The first science fiction book I can remember reading was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’engle, and I recall how immediately upon finishing it, I begged my mother to drive me back to the library so I could check out every other book L’engle had written. The strangeness of the book bent my mind in new directions, and I had vivid dreams about it for weeks after. After I finished L’engle, I found Lois Lowry, William Sleator, C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy, Jurassic Park, and before I quite realized what was happening, I’d become irreversibly entrenched in science fiction.

When I’d devoured the juvenile fiction section of my little public library, I ventured into the adult shelves (secretly at first — I weirdly thought that librarians would frown on kids browsing the adult side of the library,). There I found a new wealth of stories: Heinlein, Atwood, stacks and stacks of those Star Wars spin-off books. My dad, a lifelong SF geek, was thrilled with my new obsession, and pressed into my hands copies of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

via It’s A Woman’s Universe: The Ladies Of Science Fiction | Jessica Khoury.