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Today most things called science fiction are either fantasy or some other genre entirely, but I was introduced to the classic and pulp works, rather different to today's offerings.
I cherish my 1979 Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction. Gollancz, long associated with SF, have placed the third edition of this encyclopaedia online- Science Fiction Encyclopaedia and for convenience I will add their search box at the bottom of this page. But now onto my experiences and some interesting SF links:-

My introduction to Science Fiction came in the late 1950's with the juvenile books by Angus MacVicar (the Lost Planet series) and E C Eliott (Kemlo stories). I quickly moved on to Galaxy Magazine and the Ace paperbacks, and onward from there. So first, the written word element....

There were a number of British science fiction magazines that I started reading from around 1962, (including New Worlds under the editorship of John Carnell, and Peter Hamilton's Nebula) and also bought some older ones from market stalls.
At this time I enjoyed reading the short stories of F G Rayer. Not too long after, the British SF magazine market went all new-wave and obscure (Michael Moorcock took over editorship of New Worlds), and stopped buying the stories that I enjoyed, so by the end of the sixties I had stopped buying what British SF mags remained, as I think many others did. Fortunately the classic SF story continued to be welcome in the several SF magazines from America which were available here.
Due to an interest in amateur radio, I made contact with my first SF Author, radio amateur F G Rayer who died in July 1981. It would be nice to have his works collected, and I did try to offer some on the internet to mark the 30th anniversary of his death but negotiations were ceased. Quite a lot of his work is available from Amazon Marketplace as second hand SF magazines. There is an article regarding himself and SF on the internet by F G Rayer from 1953 (note: this link is to an image, not text).

An exhaustive bibliography of some SF authors but with good detail is at ISFDB || A major collection of SF (35,000 books) is held in Liverpool University and is accessible at Liverpool by appointment (18 reading spaces).


Read Project Gutenberg SF texts - they have a SF Bookshelf listing SF books available.
A short sample SF authors available on Project Gutenberg are: Marion Zimmer Bradley, John W Campbell, Ray Cummings, H Beam Piper,
Murray Leinster, Andre Norton, Alan E Nourse, Lester del Rey, Robert Sheckley, Edward E (Doc) Smith, Jules Verne, H G Wells, Robert H Wilson

The complete works of Sydney Fowler Wright || Wayback archived copy of SFW site, which is often down.

There is an extensive bibliography available at Center for the Study of Science Fiction.
Useful introduction to Science Fiction from wikipedia.


My next involvement with science fiction was through film, and a move from fantasies such as tom thumb (all lower case of course) to the more serious material, with George Pals Time Machine. Next we look at films...

The boundary between tv and film is now quite blurred. An excellent introductory article on film and science fiction is at Wikipedia.


Naturally I was there for the first television showings of Doctor Who, Space Patrol (the puppet series), Star Trek, Out of this World, Out of the Unknown, and the others of the era. So television...

Wikipedia has a good article about SF on TV.

tv.com has many pages on lots of tv shows which are more or less science fiction related - their definition is quite broad.


STAR TREK
Currently (tm) CBS Studios Inc.
I watched many classic SF tv programs on first run, including Doctor Who and Star Trek. When a Star Trek convention was held in nearby Manchester in 1992, we obviously went along to see what it was all about. There were no actors present so we spent most of our time watching the new American shows that the BBC were not yet showing. Also at this event I made my first contact with Japanese Anime.

TV.com has a lot of info on Classic Trek and even more on TV.com- The Next Generation not to mention TV.com Deep Space 9.

BABYLON 5
1995 was the first Babylon 5 convention in Britain, held in Manchester - so we went along and enjoyed meeting with jms (Joe) the creator. Also present was Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who just happened to agree to appear in B5 whilst she was there in Manchester, and indeed she did make an episode of B5.

jmsNews has archived ALL of jms news posts where he discussed the writing and production of the show in searchable form. Joe has now moved away from usenet onto Facebook.
The Lurkers Guide although long a dormant web site still has a great deal of info. on Babyon 5.
Try the data held on TV.com Babylon 5 .
The Zoccolo/ ISN News has a large section B5 info -ISNNews


Radio has been an important source for science fiction drama, but my own involvement has only been quite recent, with the new availability of so many old time radio shows - I have some links for free downloads on my music web page - towards the bottom under Listen to...
Also, otr.com has a useful intro page to science fiction on the radio with direct links to mp3 files to download.

The concept of the SPACE MARINE is a long established one in the SF genre going back to 1932, and a certain company throwing its weight around in 2013 to prevent publication of an SF book about Space Marines (generic term) on the grounds it owns a trademark on the term just goes to prove how immoral and wrong trademark law is - and how unethical said company is. And why commercial lawyers should be outlawed. Readers of the late Robert Heinliens works will appreciate the irony.
Read these stories which include the term (from Gutenberg): A Tom Corbett space adventure from 1954 by Carey Rockwell uses Space Marine (with capitals) in Treachery in Outer Space - ten usages. From 1955, same series, Sabotage in Space - 16 usages.
From 1962, H Beam Piper's lovely story of Little Fuzzy - capitalised, one usage and also The Cosmic Computer from Ace in 1964.
From 1961, Star Hunter by Andre Norton, published by Ace Books: Star Hunter- one usage, lower case.
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