Science Fiction Day!

I hope everyone had a great (and safe) New Year's, and that you're ready for another year of fresh adventures and good reads!

To help get your 2014 reading experience underway ...

... today is Science Fiction Day!

There are all kinds of science fiction offerings available - from space to "weird medicine" to time travel. My personal favorite is space-based, and I'm fairly certain that preference has to do with the figures in the image above. Watching A New Hope was my first taste of science fiction, followed up by a Science Fiction course in college ... That class was an interesting experience, and the first time I'd ever read sci-fi. I quickly learned that I hate robots, but love space. (Okay, maybe I already knew I loved space - I took Astronomy as my lab science). Reading and discussing six novels over the course of the semester was a great way to "jumpstart" things - in the years since, I've revisited the world of science fiction several times. Almost always, those forays involve space travel/living, but there have been some other reads too. Meg Cabot's Airhead trilogy was one that caught me off guard and held my attention more than I anticipated.

With so many different sci-fi novels available, how do you decide what to read? Well, think about the movies you like - chances are, there's most likely a book that's similar. And there are a lot of really good Young Adult novels, which can help you figure out what "flavor" of science fiction is your favorite - YA reads are a great way to explore new genres, because they have excellent story-value, without some of the daunting detail (and they're usually quick reads). The bloggers over at YALSA's Hub have a list of their top 5 world-perspective-changing sci-fi titles on the blog today, and that may be a good place to start too.

Science fiction is a genre that can make you think as much as it can lead you to dream. And it's fun - which is one of my all-time mega points for choosing books: read things that are fun, that you want to read.