Books like The Other Side Of The Sky

This book gets 5 stars just because....I found this book, as if dropped by God, lying in my path walking from the school bus-stop. I wish I could remember the year - early to mid 80's I suppose. It was the first science fiction book I read. I devoured each short story and wanted more. I cleaned out the meager Clarke collection at our library which led me to others. Herbert, Heinlein, Delany, the list goes on.I later found out that it had fallen out of a neighbor's pocket on his drunken trek from the local bar. I still believe that providence/fate/aliens put in my way. This book sent a poor gay kid living in the rural south on journeys that without it he could never taken. I have taken journeys of the mind, body and spirit into the vastness of the cosmos and into the realms of smallest particles - stories telling me that there is more out there than the little patch of earth that was my world.. It is difficult to write but I think that science fiction may have had a great part in “getting me out alive.”I've never gone back to these stories for fear that some magic would be lost, but it was the beginning of an incredible ride.