Fantasy hackery

When I was a kid, I benefitted a lot from living in a place that had nearly year-long clement weather. I also benefitted from living before the age of paranoia in which we live now; so my parents didn't worry overly much that I galivanted all over town as a child. I also happened to live in a town that was the perfect size; small enough to have that small town feel; large enough to have just about everything I could want to go see.

I can't remember if I started this in kindergarten or not, but certainly by 1st grade, I was riding my bike to school. With the benefit of Yahoo! Maps, I could chart how far that as, and it was about three quarters of a mile through residential streets. I get about two and a half miles to the public library, which by the time I was twelve, I was doing almost weekly, especially during the summer. There also was a used bookstore, Half Price Books, that wasn't very far from me either, and I used to make regular forays in that direction as well. I had a couple of decent new books stores within easy striking distance as well.

As you can probably guess based on the above, I was a rather voracious reader as a kid. I typically tell people that I used to read books by the truckload. And I very rarely gave up on books; even ones that were particularly bad. This was before the "paper crisis" that made prices increase dramatically in the early 90s; relatively slim novels still cost $1.99 at the time, and even large, thicker ones were rarely more than $3.99 or $4.99 for the absolute largest ones. Not that I had a ready source of cash before I turned 16 and got a regular job, but books were cheap enough that I between the library, the new bookstores and the used bookstores (where I'd also turn in books I was done with and didn't figure I'd ever read again) I had a pretty steady flow of books coming into the house. Good thing, too, given the rate at which I could read them.

Although my reading interests were fairly diverse, in the fiction department I certainly read much more science fiction and fantasy than anything else. I read a few westerns, a few other adventure tales, some modern thriller/bestseller types, and even on slow days I'd pick up a handful of my sisters romances, but I usually read fantasy and sci-fi, and a lot of non-fiction.

There's a lot of fairly bad science fiction and fantasy, too—but like I said, as a kid I usually perservered and read them anyway. There's a lot of good stuff out there too, after all. One of my favorite discoveries from this time was Edgar Rice Burroughs. I used to watch a Filmation Tarzan series as a kid that I really liked (and which was surprisingly faithful to the tone of ERB's Tarzan) and I had heard of the John Carter of Mars books, so I readily dove into both of those and started a long-lived love affair that continues to this day. I also read, at a friend's recommendation, the Chronicles of Prydain, which was my first High Fantasy series. The next year I finally (and belatedly) discovered Tolkien at the age of 12.

As a curious coincidence, not long after I discovered fantasy and read most of what I could get my hands on at the libraries and bookstores, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman published the first Dragonlance books. I remember seeing the small section of the shelf rather rapidly balloon out as novels were published four or five a year, and calendars (with cool Larry Elmore art) popped up and obviously a minor little craze was going on around the property. So by 1987 or 1988 or so, I found a copy of the three Dragonlance original trilogy novels (including one signed by Margaret Weis) at my used bookstore and picked them up. They were better than I expected, and remain one of the very few game-related fiction pieces that I thought was good enough to keep (other than that, I think the original three R. A. Salvatore Forgotten Realms novels are the only ones. And I've had second thoughts about those from time to time.)

One series I discovered and like quite a bit was by Raymond Feist; the original Riftwar Saga. Although not technically game fiction, as it turns out, the setting of Midkemia on which the action takes place, was in fact a roleplaying game setting that Feist and his friends used. He set the first book 500 years before his game (which means that all the books he's published for Midkemia take place way before his game; I'm a little curious what the setting looked like at the time of his game, actually.) There's also the possibility that Kelewan and the Tsurani Empire—the other major world described in the Riftwar Saga—was heavily influenced by Tekumel and their own Tsolyáni Empire.

The reason I bring this up is that I recently (finally) moved all my fantasy books from the boxes in the basement, where they were a real pain to get to, to a large bookcase that I have in my bedroom. In doing so, I discovered that I am missing some of my books—and among them are the first three Riftwar books, which I consider a high priority to recover.

I like the Riftwar. I like Midkemia. I like Kelewan. Sure; none of them are terribly original; Midkemia feels like a D&D world (and for all intents and purposes, it is—although Feist and the other creators do acknowledge that they very early became dissatisfied with D&D as a system and created their own, the feel is still very similar). However, unlike the farmed out game fiction novels, Feist actually really loves his setting and cares about it, which helps his novels immensely. He's also a skilled enough writer to write what he wants rather than be simply a "novelist for hire." Despite my disdain for "game fiction" however, I do have to admit that a lot of it—maybe most of it—is still the equal to other fantasy "hack" writers; folks like David Eddings or Terry Brooks.