In the spirit of our earlier “happy computer memories” thread, I’ll open one for happy book memories. What’s a book you read that occupies a warm-and-fuzzy spot in your memory? What book calls you back to the first time you read it, the way the smell of a bakery brings back a conversation with a friend?
As a child, I was into mystery stories and Ancient Egypt both (not to mention dinosaurs and deep-sea animals and…). So, for a gift one year I got an omnibus set of the first three Amelia Peabody novels. Then I read the rest of the series, and then new ones kept coming out. I was off at science camp one summer when He Shall Thunder in the Sky hit the bookstores. I don’t think I knew of it in advance, but I snapped it up and read it in one long summer afternoon with a bottle of soda and a bag of cookies.
Warmiest memory is our dad reading to me and my sisters (until we were quite old I think) , the Chronicles of Narnia, really going for the voice acting.
After wracking my brain trying to remember novels I read as kid and coming up blank, I finally remembered most of my early sci-fi books were in French, mostly aimed at middle-school aged kids but, gave me an early taste for sci-fi, and neat cover art to boot: https://www.noosfere.org/livres/collection.asp?NumCollection=-10246504&numediteur=3902
A few choice picks:
Les Abîmes d’Autremer: (rough translation: The Abysses of Othersea)
About a young journalist investigating the planet (Autremer) with the best spaceships (the Abîmes), which turn out to be retro-fitted space whales, that the pilot bonds to, and the journalist herself ends up as a pilot.
L’ Œuil des Dieux: (The eye of the gods)
About a group of 29 kids who were left behind at a lunar station after a serious accident while there were still in kindergarten, (nobody knows they are still alive), told many years later the oldest ones now teenagers, when they don’t really remember this (having been raised by a now defunct nanny robot) , and for them the station is the whole world, and they don’t really understand technology, and are separated into three semi-hostile tribes tribes the Wolves, the Bears, and the Craze.
(Generation Ship sci-fi is still one of ny favorite genre, if I ever write a sci-fi book it would probably be in that setting)
L’Or Bleu: (Blue gold)
This one I don’t remember that well and don’t have at hand, but it follows a young man from saturn visiting Earth for the first time, in a world where water has become scarce, specifically in the Atlanpolis capital city of the now dry Mediterranean sea, Paris with a now dry Seine river, making his living by being very good at arcade virtual reality videogames with leaderboards (the book is originally from 1989), and uncovering machinations of those of have power and control of water.
Bonus Mention:
From a short story, from a collection I don’t remember, but it follows a girl who is interupted in her life [while vacationing with her parents], is interrupted by the “Player” trying to complete his quest, and finding out that she’s acutally an NPC, she’s disturbingly realistic, and falling in love they do eventually complete the quest with a teary goodbye, and hopes that the virtual reality software the boy is using is actually tapping into parallel universes somehow. Cue the reveal, the girl was the Player all along, with slightly modified memories, for “enhanced” “immersion” and “excitement”, she does not mourn or worry about the boy much at all, realizing he was the NPC after all.
L’imparfait du futur, une épatante aventure de Jules: (Future Imperfect, A spiffing adventure of Jules)
This one is a whole French comic book series (Bande-déssinée), which tells the story of Jules an unremarkable young man with average grades, who is selected for a space program for no greatly explained reason (It later turns out the chief scientist is a crazed eugenicist with really flawed software, trying to create “ideal” pairs), which actually explores the concept and consequence of light speed travel, and time dilation, something not properly explained to Jules, until “take off”, cue a horrified face. When he does come back from alpha centauri in later installements, his younger brother is indeed now older than him. This book actually prompted me to ask in class in 2nd Grade for the teacher to please explain Relativity (in front of the whole class), and to his credit he actually gave it a fair shot, and didn’t dismiss the question as not being context or age-appropriate.
[There’s actually also lot of high quality french sci-fi comic books, generally intented for a more grown up audience.]