Don't get me wrong...I'm a BIG Jules Verne fan, and plan on hopping straight to reading Zach "From The Earth to the Moon" after this. I wouldn't be reading my kids this stuff if I didn't know it was good for them. But geez! H. G. Wells didn't spend a page and a half describing all the plants growing around the splash crater of the Martian cylinders.

I was determined to make sure that my kids got the original books in their heads when exposed to movie versions. Dr. Doolittle, Mary Poppins, Jungle Books, Lord of the Rings (yes, I read that out loud to them as kids. Took me EONS.) and others. Some of these efforts were more successful than others. I have yet to get either one interested in science fiction in a big way, which I consider to be some major black mark against me as a father. Neither kid has, on their own, touched a book by Heinlein, Clarke, Niven, or any others, although I haven't given up. My son reads mostly comics and Star Wars novelizations, although at least he is willing to let me read him other stuff, and my daughter is pretty much stuck on Terry Pratchett right now, rereading his old books before trying any other authors. Rats.

I could blame video games and TV to some extent, and the short attention span they create, although God knows had such things been available when I was a kid, you probably couldn't have pried me away with a crowbar, and I was nuts about TV myself. I still think "Riven" was worth two good SF books all by itself.

My garage office has an entire wall covered with fiction, and another covered with nonfiction and National Geographics* and I hope curiosity gets the best of them eventually.

*Which reproduce like coat hangers