Reading Rainbow turned me into a geek...and I'm glad!

Science fiction was not a big thing in my house as a young kid. Sure, we had all seen the Superman and Star Wars movies, but they were spread out over the years and the only science fictiony thing I watched on TV at the time was old Batman reruns and Land of the Lost.

In 1989, my freshman year in High School...everything changed.

My history teacher had a historical mini-series to show us one week in school. Ugh. Usually those things were boring and horrible. This one, however, was Roots. I was pleasantly surprised to see LeVar Burton, someone who I knew from watching Reading Rainbow on PBS was the title character Kunta Kinte. Okay, I was interested. The series was amazing and something every school kid should definitely watch...and although it had a profound impact on me, it lead to something much more interesting.

One day a few months afterward, I'm watching some Reading Rainbow reruns from the previous season and lo and behold, LeVar is on the USS Enterprise. It's a behind the scenes show. Cool! I'm watching, I chuckle at the actor who plays Worf. I watch LeVar put a banana clip over his eyes "Ha, ha, I used to wear those!". I'm watching...then I see the kid from Stand By Me! Ooh, of course I didn't remember his name, I had only seen the movie once at that point, and we didn't have the geek bible IMDB yet. I was intrigued. Looked up Star Trek: The Next Generation in the TV guide and made sure to watch the next episode.

I don't remember which one I first saw, but it didn't matter. I was hooked. Wil Wheaton was around my age. So cool, he's in space! I watch every rerun episode I could find. Secluded myself in the basement with the rabbit eared TV when it was on because no one else was interested. I started reading the books, of which I still have all of them, branched out into more Science Fiction like Quantum Leap, Roswell, Deep Space 9, The X-Files, Buffy, The Highlander, The Tomorrow People (on Nick, and CW is bringing it back!!) Sliders. Then eventually shows like Smallville, Medium, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica, Supernatural, and LOST, but then I REALLY got into it with  Futurama, Jericho, The 4400, Firefly, Farscape, Dark Angel, Warehouse 13, Fringe, Voyager,  Doctor Who, Torchwood, Primeval, Lost Girl.

When Prime Time TV started doing some Sci-fi I was so excited! Flash Forward-canceled. The Event-canceled. Terra Nova-canceled. Terminator Chronicles-canceled. No Ordinary Family-canceled. WTF!!

I really didn't understand. All of those shows were pretty damn good, some were just on the cusp of becoming awesome. Grrr. Fine. It's okay, I've got a crap ton of movies now to feed my geekness. I won't even start to list them, I'm sure you get the idea.

All throughout this time of Sci-Fi absorption  I delved even deeper in some areas. I love anime. Have seen a bunch of movies, series', and OVA's. I've picked up a healthy appetite for Fantasy too. My new love of Science Fiction even helped me to seek out documentaries to better understand science in general.

So now that the 2013-2014 is chock full of yet another round of awesome looking Science Fiction shows, I'm both excited and worried. I hate the thought of watching one or two shows for 16+ episodes only to have the show canceled...it really is becoming a crappy trend in the TV industry. And despite my promise not to pick up anything new, I did watch get hooked on Arrow, Elementary and Beauty and the Beast this year. It could have been more, but I stopped myself. :-)

Do you like Sci-fi? What are your favorites??