The Golden Years – Geek Nirvana During My “Teens”
I recall many years ago, when reading a discussion on the topic “When Were The Golden Years of Science Fiction”, some bright wag – I’m pretty sure it was Isaac Asimov – stating “It’s when you’re twelve.” He was spot on, our Isaac. The beginning of our teens is the sweet spot for the vast majority of us, long enough ago that most of our memories are fond, rosy ones, but the first period of our lives from which we retain a decent amount of memories, unlike our earlier childhood, the memories of which are very vague and fragmented. And it is also the period before we reach adulthood, during which we have the most fun and freedom to do what we want (after we finish our homework, of course), before the bland banalities, responsibilties and worries of “grown-up” life start to descend upon us.
Twelve years old was certainly right at the beginning of a “golden” stretch for me, as well. Things may not have been rosy on the domestic and personal front, but my hobbies and obsessions certainly did kick into overdrive in a very big way, possibly to compensate for my miserable “Real Life”. By that age, I was now growing old enough to be much more sophisticated, systematic and discerning when it came to what I was “into”.
This was the age at which I became a totally obsessive Doctor Who fan. John Pertwee (the Third Doctor) had begun his tenure on the show when I was ten years old, continuing in the role up until I was fourteen. I’d already been watching the show for four or five years, but was previously too young to get too deep into it. But Pertwee was the first Doctor whom I really considered as “my Doctor”, the first one that I began to hero-worship as a distinct personality. And when he left the show, his place was taken by my absolute favourite Doctor of all time, Tom Baker, who reigned for another seven years. So this entire decade, from the age of ten up until twenty, was my own personal “Golden Age” of Doctor Who watching.
I had also become a huge fan of the original Star Trek at the start of the 1970′s, and by the time I was twelve (1972-73), Star Trek was running neck-and-neck with Doctor Who as “my favourite TV programme”. To this very day, it’s still by far my favourite incarnation of Trek, although Seasons 3-5 of TNG are also right up there with it. And it wasn’t just Doctor Who and Star Trek. By this stage in my life, I was watching almost anything that was sci-fi, although I did make a strong distinction between my “favourite” shows (Doctor Who, Star Trek, UFO) and those that would merely help pass an hour or two (most of the Irwin Allen shows, with the exception of The Time Tunnel, which was a favourite of mine).
I did like other things aside from sci-fi (westerns, war films, comedies, some sport), but it was always sci-fi that was my real obsession. All through my teens there was a steady procession of classic sci-fi TV shows – Doctor Who, Star Trek (TOS and animated), UFO, Space:1999, The Time Tunnel, The Invaders, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, the list goes on. I even enjoyed some of the Irwin Allen shows, particularly Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Land of the Giants, although, even then, I regarded most of them as tacky and cheap (compared to Trek), even if they were kinda fun.
I also absolutely loved re-runs of the old 1950′s and 1960′s classic sci-fi movies on television, and it was during this time that I fell in love with not only classics like Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds, This Island Earth, When Worlds Collide, The Thing, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Even in the late-1970′s, when I was nearing the end of my “teens”, there was still a steady procession of great new sci-fi material, both on TV and in films – Logan’s Run, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, Blake’s 7, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Alien, Superman, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and many others.
The 1970′s was also a “golden” period for me as a fan of reading science fiction. All through the ’70′s I was reading lots of great SF, mostly unearthed at the local libraries. I’d gone from starting off at the beginning of the decade with Wells, Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov and a few other greats, to becoming a hardcore SF fan, reading anything I could get my hands on, and rooting out the most obscure, long-buried SF & fantasy authors. As I moved into my teens (1972-73), I entered a five-year period during which I devoured every SF book that came my way, sometimes reading two or even three books per day when I was on a roll. This was the period in my life in which I read the largest volume of SF, before the intensely heavy periods of studying, beginning with my “A-Levels” (from age 16-18), and continuing on when I went to university (at age 18-22), began severely curtailing any other form of reading.
It was during this time, early-to-mid 1970′s, that I developed my love for short fiction, which later was to prove useful as the decade wore on and my studies became much heavier, taking up almost all of my time. Short fiction is much easier to read than large novels when you have little free time for reading, and, as the decade rolled along, I found that most of the books that I read were now SF anthologies and collections, rather than novels. That strong preference for reading short fiction has persisted to this day, and 95% of the material I read is still short fiction. I do still enjoy the occasional good novel, though.
In the early ’70′s, I started getting into comics in a very big way. I’d already been a big fan of several British comics since the mid-1960′s – The Lion, The Valiant, The Eagle, TV21, and a few others. But in 1972, Marvel UK launched several titles – The Mighty World of Marvel, Spider-Man Comics Weekly and The Mighty Avengers – and overnight I became a complete addict, starting a lifelong love of superhero comics. By the mid-1970′s, I wasn’t just reading the Marvel UK reprints, but had started hunting for US Marvel (and DC) imports. Aside from US superhero imports and reprints, I also had a number of favourite home-grown UK comics classics on my “regulars” list – in the early ’70′s it was Countdown, in the mid-’70′s it was Vulcan, and in the late-’70′s it was 2000AD and its short-lived companion comic Starlord, and Doctor Who Weekly and Starburst (both of which were actually more magazines than comics). Aside from a decade away from comics (1982-1993), I’ve been a huge fan of comics since the mid-1960′s, and still spend a considerable amount on them each month.
All through the 1970′s, up until around 1978-79, was a “Golden Age” for me, when I was in full swing reading comics, great SF literature, and watching lots of great sci-fi series and films on TV. I just couldn’t get enough, and it seemed like the good days would never end.
I was wrong.
To Be Continued…
