join a club if you can
get hold of a good book-I personally like "Turn Left at Orion" even though it was written for Northern Hemisphere observers. Another often recommended is "Nightwatch"
you may be able to borrow these from your local library
browse this forum
as an avid SF fan-of course you will be hooked on astronomy- for example, don't you want to be able to find the location for classics such as the "Mote in God's eye" yourself?-hint- it's a naked eye object, you will have to go somewhere where you are far away from light pollution to see it though
or find all the nebulae in famous SF yourself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebulae_in_fiction?
(including the lagoon nebula referenced in Battlestar Galactia??)
or recognise all the astro-posters in the apartment of the main protagonists in Big Bang Theory?
resistance is futile
You have to become an amateur astronomer