Snowflake Day Two
*waves*
So, this challenge is:In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.
My goodness, that sounds...dire. Heh. A mark on my sooooooul. (Yes, it just sounds a little pretentious. But in thinking it over...there is a mark, and I know what made it.)
Brace yourself!
Star Wars. The original movie, which I went to see when I was ten. Standing in line in the heat of a Missouri summer, inching *around the building*, so so slowly.
And then the lights went down, the screen lit up, and the music started. And the words started. And I never looked at sci-fi, or space, the same again. I think that movie, more than anything, changed my entire outlook, appreciation for, and interest in, all things astronomical. I became a die-hard sci-fi junky after that, even though I'd already enjoyed stuff about the Moon landings, and everything NASA was doing, that just...made it more real, somehow. Star Trek and Space 1999, and Battlestar Galactica, and yes, even Buck Rogers in the 25th Century were now things I consumed with avid glee.
And I started reading sci-fi, too (up until then, i'd mostly been reading about horses). The original Star Wars book (so different from the movie in some respects!), and the one that followed after, 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye', by Larry Niven. Hell, *all* the Niven my brother had/the library had/i could get my hands on. And the Amber Chronicles books, by Roger Zelazny and then of course I discovered James Tiptree Jr. and then Dune, and then the Pern books, and then C J Cherryh, oh gods, her 'Faded Sun' trilogy and Downbelow Station and....
Well. Never got over that, that's for sure. :) Delaney, Silverberg, Dickson, Leiber. Tanith Lee, who broke my heart with 'Silver Metal Lover', and then Harry Harrison, who made me giggle with 'The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat'.
Worlds and universes and stories beyond our everyday ploddings; flights of fancy, incredible discoveries, sinister (or cute, or sad, or helpful, or funny) aliens.... I devoured it all.
And then the *other* movies. Alien (which scared the hell out of my sister and me, sitting in that theater, watching Kane crawl through the ducts...oh my *gods*.... Blade Runner and Star Trek and Brazil, RoboCop and The Abyss, Alien Nation, oh, so awesome! Enemy Mine, Escape from New York, Flash Gordon and The Fly.... Mad Max, Predator, Starman, Videodrome and Tron.
The Right Stuff made me cry, Apollo 13 made me sit there, tense and freaked out, until the astronauts got home safe. The Martian made me dream of a time when we really *do* send people to Mars, and wish, abstractly but sincerely, that I could volunteer for that first flight - that first colony. If I had a billion dollars, I'd buy myself a trip to the moon, and nothing makes me happier than to be absorbed in a good book, a good movie, or the wide, unblinking night sky.
Cheesy or silly or bad, I didn't care. Give me a spaceship and a star to steer her by!
I have been loving, and writing, and dreaming about sci-fi, and space, for decades, and I don't see the obsession ever fading.
All of that, from one movie, one summer, forty years ago, when one small-town Missouri girl had her eyes opened wide. And never closed them again.
Originally entered at http://tabaqui.dreamwidth.org/194975.html - comment where you please!
So, this challenge is:In your own space, share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Something that impacted on your consciousness in a way that left its mark on your soul.
My goodness, that sounds...dire. Heh. A mark on my sooooooul. (Yes, it just sounds a little pretentious. But in thinking it over...there is a mark, and I know what made it.)
Brace yourself!
Star Wars. The original movie, which I went to see when I was ten. Standing in line in the heat of a Missouri summer, inching *around the building*, so so slowly.
And then the lights went down, the screen lit up, and the music started. And the words started. And I never looked at sci-fi, or space, the same again. I think that movie, more than anything, changed my entire outlook, appreciation for, and interest in, all things astronomical. I became a die-hard sci-fi junky after that, even though I'd already enjoyed stuff about the Moon landings, and everything NASA was doing, that just...made it more real, somehow. Star Trek and Space 1999, and Battlestar Galactica, and yes, even Buck Rogers in the 25th Century were now things I consumed with avid glee.
And I started reading sci-fi, too (up until then, i'd mostly been reading about horses). The original Star Wars book (so different from the movie in some respects!), and the one that followed after, 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye', by Larry Niven. Hell, *all* the Niven my brother had/the library had/i could get my hands on. And the Amber Chronicles books, by Roger Zelazny and then of course I discovered James Tiptree Jr. and then Dune, and then the Pern books, and then C J Cherryh, oh gods, her 'Faded Sun' trilogy and Downbelow Station and....
Well. Never got over that, that's for sure. :) Delaney, Silverberg, Dickson, Leiber. Tanith Lee, who broke my heart with 'Silver Metal Lover', and then Harry Harrison, who made me giggle with 'The Adventures of the Stainless Steel Rat'.
Worlds and universes and stories beyond our everyday ploddings; flights of fancy, incredible discoveries, sinister (or cute, or sad, or helpful, or funny) aliens.... I devoured it all.
And then the *other* movies. Alien (which scared the hell out of my sister and me, sitting in that theater, watching Kane crawl through the ducts...oh my *gods*.... Blade Runner and Star Trek and Brazil, RoboCop and The Abyss, Alien Nation, oh, so awesome! Enemy Mine, Escape from New York, Flash Gordon and The Fly.... Mad Max, Predator, Starman, Videodrome and Tron.
The Right Stuff made me cry, Apollo 13 made me sit there, tense and freaked out, until the astronauts got home safe. The Martian made me dream of a time when we really *do* send people to Mars, and wish, abstractly but sincerely, that I could volunteer for that first flight - that first colony. If I had a billion dollars, I'd buy myself a trip to the moon, and nothing makes me happier than to be absorbed in a good book, a good movie, or the wide, unblinking night sky.
Cheesy or silly or bad, I didn't care. Give me a spaceship and a star to steer her by!
I have been loving, and writing, and dreaming about sci-fi, and space, for decades, and I don't see the obsession ever fading.
All of that, from one movie, one summer, forty years ago, when one small-town Missouri girl had her eyes opened wide. And never closed them again.
Originally entered at http://tabaqui.dreamwidth.org/194975.html - comment where you please!