100 Days of Fantasy
(a memoir)
by Ty Johnston
Copyright 2011 by L. M. Press
for those who came before
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Fiction available from the author
City of Rogues: Book I of The Kobalos Trilogy
Road to Wrath: Book II of The Kobalos Trilogy
Dark King of the North: Book III of The Kobalos Trilogy
Blade and Flame (short story prequel to The Kobalos Trilogy)
Bayne’s Climb: Part I of The Sword of Bayne
A Thousand Wounds: Part II of The Sword of Bayne
Under the Mountain: Part III of The Sword of Bayne
The Sword of Bayne: Omnibus edition
The Castle of Endless Woe (novelette)
SEVER, SLICE and STAB: 20 tales of horror
The Impulse to Punish: a short story of Mars
More Than Kin
My memory isn’t what it used to be
Actually, that’s a lie. My memory was never all that good in the first place. I’ve never been one with an excellent recall of the past beyond a matter of a few days. My childhood and even my teen years are a blur to me with brief images of faces and events standing out. Perhaps all of us are this way, but it has always seemed to me most others have a better memory than myself. My wife would agree with that, I’m sure.
Because of my lax in memory, in 2010 I decided to force myself to recall particular books that had had an affect upon me as a writer. Why 2010? No particular reason other than my fiction writing career was beginning to take off. For twenty years I had been a newspaper journalist, but then the fickle fates of the economy forced me into a change of careers. After having been a hobbyist writer (a short story sold here, parts of a novel written there), I decided it was time to take my fiction seriously and to step fully into the writing game.
By 2010 I had been writing full time a couple of years, and as I mentioned, was beginning to have some small success. I became interested in what had influenced me as a writer, specifically a writer of speculative fiction as I write mostly in the fantasy and horror genres.
To formalize things somewhat, I decided to spend 100 days thinking about books that were important to me, though were not necessarily always favorites. I wanted to study books that had had an impact, one way or another. Each day I sent my mind back in time, perusing the thousands of books I have read over the last four-plus decades. Each day I picked a particular book to recall.
In the end, the 100 books I remembered are the 100 you will find here in this e-book, as well as my recollections of them.
This little collection is by no means an extensive literary discussion of major books, but merely thought of mine concerning these 100 books, mostly fiction but with some non-fiction here and there. Also, not all of the books mentioned here are strictly books. More than a few graphic novels and comic books found their way into my memory, and I decided to include them because comics were a huge influence upon me as a boy in the long-ago days of the 1970s.
I hope you will find something to enjoy here, looking back at the past. Perhaps my memories will nudge some of your memories, or perhaps you will discover new reading material. Either way, thank you for reading.
Note: This collection originally ran as a series on my blog, tyjohnston.blogspot.com, but has been re-edited and slightly reworked here.
Day 1
The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
I'm beginning with one of the most obvious fantasy novels, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Originally published in 1937, The Hobbit has probably had more influence, directly or indirectly, over the last century's fantasy fiction than any other single book. Some might argue Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings has had more influence, but without The Hobbit there likely would never have been The Lord of the Rings. Also, even fantasy authors who are not fans of Tolkien (Michael Moorcock comes to mind), likely would have to admit Tolkien and his hobbits have been hugely important and influential upon modern fantasy fiction.
Growing up as a kid in small towns back in the 1970s, there wasn't a lot of fantasy fiction to be found in the local book stores. Even the libraries didn't have much to offer. Fortunately, at least Tolkien's The Hobbit and his The Lord of the Rings were relatively easy to find.
That was it for me back then. No Conan stories. No endless epic fantasies. Nothing. Nada. At least not until the late 1970s when Terry Brooks came along and then one of my local book stores began carrying the Thieves' World series of anthologies edited by Robert Aspirin.
But Tolkien was it for the longest while. The only fantasy fiction I had available to me. I'd started reading with comic books, then moved on to longer works appropriate for kids, such as the Black Beauty and Black Stallion novels and the collection of Alfred Hitchcock The Three Investigators series, but eventually I discovered Tolkien.
Growing up in a small town, there were not a lot of kids who were readers. Most were into sports of one sort or another. I liked sports, at least some of them, but reading was my big thing. Among the few reading kids I did know, Tolkien was the lone author everyone said I had to try.
So, I did. I decided to start with The Hobbit for two reasons. One, it was a stand-alone story, so if I didn't like it I didn't have to worry about not finishing a longer series. Two, everyone was telling me The Hobbit was basically a prologue to The Lord of the Rings and I wouldn't understand what was going on with Sam and Frodo unless I knew what had happened with Bilbo.
Of course I read The Hobbit and loved it. I've read it several times since.
Nowadays, being older and more widely read, I'm a little more critical of The Hobbit and Tolkien in general. Don't get me wrong. I still love Tolkien's writing, but it doesn't call out to me the way it did when I was a child.
When I was a kid, discovering Tolkien was one of the greatest times of my life. It opened up new doors and possibilities for me. Tolkien combined decent story telling, interesting characters, the intriguing notion of the alien and unique, and cool stuff. Like swords and armor and dragons and monsters and quests and ...
I could go on. But The Hobbit, for me, brought much of the vitality and adventure of comic books to life on a broader, grander scale than any comic book (at the time, anyway) could ever have dreamed of accomplishing. Tolkien's prose went beyond comics in that his words allowed my mind to create its own images of each character and of events. It was like having my own personal movie in my head, but better because my mind could include senses beyond that of the mere visual.
It was freedom.
So, that's what I have to thank Tolkien's The Hobbit for, for freeing my mind, for allowing me to dream of possibilities.
'Nuff said. At least for now.
Day 2
The
Sword of Shannara
by Terry Brooks
As I have mentioned, hen I was a kid in the 1970s, fantasy fiction wasn't easy to find in the towns where I lived. Of course I was able to get my hands on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but nothing beyond that was available. Which was a shame, because after reading Tolkien (and seeing the first Star Wars movie) I yearned for more fantasy.
Along came author Terry Brooks.
And the gates of the heavens opened and the faithful were allowed entrance!
I actually started my Shannara readings with the second book in the series, The Elfstones of Shannara. I'd stumbled across a big paperback version of that novel at a local book store and I had to snag it up when I saw the awesome cover by artist Darrell K. Sweet. But soon after that same book store got in a paperback copy of The Sword of Shannara, and I was swept away in fantasyland.
Over the years I've read not quite half a dozen of this author's books, and admittedly I've never been blown away by them, but in all fairness I've read worse and seen worse on the market. But Brooks helped me through the latter parts of my childhood and early teens, giving me exciting fiction to read when there was a dearth of it available to me. Brooks even helped me through a couple of tough spells when my mother was in the hospital in the very early 1980s, and I had to spend days upon days in waiting rooms with nothing to do but read. So I've always had somewhat of a soft spot for Brooks, especially his world of Shannara.
Over the years, Brooks has often caught grief from some fantasy fans who have accused him of being a Tolkien ripoff. Those fans' opinions are not completely unjustified because Brooks' early Shannara works have a lot in common with The Lord of the Rings, including such tropes as elves, dwarves, swords, quests, and druids, which seemed an awful lot like wizards.
But for a kid dying to get a fantasy fix and finding little else available, Brooks was awesome.
I can't say Brooks has had a direct influence upon my own writing style, but his subject matter was definitely fuel that kept my own fantasy fires burnings. Also, I love one of Brooks' nonfiction books on writing, Sometimes the Magic Works, mainly because the way he approaches writing fiction seems quite similar to my own, an immersion into the writing that at times seems to take one away from or out of the real world, almost in a spooky way at times.
If nothing else, the Shannara books kept me reading and kept me interested in fantasy fiction. But I'd like to think there was a little more than just that to the whole thing. I'd like to think Terry Brooks helped me along my road to becoming a fiction author.
Day 3
Black Beauty
by Anna Sewell
Written by Anna Sewell and originally published in 1877, Black Beauty has come to be considered literature for young people even though it was not meant to be such. However, it is understandable to see how this came about after having read the book.
The story is that of Black Beauty, a horse living in 19th Century Britain, and the tale is told in first person by this horse. The chapters deal with Black Beauty's various owners, some cruel and some not, and much of the story's focus is upon cruelty towards animals and how it affects the animals.
There's not much fantastical here, strictly speaking, unless one considers a horse being able to tell his own story fantastical. But it is a heartwarming tale.
Also, personally, this is an important book for me. It was the very first novel-sized book I ever read. I picked it up at my school library in second or third grade, and I was soon hooked. I then went on to read a sequel, The Son of Black Beauty by Phyllis Brigs, and a string of unrelated novels in the Black Stallion series written by Walter Farley.
While Black Beauty was my first real book, it was by no means my first reading material. Like many other kids growing up in the 1970s, I'd read and had read to me plenty of children's literature, such as the Dr. Suess books. Also, I was a huge comic book fan; I poured through tons and tons of comic books, my favorites back then being the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Batman, Superman and World's Finest (with Batman and Superman). Spider-man also made the list.
Why did I pick up Black Beauty in the first place? I honestly don't know. I wish I could remember, and it kind of bugs me that I can't. I grew up in horse country, and though I like horses I've never been particularly drawn to them, so I don't think it was the specific subject matter. However, I would like to think this book influenced my beliefs and opinions about animal welfare.
Day 4
The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow
by M.V. Carey
A lot of avid readers started reading as a kid, and many of them often had a favorite book or series from their childhood.
Mine was The Three Investigators series. In this series of novels, three boys in their early teens went about solving mysteries. In most of the novels there were supernatural elements, elements that eventually were explained away. This should sound familiar to you Scooby Doo fans, because the plots were somewhat similar but without the crazy antics of the likes of Scooby and Shaggy.
A lot of young readers back in the day went for the Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys mysteries, but those never did much for me. I always preferred The Three Investigators.
What initially drew me to The Three Investigators series was this book, The Mystery of the Sinister Scarecrow, specifically the cover. I can remember in fourth grade going to my school library and randomly pulling this book off the shelves. The artwork by Robert Adragna blew me away. I had to read that book. And I did. Followed up by twenty or so of the other books in the series, all with fantastic artwork and great stories that kept me interested throughout.
One strong element about The Three Investigators books that has stuck with me was the notion that the characters had to solve their own problems. As the three main characters in this series were only thirteen or so years old, they had a lot of limitations compared to an adult. They couldn't drive. Adults had a tendency not to believe them. Things like that. But the characters always persevered, despite the many setbacks and dangers they faced in each novel. As a young reader, I picked up on this, and I believe it affects my writing even to this day. It taught me to never let the characters off easy, to have them solve their own problems; anything else strikes of deus ex machina and can seem silly to the reader.
That being said, eventually I grew older and moved on to other reading material, but still today I have a fondness for this series.
Day 5
The
Fellowship of the Ring
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Like many young readers in the 1970s, The Hobbit was my introduction to fantasy literature. And growing up in small towns where finding books was no easy task, it was quite difficult to get my little hands on a fantasy novel. But after discovering The Hobbit, I was hooked. And I had to have more.
The next logical course was to follow up The Hobbit with more works by J.R.R. Tolkien. Again, this was the 1970s. This was back in the day before Tolkien's son Christopher had come along and reworked a bunch of his father's material and published it. Heck, even Tolkien's The Silmarillion was just coming out in book stores.
The Lord of the Rings was the only choice. Not that that was a problem. The Hobbit was considered children's literature, but The Lord of the Rings was the adult stuff. And adult stuff was risque and exciting. At least that's how I saw it as a kid back then.
So I spent a summer reading The Lord of the Rings. I suppose, looking back on it, the first book in this trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, was what I considered my first adult fantasy reading.
Again, as with The Hobbit, I was hooked. But even more so. The plot was more dangerous. The characters were more indepth. The writing was more ... uh, Tolkieny.
It was great adult reading for me, reading about this group of hobbits who were on this great big mission to save the entire world. What could be of more importance?
The Fellowship of the Ring has always been my favorite of all Tolkien's work. It's also my favorite of the Peter Jackson movies based upon The Lord of the Rings. I seem to be in the minority here. Many readers of Tolkien with whom I've been in contact tend to enjoy the third book, The Return of the King, as their favorite. My experience has also been the same with the movies. Admittedly The Return of the King is where everything is wrapped up, but I've always felt the character development and the pathos created in The Fellowship of the Ring was top notch. And it was the characters, the good and the evil, who made me fall in love with Middle Earth.
Market saturation has given trend recently to an anti-Tolkien feeling among some fantasy fans and writers. To some extent this can be expected. What's popular often becomes passe. It's also true that today's reading and viewing audiences have different expectations than those of Tolkien's day, from roughly the 1930s through the 1950s. But no one can deny the influence Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings has had on fantasy fiction in particular and mainstream fiction in general.
Day 6
Thieves' World
edited by Robert Lynn Asprin
In 1978, I turned nine years old. By that point, this future fantasy author had rolled through Tolkien and had discovered Terry Brooks. In my own nine-year-old way, I thought I knew everything there was to know about fantasy fiction.
Oh, how naive.
That same year I discovered a sub-genre of fantasy known as Sword and Sorcery. Big guys with muscles swinging swords. Evil wizards. Damsels barely clad in chain string bikinis. Murky monsters. You know. Fun stuff.
And how exactly did I discover Sword and Sorcery?
Through a collection of short stories titled Thieves' World.
The tales in Thieves' World take place in the crumbling, cesspool of a city of Sanctuary, one of the outer cities of the Rankan Empire. Within Sanctuary can be found mages, thieves, assassins and generally all kinds of shady characters. Every once in a while even a demon or something resembling a zombie will show up. It's the kind of place you don't want to visit after dark. Or even during daylight in certain parts of town.
The collection was filled with fantastic tales by such authors as Poul Anderson, C.J. Cherryh, Marion Zimmer Bradley and my personal favorite, Andrew J. Offutt. Offutt wrote about a character named Hanse Shadowspawn, a thief who dressed all in black and carried a dozen or more daggers hidden on his body. Despite his dark demeanor, Hanse was actually a pretty good guy and likable.
Thieves' World proved to be popular enough to continue in a series, of which there were originally 12 books and probably another dozen or so independent novels. In the early 2000s, the series was started up again with three new books, but the last one was printed in 2004 and there have yet to be signs of any further material.
As a writer, I learned a lot from the original Thieves' World book. It opened up new potentials to me, dark potentials. Before, all that fantasy I had read had been quest oriented with big, saving-the-world kind of stories. Thieves' World showed me another way. It showed me little stories, but stories still containing excitement, stories of things that could happen just around the corner, deadly and mysterious things.
Also, Thieves' World lead me to Andrew J. Offutt, who wrote several novels in the 1970s containing characters of Robert E. Howard, characters such as Conan the Cimmerian and Bran Mak Morn. Thus, Thieves' World lead me to Offutt, Offutt lead me to Conan, and Conan lead me straight to Robert E. Howard, the father of Sword and Sorcery itself.
My writing and reading have never been the same since.
Day 7
The Executioner #38: Satan's Sabbath
by Don Pendleton
I was a huge James Bond fan when I was a kid, and still am somewhat to this day. Sean Connery has always been my favorite Bond, but "Live and Let Die" is my favorite Bond movie.
As a kid and young teen, I delved into some of Ian Fleming's Bond books. They were good. They were interesting. But they didn't quite have enough action for me, the budding young man. I wanted a lot more of things blowing up, and of bad guys getting shot.
Then, at about age 12, I discovered The Executioner series of men's action/adventure novels. A couple of times a year a new book in the series would come out. The overall plot was simple: A Vietnam veteran named Mack Bolan lost his family to mafia violence, so now he was out for revenge. Each book detailed Mack's latest adventures in taking down the mob. It was great, explosive stuff.
I first picked up the series with this book, Satan’s Sabbath, which was actually a shame. It was the end of the original author's run on the series. Don Pendleton would no longer write Mack Bolan books after this one. Also, the series was going in a new direction with Bolan taking on terrorists. There was really nothing wrong with the new direction, but Pendleton had been the one to hook me on the series and I wanted to read his take on his character before going on to other authors.
Well, the good thing about starting with book 38 was there were 37 books before that one, all but one (#16) written by Pendleton himself. So, I spent the next year searching for and reading as many of Don Pendleton's The Executioner novels as I could find. I never read all of them, but I did read a good number.
And once I finished with Pendleton's original run, there were still new Bolan adventures coming out, only this time a new novel came out at a least once a month.
I don't regularly read The Executioner novels nowadays, though I pick one up from time to time, and the series is now up in the four or five hundreds or something ungodly like that. It's almost like a comic book in that way.
As a writer, The Executioner novels taught me a lot. They weren't always the best reading, depending on who was doing the actual writing, but they were almost always tight with action. Frankly, I learned how to write action scenes from these books, and I suggest any writer wanting to learn to write decent action scenes couldn't do much better than reading through a dozen or so of these novels.
Plus they can be a lot of fun to read.
Day 8
Pet Sematary
by Stephen King
As a boy and young teen, I always knew I'd be a writer. Back then my interests were mostly fantasy and science fiction.
Then one day my mom received in the mail a box of books. She had joined some book of the month club. As I was an avid reader, I perused the books to see what was there. Most of them were cook books, which made sense since these were for my mom, but one of them was a book titled Pet Sematary by Stephen King with an image of a howling cat on the cover.
This was 1983, and I was 12 or 13 depending upon the actual time of year. Of course I had heard of Stephen King at that point. Who hadn't? He was the hottest author in the world at the time.
But horror had never been my thing. So, I stacked my moms books together and left them sitting on a table.
Over the next several days, that howling cat image kept calling back to me. I would pass that stack of books and glance at the outer edge of Pet Sematary, but then I would go on my way.
After a couple of weeks of this, I couldn't stand it any more. I snagged up Pet Sematary and started reading.
My life has never been the same since.
Pet Sematary was not only the first Stephen King book I ever read, but it was the first horror novel I ever read. I'd read a few Poe short stories in school at the time, but I'd yet to immerse myself into a deep horror tale.
Pet Sematary had me hooked. It wasn't just that it was horror or that there were supernatural elements, though that helped, but it was the way King told his tale. This wasn't a story taking place in some ancient faraway kingdom or a billion light years away in outer space; this was a tale that could have happened down the street from me. And I think that's part of what grabbed me and has stuck with me over the years. For me, King wasn't just writing horror, but he was taking fantasy elements and infusing them into the real world, and those elements would be scary as hell in the real world. Imagine if a real-life dragon showed up and started spewing flames. We'd all go nuts, and it would be terrible. This was how I was seeing things. There was also the factor that King knew how to build suspense quite well.
For the next decade, I wanted to write just like Stephen King, or at least to tell the kind of stories he told. I tried, and even did passably well if I do say so myself, but eventually as a writer my own style and personal interests began to work into my bloodstream and out through the keyboard and onto the paper. I still occasionally pen a tale of horror that is somewhat King-esque, but I feel I've mostly gone on and grown as a writer into other interests. King does what he does very well, but I'm not King. I have my own things to say.
Day 9
The Stand
by Stephen King
As I mentioned, I had discovered horror fiction and Stephen King in the early 1980s through the book Pet Sematary. As a budding young writer who was not quite a teen, Pet Sematary opened up new story telling possibilities for me.
And it drove me to hunt down as many Stephen King books as I could find. Back then, there weren't nearly as many King books available as there are today, or even as there would be just a few years later. King had been publishing about a book a year, but he was just hitting one of the busiest points in his career, churning out huge volumes of work through the rest of the '80s.
Still, there were a number of King novels available. Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, were all excellent books.
Then I stumbled upon The Stand. It was such a thick book that I put off reading it for a while. Which was a shame, because once I did read it, it has since been one of my all-time favorite reads.
The Stand is a sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy tale. Most of humanity has been wiped out by a disease known as Captain Tripps, and the handful of survivors must ... well, first they have to survive. Then they begin to receive dreams and other mysterious messages which lead them on a quest of sorts. Only there are two different types of dreams, for different types of people.
Eventually the survivors of Captain Tripps form into two camps, one that's basically the good guys and the other that isn't. Sounds simple. It's not. It's great and heroic and dark and challenging. It takes the idea of the fantasy quest, mixes it with horror, then plants it right in the middle of America.
When I had first discovered King, I had been intrigued by his mixing of fantasy tropes with the actual world, thus creating his own brand of horror. With The Stand, this was more blatant, and it worked quite well. It's the first book I ever remember reading that made me actually jealous, that made me think, "Man, I wish I'd written something that cool."
An eerie coincidence has happened with me and The Stand over the years. The Stand, when originally published in the 1970s, had dated chapters. Those dates were just a few years after the original publication date. Oddly enough, I first read The Stand during the actual dates in the book. Then a dozen or so years later, a new version of novel was released. The dates within the book's chapters had been updated, of course, and guess what? I re-read the book. During the exact time period of those new dates within the tale. Spooky.
Day 10
Conan of Cimmeria
by Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter
The Thieves' World collection of short stories might have been my original introduction to the fantasy sub-genre of Sword and Sorcery, but I wasn't about to end there. As a boy and young teen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I yearned for more fiction of sword-slinging heroes, evil wizards and things that skulked in the night.
Fortunately, I discovered a little paperback book in a used book store in my hometown. The title was Conan of Cimmeria. It was a collection of original short stories by Conan creator Robert E. Howard with some additional editing and writing by authors L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter.
It was like doing crack for the first time. Or maybe heroin. I don't know. Never did either. But still, it was awesome discovering not only Conan, but more importantly the writing of Robert E. Howard.
Howard is a damn good writer. He knew how to spin action just right, how to weave intriguing plots. He was awesome, and even today his writing stacks up quite well against even the best of today's fantasy authors.
Of course I had heard of Conan and Howard before finding Conan of Cimmeria. Conan the Barbarian comic books had been popular when I was a kid in the 1970s, though I had always leaned towards the super hero comics myself. Then the first Conan movie came out in 1982 starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and though that movie isn't completely true to the Conan character, it's still a fair fantasy flick, in my opinion.
Over the years I've delved into more and more of Robert E. Howard's writing. I've read many of his Conan tales, as well as a good number of stories about his other fantasy characters such as Bran Mak Morn, Kull, Cormac Mac Art and others. What has impressed me more, however, were the non-fantasy stories of Howard I've read. From the Steve Costigan character in boxing tales to Howard's Western adventure writings, it soon becomes apparent this fellow could write and write well, even outside the fantasy genre which has embraced him for the last century.
If you've not discovered Howard's writings, I suggest you do. Or if you're a fantasy fan who has only read Howard's Sword and Sorcery tales, I suggest you read his other works. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't.
Day 11
Splinter of the Mind's Eye
by Alan Dean Foster
As a kid in the late 1970s, I was blown away by the original Star Wars movie. But what kid wasn't? The whole world seemed to go crazy for Star Wars, and to some extent has been ever since.
At that point, there was no The Empire Strikes Back. There weren't the tons upon tons of Star Wars book there are nowadays. There were no Clone Wars shows on TV. Nothing. Just the original movie, Star Wars.
But fans were clamoring for more.
That's where science fiction author Alan Dean Foster comes in. He wrote the original novelization for the Star Wars movie. At the time, no one knew if Star Wars would be a hit or a flop, so George Lucas and 20th Century Fox went ahead and signed Foster up to create a sequel for Star Wars, a novel that would come to be known as Splinter of the Mind's Eye.
I first spotted this book in one of those revolving racks at a gift shop in a small town in Kentucky. I was 8 years old and traveling with my parents to visit some relatives. What caught my attention about the paperback was the image of Darth Vader on the cover.
Darth Vader! What's he doing on a book cover?!? I had to investigate. I had to find out. And that's when I discovered Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the very first sequel to anything Star Wars.
I talked and talked and talked at my parents until they bought me the book. My mom gave me the cash to buy the novel, and it turned out to be the very first book I'd buy for myself. The rest of that trip I had my nose stuck in a book, where it's been ever since.
The plot concerns Luke, Leia, R2-D2 and C-3PO being forced to crash land their spaceships on a swamp-like planet. While there they discover an Imperial presence in stormtroopers and something called a Kaiburr crystal, which allows the Force to be magnified in those sensitive to the Force. And, of course, Lord Darth Vader shows up wanting the crystal. Action and antics ensue.
The Splinter of the Mind's Eye was a decent book, and it fed Star Wars fans hungry for more of their favorite science fiction universe. For me, it is fondly remembered as being that first Star Wars sequel and for being the first book I actually bought with my own hands (despite the fact that mom technically paid for it). As a writer, this novel introduced me to author Alan Dean Foster, and I would read more of his books in coming years, and it taught me the importance of sequels to fans.
Because I was one of them.
Day 12
Another Fine Myth
by Robert Lynn Asprin
The novel Another Fine Myth hit book store shelves in 1978, but I didn't discover it until a few years later when I was about 11 or 12. I picked up the novel initially because I was familiar with the author, Robert Lynn Asprin, through his work as the editor of the Thieves' World series of short story collections. I was a big fan of Thieves' World and the Sword and Sorcery tales found within the series, so I figured Apsrin would be as good a writer as he was editor.
I was right, too. He was a solid writer.
But I was in for a big surprise with Another Fine Myth. It wasn't Sword and Sorcery, at least not straight-up, old-fashioned, knock-down-the-door-and-kill-the-bad-guys Sword and Sorcery. Another Fine Myth was fantasy, yes, but it was comedic fantasy.
Until that point in my reading experience, I had never run across funny fantasy writing. Not only was I surprised by Asprin's novel, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Another Fine Myth is a darn funny tale. Without giving too much away, the book is the story of a small-time thief named Skeeve who is trying out his hand as a wizard's apprentice. Unfortunately for Skeeve, his teacher is slain quite early in the book, chapter one. And not only is Skeeve's teacher slain, but he's slain during a conjuring spell, a spell that unleashes a demon named Aahz. Guess who becomes Skeeve's new teacher? Aahz the demon. And from there antics ensue.
If you are ever in the mood for some lighter fantasy reading that'll leave you in stitches, you need to try out the novel Another Fine Myth. It's a stand-alone book, but it is followed by 18 more novels and a number of graphic novels. If you like laughing, you won't want to miss this series.
Day 13
Spellsinger
by Alan Dean Foster
I first discovered author Alan Dean Foster in the late 1970s when I was still a kid. After all, he had been the author of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, the very first Star Wars sequel, and that was a book I'd had to have back then.
I continued to read Foster over the next several years. Much of what I read by him was science fiction or novelizations of movies. But then he came out with a fantasy novel called Spellsinger.
Spellsinger was different than any other fantasy fiction I'd read up to that time, about 1983 when I was 13. The story was about a man named Jon-Tom Meriweather from our Earth who magically gets transferred to a fantasy world inhabited by talking, bipedal animals. Once in this new world, Meriweather soon discovers he is a Spellsinger, a natural-born mage of sorts who can sing and perform music to create magical spells.
It was a fun book, and a funny one as well. Jon-Tom played the guitar, and he was a bit of a classic and metal rock fan, so much of his magic was brought about with him performing songs by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, etc. That was and continues to be one of my favorite eras of popular music, too, so the tale has always had a special place in my heart.
Spellsinger was followed up by seven more books based upon Jon-Tom's exploits in magic. Each of those books was entertaining, but the original is still my favorite to this day.
If you like lighter fantasy with a humorous twist, this series should be right for you.
And it won't hurt if you like to crank up an electric guitar every once in a while.
Day 14
The Three Musketeers
by Alexandre Dumas
Every writer of action and adventure fiction during the last century and a half has been influenced by author Alexandre Dumas, even if they don’t know it. Dumas, and his series of adventure tales of the musketeers, literally created modern action/adventure fiction in the 19th century, and as well had an influence on historical literature.
I first discovered the novel The Three Musketeers in high school. Of course I’d heard of the musketeers as there had been a bunch of movies over the years concerning the adventures of Porthos, Aramis, Athos and D’artagnon. I was heavy into fantasy literature during those days, and once I’d discovered Alexandre Dumas, it seemed only natural that I would turn to his literature. His stories seemed like fantasy, just without the magic; there were sword fights, damsels in distress, evil villains worth tackling, intrigue, plots, etc.
But once I actually read The Three Musketeers, I was blown away by the depth of the book. This was more than just an adventure tale. True, there were plenty of adventures and intrigues, but the book was so much more than that. For me, it seemed to touch upon every aspect of being human. There was joy and happiness as well as sadness, loss and much, much more. The Three Musketeers was the first novel I’d read that seemed extremely broad in its emotional appeal.
The movies over the years have never done this book justice, though some of those movies aren’t bad. The problem is the story is so expansive, there’s no way a director could fit the entire tale into just one movie.
After The Three Musketeers, I moved on to Dumas’s other writings, many of which feature the famous musketeer characters. Each Dumas book I’ve read has been different than the ones before, and each has been quite excellent, but none have the place in my heart that does The Three Musketeers.
If you like adventure stories, do yourself a favor and read this book.
Oh, by the way, in case anyone was curious: Athos has always been my favorite musketeer.
Day 15
Moby Dick
by Herman Melville
Moby Dick seems to be one of those classic novels many people can’t stand. They find it boring, even tedious. The story breaks off into long-winded passages about the history of whaling, while forgetting about the actual plot and characters for pages at a time.
Which didn’t bother me in the least. I was actually interested in all that whaling history, all of it true history. To me, all that extra information just added to the story. By today’s standards, the exposition on whaling would better be worked into the tale (at least by the standards of most of today’s professional fiction authors), but Moby Dick was published in 1851. Today’s reading audiences have different expectations and expect today’s writers to cater to those expectations. It’s understandable.
But besides all the information on whaling, my favorite aspect of Herman Melville’s novel was its study of the depths of hatred, vengeance and even madness. To this day, I’ve read few novels that come close to delving into anger and revenge as well as this tale of Captain Ahab’s loathing for the great white whale Moby Dick. Not even many of the horror novels I’ve read over the years come close to this, though a few have, as have some other classics of literature and a handful of non-fiction books.
I first read Moby Dick while I was in high school back in the 1980s, but I didn’t read it for a class. I read it for myself. Moby Dick is one of numerous novels that have been labeled “the great American novel,” so I thought I owed it to myself to find out what this book was about. I was a reading nerd back then, much as I suppose I am now.
I’m glad I read Moby Dick. And I don’t want to come off as snobbish about it, but I’m glad to be one of the small group of people who loves this novel. To me, it was never boring. And that’s the most any of us can ask from our reading material.
Day 16
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne
I first discovered Jules Verne in the 1980s while in high school. Though I tend to read more fantasy and horror, some science fiction has come my way over the years, and Verne seemed a natural as he’s considered one of the grandfathers of science fiction in particular and speculative fiction in general.
I was going through a period where I felt I needed to read some of the masters of science fiction, and Verne was a logical choice. Eventually I read quite a few of his novels, but the very first one was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I started with this book for no other reason than it seemed the most famous of Verne’s work.
Immediately I was drawn into this tale of adventure and the themes behind it. As I’ve mentioned, one of the things that drew me to the novel Moby Dick was its treatment of wrath and sanity. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea drew me for many of the same reasons. I’ve always wondered who was madder, Captain Ahab or Captain Nemo? I’ve always leaned toward Ahab for madness, but Nemo for pure vile.
Anyone interested in science fiction literature and/or writing should read Jules Verne, especially 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Verne can show that speculative literature isn’t only about the speculative, but it also can touch open the human element, our emotions, our mental states and more.
Day 17
The Iliad
by Homer
The Iliad is one of the oldest works in literature known to the world, along with its companion tale The Odyssey. Over the centuries there has kind of been a tug-of-war among scholars concerning The Iliad and The Odyssey; for a while there will be general acceptance that The Iliad is the better of the two tales, then the tide will shift and The Odyssey is considered the better story.
The current trend tends toward The Odyssey being the better tale, as least as far as I can tell from speaking with various writers, scholars, and professors, and from paying attention to mass media. But I don't follow that trend.
The Odyssey is definitely the more iconic of the two stories, I'll give it. But for me, The Iliad has a strong resonance in its morality, and in its vision and descriptions of the heroic. I won't go into the plots of the two books, as I don't want to spoil anything for potential readers, but I'll break it down simplistically and say The Iliad is a tale of warfare while The Odyssey is the tale of one man's quest. But truly, both stories are so much more than that.
Being a reader of fantasy fiction and history, I had heard about The Iliad for years before finally deciding to read a modern translation from the Greek while I was in college. Then I immediately had to read it a second time.
Some might find The Iliad rather boring reading. There are pages upon pages of heroes spouting poetry and lists of their ancestors’ names at one another. But through all the poems and bloodshed and backstabbing that goes on in The Iliad, the story truly comes to climax in one touching scene featuring the hero Achilles and Priam, the king of Troy. Again, I'd prefer not to give anything away.
For fantasy readers and writers, this tale has everything one could want. Heroes. Swords. Action. Adventure. Gods roaming the land. It's all there.
And it's great reading.
Day 18
Watership Down
by Richard Adams
Those who know me personally know I have been a fan of rabbits for a long time. Why that is, I do not know. My mother says it’s because I had a rabbit-shaped pillow when I was a baby. I personally think it’s got something to do with me finding innocence and potentially helplessness in such tiny creatures, and a feeling I need to protect them. But that’s only when I pause to think about it, which I rarely do.
I have pet rabbits, two at the moment. I’ve had more, and others, in the past. I’ll probably have pet rabbits as long as I live. Especially since my beagle gets along with them just fine.