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TV, Films, Books That Turned The Young You Onto The Fortean

Being an introvert also helped :)

Not sure about IQ - apparently, my method was to ask my grandma to read to me the same books over and over until I memorised them completely so I was able to tell them by heart. Then I connected letters with what I was saying and that is how I learned to read.

All this is "apparently" as I have no memory of the process :)
I also have no memory of learning how to read and I was reading so well by the time I started primary school that at first I was considered a poor reader, until my teacher realised I was refusing to read because the 'peter and jane books where too childish.
 
I love sci-fi books but hate the space opera kind. For people that don't like the typical sci-fi they may like Bob Shaw stories (some of them even deal with Fortean subjects such as Medusa's Children and A Wreath Of Stars).
 
I also have no memory of learning how to read and I was reading so well by the time I started primary school that at first I was considered a poor reader, until my teacher realised I was refusing to read because the 'peter and jane books where too childish.

The books I was supposed to read were so far below my level that when I'd read everything available my desperation led me to start on the 'baby books' again. I was summarily bawled out for carrying off a copy of a book about 'Ant and Bee'.
 
It was a comic book from 1979 describing UFO and alien encounters which caught my interest in the fortean.
I think it was originally released in USA as "UFO Flying Saucers", by Western Publishing.
I notice one of the stories is about the sightings of hairy alien creatures in South America, so the comic is probably based on real reports of UFOs and aliens.

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Classic Doctor Who (not the woke pc excrement the BBC vomits out today). Stuff from the 70s with Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Giant maggots crawling out of slag heaps in Wales, giant rats in Victorian sewers, intelligent reptiles emerging from 65 million years of hibernation, Lovecraftian alien intelligences possessing dolls and dummies, robot yetis in Tibet (along with the real one) and robot yetis invading the London Underground amid an ectoplasic web, giant parasitic wasps on space stations, cyborg saurians in Loch Ness, killer troll dolls lurching into homicidal life, pig brained cyborg ventriloquist dolls, monster killer plants thawed out of Antartic Ice, deep fracking projects that unleash volcanic infernos, aquatic lizard men, living, blood sucking megaliths, deadly robot parrots and not a single bit of identity politics or woke agenda on display. The real Doctor Who, that's what made me a fortean and a cryptozoologist.
 
Wish fulfilment!

She is also the friend whom I scared when text messaging first came out in the late 90s. You could page from your AOL account in those days so I gave it a go on my big computer at home, and sent Kath the silliest message I could think of.
It was 'Hey Kath, it's Scargy here, put that sausage down! You don't know where it's been!'

Kath was walking down the street in town eating a sausage bap. She nearly swallowed it whole when saw saw the message, convinced I was watching her from a window or doorway. Again I forgot all about it until I saw her again.
 
Classic Doctor Who (not the woke pc excrement the BBC vomits out today). Stuff from the 70s with Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker. Giant maggots crawling out of slag heaps in Wales, giant rats in Victorian sewers, intelligent reptiles emerging from 65 million years of hibernation, Lovecraftian alien intelligences possessing dolls and dummies, robot yetis in Tibet (along with the real one) and robot yetis invading the London Underground amid an ectoplasic web, giant parasitic wasps on space stations, cyborg saurians in Loch Ness, killer troll dolls lurching into homicidal life, pig brained cyborg ventriloquist dolls, monster killer plants thawed out of Antartic Ice, deep fracking projects that unleash volcanic infernos, aquatic lizard men, living, blood sucking megaliths, deadly robot parrots and not a single bit of identity politics or woke agenda on display. The real Doctor Who, that's what made me a fortean and a cryptozoologist.
Spot on, I stopped watching when Tom Baker left.
 
I'm made of sterner stuff, I still watch and love DW. But that's a point, there was a lot of Forteana on TV when I was little, in fiction and even in fact - poltergeist reports on the news! Unthinkable now.
Yep there was a lot more of it back then and (I could be completely wrong here) more people seemed to take the reports with less questioning than now, well I'm more sceptical now anyway.

It was more Peter Davidson that put me off Doctor Who than anything else but to be fair to him he was following a very tough act.
 
I think there's just as much supposed true life weirdness about, but you have to want to see it rather than stumble across it on the mainstream like before. Cable channels, amateur would-be experts on YouTube and social media, stuff like that "broadcast" the weirdness, but if you didn't know they were there you, er, wouldn't know they were there.

The downside is you don't have an authority to separate the wheat from the chaff. Apart from the FT every month, of course.
 
I think there's just as much supposed true life weirdness about...

Albeit that this is in a different context - I think it reflects my attitude to SF and Fantasy: The real world, in all its infinite variety, is deeply weird - I don't see the need for a different canvas. And all fiction is speculative.

I should emphasise that this is just a case of de gustibus; it's not my intention, outwith the usual application of Sturgeon's Law, to criticise the genres, or their adherents - it's just my attitude/problem.

(That said - I really don't get all that Game of Thrones stuff? It's just the Sagas of the Icelanders and Beowulf with a handful of porn stars thrown in. Only nowhere near as good.)
 
Many SF novels are overwritten but it's not the case with Feed by Mira Grant, first in her Newsflesh Trilogy about the Zombie Outbreak of 2014 and it's aftermath. Most of the narrative is set during a US Presidential election 2039-40. Feed's 570 pages are justified by the mixture of Zombie Science Fiction, Conspiracy, Politics and Online Independent Media. I'm looking forward to reading the next two books.

The same is true of Peter F. Hamilton's latest Trilogy, The Salvation Sequence. Two story lines. One is set in 2204. In this period humanity has developed near-instantaneous space travel via 'trans-dimensional gates,' and are using them to begin spreading out into the galaxy (bit like The Common Wealth but different Universe). When an unknown vessel is found on a recently explored world, a team of specialists are sent out to investigate both the craft and the astonishing contents therein. The members of the team tell stories, mostly about combating criminals and terrorists. A lot of the action also takes place in London. The other story line is set much farther in the future. It follows a genetically engineered team of (human) special forces designed to confront and destroy an enemy who are following their religious agenda of harvesting all sentient species in the galaxy.

Space Opera, Weird Aliens, Interstellar War.

I've read Salvation (590 pages) and Salvation Lost (520 pages), looking forward to Saints of Salvation.
 
Erich von Daniken. I still have a soft spot for him now and am a big fan of Ancient Aliens and Giorgio Tsoukalos.

(Yes I know and I don't care)


Me too (although I haven't kept up with it.) I first read about Daniken in a edition of Look and Learn. I made a mental note of it and, when I was older bought Chariots of the Gods, with it's pale blue cover with a goldfish bowl face atop a a stairwell - and the claim at the beginning that it took courage to write and would take courage to read.

I still find it hard not to view Daniken as a sort of cheery Uncle-that I-never-had...although I've since heard a lot of negative things about him and no longer feel able to subscribe to his theories.

Looking back, my interst in Daniken was really just ann extension of my interest in science fiction which had been nurtured by seventies televison. The very first novel I read - at about the age of 8, I think -was a novelisation of The Tomorrow People. But I also remember Timeslip.

The disaster movie craze of the seventies - starting with Towering Inferno - but also the Airport series - was a big influence too, as it was sort of ecothriller science fiction of sorts and had a slightly illicit feel abouit it, insofar as your parents worried that it might be scaring you.

I remember buying a copy of the novelisation of Squirm - and having to keep it hidden from parental gaze - which took some doing!
 
Got to also hand it to Charlton Heston’s great sci-fi trilogy. Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man and Soylent Green.
Agreed, very influentional films . Judging by some of the films being put on freeview since the lockdown I'm really hoping The Omega Man will be on soon, haven't seen it in years, ( I prefer it to the book and sequel ).
 
Looking back, my interst in Daniken was really just ann extension of my interest in science fiction which had been nurtured by seventies televison. The very first novel I read - at about the age of 8, I think -was a novelisation of The Tomorrow People. But I also remember Timeslip.
It's funny but for me, fiction did not do it at all although I loved ghostly, magical and alien books and TV programmes as much as the next child. I think just simply because it was fiction. The von Daniken books meant it was REAL.

(Yes I know..)
 
It's funny but for me, fiction did not do it at all although I loved ghostly, magical and alien books and TV programmes as much as the next child. I think just simply because it was fiction. The von Daniken books meant it was REAL.

(Yes I know..)

Yes! As I've said earlier in the thread, the "real" stuff was a lot more appealing and fuelled my interest in weirdness. I read Nicolas Fisk, for example, but placed him in a different category to the supposedly true stuff I borrowed from the library and read voraciously. I didn't know that Peter Haining was probably making it all up, if it had that semblance of authenticity it fascinated me.
 
It was a comic book from 1979 describing UFO and alien encounters which caught my interest in the fortean.
I think it was originally released in USA as "UFO Flying Saucers", by Western Publishing.
I notice one of the stories is about the sightings of hairy alien creatures in South America, so the comic is probably based on real reports of UFOs and aliens.

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And you never noticed that James Dean was the witness and he died soon after in a RTA?

EDIT: It could be Jeffrey Hunter.
 
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I gave the whole lot to a charity shop when, in a mad rush of blood to the head, I decided to declutter. Something I have regretted ever since.

You can find most of them on Amazon and Ebay quite cheaply but to be honest, I'd rather just read the synopses on that blog. So much to read and so little time.
If there were a 'Best Of' compendium of the most highly regarded stories in the entire series, that might be a different matter.
 
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