury through a media tie-in copy of The Martian Chronicles in preparation for the miniseries. By then, of course, I’d also started following John Carter’s exploits on Mars and had even begun dabbling with Robert Heinlein and Stephen King.

In the late seventies, everything changed. A man named George Lucas put a Story on the screen that was so compelling, so big, that it left me slack-jawed with wonder. I had read the novel at least a half dozen times (until it fell apart) and memorized the LP before we got around to seeing the movie. I saw the movie in the back of a Ford van at the Valley Drive In in Auburn WA, and even though I’d read the book and heard the actors lines the movie was fresh and new to me. Until then, movies had certainly wowed me but nothing like Star Wars. I’d mostly watched the old black and whites on Sci-Fi Theater (it came on at 11am on Sundays) but I’d seen a few of the classics like Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man. But I think the world agreed in its response: Star Wars marked a change.

By 1980 or so, I had a lot of Story going on — I continued the steady diet of books, TV and movies, plus comic books, of course. And then a new kind of Story vehicle showed up.

I can’t list influences without adding it to the mix. The role playing game Dungeons and Dragons became a mighty, mighty influence because it brought Story to life in a new way by suddenly putting my friends and I to work as the characters and narrators caught up in Story ourselves. And so much of the primary source material for the game was found in a vast treasure trove of books I’d not yet ventured into — Moorcock’s Elric series, Robert E. Howard’s Conan and Solomon Kane stories, Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. The wide world of sword and sorcery opened up to me and then, as TSR expanded into espionage with Top Secret, the wild west with Boot Hill and the post-apocalyptic future with Gamma World my reading and film watching expanded into those genres. I found myself reading Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour and Max Brand alongside Ian Fleming and Andre Norton.

It was around this time that I read Bradbury’s essay “How to Keep and Feed a Muse” and decided I couldn’t just be a Story Junky — I needed to Deal Story, too. My Mom, an unpublished romance novelist, bought me my first typewriter and I started banging out Stories of my own, feeding my imagination a steady diet of books, movies, television and games.

Today, it’s really not too different. I don’t have the time I used to have for RPGs and I’m too busy writing to read or watch TV and movies as much as I’d like to, but I keep a steady diet of Story coming into my life — and flowing out of it as I put my own Stories out into the world.

_{Ken Scholes is the author of debut novel Lamentation, published by Tor Books. Ken’s short story collection, Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Strange Journeys, is available from Fairwood Press. His second novel, Canticle, will be out in October 2009.}

_{You can visit Ken Scholes at kenscholes.com}

    
Robert V.S Redick – I’m tempted to label childhood reading the most important we ever do: there’s a reason we call those years “formative.” Just what a writer happens to have read as a child is less important that the act itself: that passionate identification and early attachment to language and characters and written storytelling. If you’re blessed (afflicted?) with such habits, junk writing will transmute into gold in the crazy laboratory of your mind. But you won’t long be satisfied with junk.

My parents made me gifts that changed everything. For several years my favorite part of the day was the last, when I’d kick back on the bed and listen to dad read a chapter or two from those great, rip-roaring Winston juvenile SF hardbacks (some of you will remember Battle on Mercury or Vandals of the Void). After those books nothing could break my addiction to dreaming. My mother’s gift was more mysterious, because she’s never cared for SFF: yet for some reason she handed me, in fourth grade, the boxed pocket edition of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There was not a word on the outer box to tell me what I was in for, just a number of Tolkien’s Elvish and Numenorian symbols. But that box is the reason I can recall so little of fourth grade, or fifth. It’s the reason for many things, some of them ongoing.

The other key writer for me as a child was Susan Cooper (who I met at a conference last year, where I learned how easily I could be turned back into an abashed, inarticulate fanboy). Her famous series The Dark is Rising is the most beautifully written children’s fantasy cycle I know. They are worlds away from current trends of violence, shock and desperate hipness. At the same time they’re extremely honest books: a key admission in all of them is that the forces of darkness that hatch and flourish within ourselves are as deadly as anything we face elsewhere.

There were others whose impact on my childhood was profound–le Guin, Frank Herbert, Bradbury, CS Lewis, later John Crowley–but if I don’t stop now I’ll write an essay on each one. Somewhere in the years between Dune and Dostoevsky, much of my reading life slipped away from the genre. I’ve been a hard reader to win back. Never clearer to me, though, is the fundamental shape those early years gave to my work. To paraphrase Vin Diesel, you keep what you devour.

_{Robert V.S. Redick is the author of The Chathrand Voyage epic fantasy series. Book I, The Red Wolf Conspiracy, will be released on April 28 from Del Rey Books. A former international development researcher, he lives with his multi-species family in Western Massachusetts.}

_{You can visit Reidck at www.redwolfconspiracy.com}

    
Jackie Kessler – Even though I read tons as a child (and God knows, I still do), it was actually my love of comic books that got me into superheroes — which, in turn, led to me writing the dystopian superhero novel Black and White (June 2, 2009, Bantam Spectra) with Caitlin Kittredge. My dad and I would go to the comic book store every Saturday, and we’d buy that week’s stash, then spend a good chunk of the afternoon reading and swapping comics. The first time I’d read the preview for the New Teen Titans by Wolfman and Perez, I was with my dad flying to Colorado—I think the preview was in a Green Lantern comic—and I remember thinking how cool it was that teenagers (just a couple years older than I was at the time) were out saving the world. (For my bat mitzvah present? X-Men #94 – 100 in mint condition. Best. Parents. In the world!!!)

So for me, reading superhero comics made a lasting impression. Yeah, I wore Wonder Woman Underoos. And I watched Challenge of the Super Friends as a kid and ran around pretending to be a hero (or, sometimes, a villain—because let’s face it: evil can be awesome). But it was reading those comics — way before I was blown away by Neil Gaiman’s Sandman or Alan Moore’s Watchmen or Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns — that really cemented my love for all things Good versus Evil.

In just a few years, my boys will be old enough for them to start reading my comic book collection.

**rubs hands gleefully**

Until then, we’re watching Teen Titans and Batman: The Brave and the Bold on television. Can’t wait to show them the originals!

_{Jackie Kessler is the author of the Hell On Earth series, and most recently a collaboration with Caitlin Kittredge Black and White, which will be released in June from Bantam Spectra/Random House.}

_{You can visit Kessler at www.jackiekessler.com}

    
Alan Campbell - If you’re looking for childhood influences, I’d have to say the Sapphire and Steel, which was actually a TV programme starring Joanna Lumley and David McCallum. It scared the bejesus out of me. And if it anything scares me that much, it has to have had an influence. I also remember loving a series of historical adventure books for kids about vikings, but I can’t remember the author’s name. I’d have to choose books over films because we didn’t have a video recorder when I was young, so we didn’t watch many films.

_{Alan Campbell is the author of of the Scar Night, The Iron Angel and God Of Clocks, all part of his Deep Codex series.}

_{You can visit Campbell at his site An Urban Fantasy}

    
Mark Charon Newton – I’m going to shame myself by talking about something that is not SF or Fantasy in the first instance. For my best childhood reading, I adored the Willard Price Adventures series. Two young boys Hal and Roger Hunt, would travel the world as zoologists, capturing exotic and dangerous animals for their father’s wildlife collection. Now, given that I’m very much into ecology, I understand that this wasn’t exactly helping the local ecosystems; these books were very much a product of their time – originally they were written in the 1960s, although I would have read them in the 1980s. In fact, one of the fascinating things about visiting childhood reads is understanding how those things never occurred to your younger mind.

Anyway, the two boys had about fifteen or so adventures – from the arctic to Africa to the rain forests of New Guinea, and the two zoologists would almost always uncover some deep criminal plot where their lives would be at risk, as was the local community. It was proper boys’ adventuring at its best. I even remember one part of Whale Adventure where Hal and Roger learned how to steer a whale – how cool is that?

I’d carry the books around with me wherever I went. I remember locations in my youth spent with a copy of one of these titles. They took my young boy’s mind to far corners of the globe and stoked an imagination. I’ve often said that the natural world offers forth more bizarre things than any imagined one, and these books proved them to me.

But my other secret shame, more genre related, is for Knightmare - the UK children’s TV series, which also spawned some spin-off choose-your-own-adventure gaming books. Anyone remember Tregard? The point of the show was that one kid would wear a helmet so he couldn’t see, and three team members back in the studio would guide him around a virtual reality fantasy world on some sort of quest. Sure they look incredibly dated – but in the 1980s, that was pioneering stuff, a kind of RPG on TV!

Just type Knightmare into Youtube, and you’ll get loads of examples of what it was about. This got me excited about fantasy fiction, certainly. I mean, I never separated books and the TV show back then for some reason – they were both plain and simple acts of the imagination.

Things seemed a lot more straightforward when you were a kid. I wasn’t concerned with themes or plotting or characterization or prose. Now I can’t read something without all those qualities firing. It’s a shame really.

_{Mark Charan Newton was born in 1981 and lives in Nottingham, UK. His fantasy novel Nights of Villjamur is published in June by Pan Macmillan/Tor UK.}

_{Visit his site at blog.markcnewton.com.}

    

    
Colleen Doran - There are many children’s books I have kept and reread to this day, including a wonderful edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales with illustrations by Walter Crane, The Secret Garden by Francis Hogdson Burnett with illustrations by Tasha Tudor, and The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. I tend to enjoy some of the older books, obviously. Many of my children’s books are vintage.

Almost all of my favorite books were also graced with outstanding illustrations, though I don’t know how much that influenced my taste, since I am fond of both the stories when other artists illustrated the material. I first read Howard Pyle’s King Arthur series when I was a kid, but the version I read had lovely little illustrations by Darrel Sweet. It would be years before I would find the version with the original Pyle illustrations. The Pyle King Arthur remain my favorite of all versions of the Arthurian legend I have ever read. I have several different editions of all four of them.

The Secret Garden was a very important book for me, and when I was a little girl, I kept a little garden in the farthest corner of the schoolyard. I would run off by myself and at the edge of the fence, a family had a little house with their own garden. Flowers and bulbs crept under that fence into the schoolyard. I would take care of those plants. The whole area was hidden by a big mound of trash and yard debris where the school groundskeepers would just pile up the yard clippings. So, I was back there tending my own little garden in perfect solitude. Today, I still love gardening and live on the family farm, which is heaven to me. My goal was always to grow up and be like Tasha Tudor, and while I am not willing to give up all my modern conveniences as she did, I admired her independent spirit and simple way of living, which I emulate to the extent that I prefer a world which has computers in it!

There are films I enjoy and watch repeatedly for the sole reason that I like the visual sensibility. For example, The Lord of the Rings films don’t have the depth of the Tolkien novels, which I enjoy listening to on CD while I work. But they are gorgeous to look at, and I love the cast. I loved the films and it’s a real pleasure to have them running while I work at my drawing board.

Also, The Golden Compass film is a disappointment, but it is such a beautifully designed piece of work. And blonde Nicole Kidman is the perfect Mrs. Coulter, even though Mrs. Coulter is dark-haired in the novel. Kidman’s chilly beauty conveys the character very well.

If the design of the film complements my memories of what I saw while reading the book, I am content, even if the story deviates somewhat.

I know lots of people go into a rage if the film does not follow the book exactly, but I never go into a film with that expectation. I suppose it’s because I don’t have high hopes, but also because I am primarily an illustrator, and my first concern if for the design sensibility. If a movie hits that for me, I’ve been known to buy the film and run it with the dialogue off.

I am more likely to repeatedly watch all those Merchant/Ivory films than I am to re-read the novels they are based on. I love the film version of Howard’s End, for example. I can’t say it is superior to the book, but I prefer it to the book. It’s faithful to the source, but has such splendid performances and the visuals are breathtaking. It’s one of my favorite films.

I also loved The House of Mirth film (not Merchant/Ivory, but it sure could have been) based on the Wharton novel, and can’t say as I enjoyed one more than the other. Wharton’s work was followed very closely, but there are period social idiosyncracies that were not explained in the film. The novel gets into the character’s heads in a way the film could not. But to actually see the upper class world of Lily Bart, and the depths to which she sank as depicted in the film helped me to enjoy both film and book in different ways. That’s an instance of a film and a book I enjoy experiencing repeatedly for different reasons. We are told how beautiful and appealing Lily Bart is, and the effect she has on those around her, but to see Gillian Anderson in the role and in those costumes brought it all home for me.

Also, Auntie Mame starring Rosalind Russell is one of my favorite films. That’s one of the few instances where I can say I enjoyed the film and thought it superior to the book. I read the Patrick Dennis novel some time ago, and thought it very funny, but the film made such a strong impression on me that I never could quite reconcile the film Mame and the book Mame. The film Mame was a far more sanitized version of the character, but I had gone so many years enjoying that film that when I finally read the novel, I couldn’t accept the original characterization!

_{Colleen Doran is an illustrator, film conceptual artist, cartoonist, and writer whose published works number in the hundreds with clients such as The Walt Disney Company, Lucasfilm, Scholastic, Parker Brothers, Sony, Time/Warner, Harper Collins, Readers Digest, Marvel Entertainment, DC Comics Inc, Image Comics, The Cahners Group, Dark Horse Comics, and many others.}

_{She has illustrated the works of Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Warren Ellis, Anne Rice, J Michael Straczynski, Peter David, and Tori Amos.}

_{Her credits include: Amazing Spiderman, Sandman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, A Distant Soil, The Legion of Superheroes, The Teen Titans, Walt Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Anne Rice’s The Master of Rampling Gate, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, Clive Barker’s Nightbreed, Manga Mania, Anime Mania, The Silver Surfer, Lucifer, and Tori Amos: Comic Book Tattoo.}

_{You can visit Colleen at her website and check out A Distant Soil online!}

    
Maria Schneider - I would venture to guess that childhood books or movies come up more often around women with children. Then, secondly, men with children. I discuss books that had an effect on my childhood all the time–with my nieces/nephews and their dad. It comes up in discussion with my librarian friends now and then.

Growing up, I read very little fantasy. I was a big mystery fan:

Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene, Trixie Beldenby Julie Campbell, The BoxCar Children by Gertrude Warner, Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol, The Bobbsey Twins by Laura Lee Hope, The Secret Garden and The Little Princess, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Cherry Ames by Helen Wells.

I’m sure there were others, but these are the ones off the top of my head. Just out of reach in my memory is something about a Black Stallion…and another series that I can’t quite capture…

In Fantasy, I read the Narnia series and the Andre Norton Witch World series. My earliest memory of a fantasy that I adored for years was Escape to Witch Mountain. That was likely the birth of my love of fantasy.

In the very early years, I didn’t read a lot of fairy tales, although of course I was exposed to Cinderella, Snow White, Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty. I wasn’t a big fan of fairy tales because even then, I didn’t like to watch or read something more than a few times. I think one of my favorites was Mary Poppins, but I never got to read more than a few.

My older brother was a big fantasy fan and somewhere in my early years I tackled Tolkien and Donaldson.

We didn’t have a television until I was seven or eight. Even then, we got one station via an antenna so there simply aren’t going to be many things I saw on tv or film. I remember trying to watch a hazy version of Bewitched and wishing that station came in. Get Smart was another one that on occasion came in good enough for us to watch.

The only theater was many miles away, and I was probably a teenager before we went to see a movie. I remember Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Apple Dumpling Gang. I am pretty sure I saw those first as a movie.

We watched classics on TV when they were on the one clear channel–such as Sound of Music–which to this day remains a favorite of mine.

Perhaps one of the reasons I don’t watch much tv or films is because I didn’t do it much as a child. It has never captured me as books did.

_{Maria is a contributor at BSCreview. You can visit her at her site Bear Mountain Books.}

    
David Anthony Durham - I often think about the books I read as a child. Some of them were hugely influential, and it’s hard to imagine my life without them. I had a variety of issues growing up, too much to go into just now, but one of the results was that I was a very poor student. Labeled as fairly dumb, really, in elementary school. I had a hard time learning to read, and as I moved toward the end of elementary and middle school age I was way behind – and unhappy in a variety of ways.

I’m not quite sure how it happened, but at some point I got a special few books in my hands. In their adventuresome pages I discovered a wonderful route to escape, and, perhaps, an imaginative way to learn lessons I could apply to the real world. Fantasy titles like The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia and Prydain and the EarthSea Trilogy: I loved those books! They kept me up reading until the next day’s sun came up on more than one occasion.

But it’s actually not works of fantasy I want to put forth as two of my favorites. Two other books pop to mind, and I think they deserve a mention. One is A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck. I’ve no idea why this story of rural life among Vermont Shakers so moved me, but it did. From the first lines about a rather violent encounter with a cow, to the tear-jerking ending, I was enthralled as a black kid growing up in suburban Maryland, a novel like this testified to how connected I could be with stories of people very different than me. That’s been one of the joys I’ve found in reading ever since.

The other book is somewhat closer to home. It’s Black Boy, Richard Wright’s autobiography. It’s set in rural Mississippi and in Memphis, Tenn, and deals with growing up in deeply racist conditions. That wasn’t my situation, but I could relate. What amazed me about the story is that Wright could emerge from such a mind and soul crushing system and still manage to thrive as a figure on the world stage. A big part of that came through reading. I felt a kinship with that at the time, and later I’ve certainly followed his example by living years overseas. I have mixed feelings about other things he wrote, but that book about his boyhood has stuck with me. He dreamed big, and that let me know such things were possible.

_{David Anthony Durham is the author of the fantasy novels The Other Lands and Acacia: The War With The Mein, as well as the historical novels Pride of Carthage, Walk Through Darkness and Gabriel’s Story. His books have been published in the UK and in nine foreign languages, and three of them are under option for development as feature films. David is a two time John W Campbell Award Finalist for Best New Writer.}

_{Visit him at davidanthonydurham.com.}

    
Ian. R. MacLeod – As a kid, I wasn’t a particularly voracious or precocious reader. I remember enjoying a boy’s adventure series by Willard Price set in a whole lot of exotic (for which read colonial) locations. That, and the Enid Blyton Famous Five books, with all those midnight assignations and hidden trapdoors and unlikely baddies. My first real book-based memory of all goes back to when I was probably about six and something called The Dragon of the Seven Hills — an illustrated storybook about seven hills which turn out to be a sleeping dragon — and falling asleep on the night after we’d been read it at school with the idea still echoing in my head. I’m pretty sure that Lucius Shepherd has since written something very similar.

Let’s face it, though, most kids books back in early sixties Britain where I grew up were pretty crap. So was most TV and film. So, when something did pop up which was striking and original, you really did tend to notice it. If there was a formative moment for me, it was the very first episode of Doctor Who, which ran on a Saturday afternoon when I was about seven. It made a huge impression on me — so huge that I took the once and only step of writing to the BBC to tell them how great it was, and how (and I’m really proud of my prescience) I wanted to run and run forever. Do the BBC keep files of old correspondence from viewers? As a good old British bureaucracy, I bet they probably do! Maybe I should ask to have that letter back and get it framed…

_{Ian R. MacLeod’s fiction has won World Fantasy, Locus, Arthur C. Clarke, and Sidewise Awards, and have been nominated for the Hugo and Nebula. He is the author of 5 novels: The Great Wheel, The Light Ages, The House of Storms, The Summer Isles, and Song of Time. His short fiction can be found in three of his collections: Voyages by Starlight, Breathmoss and Other Exhalations, and Past Magic.}

_{You can visit Mr. MacLeod at his website Ianrmacleod.com.}

    
Patricia (DWT) – When I was a kid, my mom bought be two picture books, The White Seal and Rikki Tikki Tavi, both stories were by Rudyard Kipling but the illustrations were from the Chuck Jones animated adaptions of the stories. I really preferred the books (which I still have) to the cartoons (which I recently purchased), because the books were, word for word, exactly the stories that Kipling wrote in The Jungle Book. They were perfect the way they were, without anything added to them.

When it comes to The Jungle Book however, I really like the Disney version better. (I know, I know, sacrilege!) There’s just something about the characters that they made for the films and the voice casting they did that makes that movie particularly magical.

_{Patricia is a contributor at BSCreview}

    

Jay Tomio – I want to thank all of our contributors for participating!

    

    

    
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