Science Fiction

I grew up on SciFi.  My first "real" books that were not comics were science fiction and it hooked me hard.  I was transported to so many amazing worlds, how could a scrawny new kid resist?  I stopped reading SciFi when I was about 30, ashamed of missing all the great literature I should have been reading, so I spend the next 30+ years catching up (oh and reading the great noir mystery writers, too, Cain, Hammett, Chandler, Leonard, and many others)  At the suggestion of my son, Jamie, I just read a bunch of SciFi books in a row by Iain M. Banks. They were delicious. I remember how I was so awed by the inventiveness of the great Asimov, Clark and Heinlein, well, Banks is at least as good and in some ways better, more MACRO, so expansive. Yum, yum.