D&D General No One Reads Conan Now -- So What Are They Reading?

[Bedrockgames]

Moorcock is most shocking one that even fantasy literature-involved people under about 45 tend to have close to zero awareness of, or to have heard the name and know nothing else. Which is utterly wild given he was almost as he was hugely influential on fantasy as a whole, and even more influential on fantasy in tabletop games - wargames and fantasy TTRPGs - and in videogame fantasy. Indeed, I think a reasonable case could be mounted that for games in general, Moorcock's influence direct and indirect, is actually significantly more than Tolkien's.

This one surprises me as, even though I really am not a fan of Elric, Moorcock was someone you heard about all the time in the 90s.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser where in the original Deities and Demigods (along with Elric), and there was a Lankhmar setting released for 1st edition, so they were pretty important! Also, Fafhrd is the password for the Thieves Guild in BG1, and the city of Lankhmar was mucked about with to give use the now better known Ankh-Morpork.

Mechanically, the (duel wielding Ftr/MU/thief) Grey Mouser was probably the reason D&D has multiclassing.

 

[Clint_L]

Been thinking more on this topic as it is obviously right in my professional wheelhouse. A lot of the changes to fantasy as a genre have to be understood in the context of massive changes to how people entertain themselves. Howard was being published at a time when reading really was mass entertainment in a way that is difficult to appreciate today. This dated back to the rise of serial publications in the 1800s, and culminated in the pulp publishing industry of the 20s and 30s.

The result was a huge demand for material to publish, and genre fiction was particularly popular with, and targeted at, in literary terms, a less educated and sophisticated audience. Underpaid, overworked writers really were churning out potboiler material, a lot of it of dreadful quality (go review any particular issue of, say, Amazing Stories, etc. from back then). This led to genre fiction being widely disparaged amongst the literati, and usually not without reason.

However, as other entertainment options have flourished, reading has become a more specialized form of entertainment. And a lot of kids who grew up on those pulpy stories kept that love for the genre as they became older and more sophisticated readers and, occasionally, writers. So there has been a lot of blurring of the lines between genres, and writing genre fiction is no longer as disreputable as it once was (there are exceptions; one of my former writing students is a best selling adult romance author, and she still publishes under an assumed name).

Consequently, the boundaries of fantasy have greatly expanded and blurred since Howard's time, and IMO the quality of the writing is generally much higher.

 

[TwoSix]

They were extremely well-known, but like most fantasy authors who published largely before 1990, they've basically been forgotten by what I'd call the LotR-GoT generation, i.e. Millennials, particularly younger ones. Through no fault of either said Millennials or the authors, note. But if books aren't printed and authors aren't being discussed, well, what are you going to do?

Moorcock is most shocking one that even fantasy literature-involved people under about 45 tend to have close to zero awareness of, or to have heard the name and know nothing else. Which is utterly wild given he was almost as he was hugely influential on fantasy as a whole, and even more influential on fantasy in tabletop games - wargames and fantasy TTRPGs - and in videogame fantasy. Indeed, I think a reasonable case could be mounted that for games in general, Moorcock's influence direct and indirect, is actually significantly more than Tolkien's.

With Leiber, book-wise, I'm not sure much is in print, annoyingly, but Swords and Deviltry is the first book, and any collection that includes that is probably a good bet. Personally the first one I read was The First Book of Lankhmar, which includes all of those and another, but I am very confident that is out-of-print and doesn't appear to have a digital edition.

The market in fantasy really seemed to shift towards "doorstopper" long series in the '90s; which didn't work in the favor of Moorcock or other authors whose work was more experimental and not focused around a single main character in a linear narrative arc.

I know at least here in the US they published collected omnibus editions of Moorcock's Eternal Champion stuff in large tradeback editions in the late '90s, which is where I ended up doing my Moorcock reading. But I think the fact that what was published wasn't a linear story worked against more casual fantasy readers picking it up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

My 11 year old daughter loves the Wings of Fire series. She just finished her 17th WoF book, which itself is a side-product focusing on worldbuilding. She's also been obsessed with the multitudinous Ninjago series on Netflix for years, and she and I discuss world details and narrative tropes about it all the time.

It really warms a grognard dad's heart.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The last few fantasy authors that I’ve read: Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House and Hell Bent, S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy and the Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, The new Forgotten Realms book The Fallbacks, The Critical Role novel Kith and Kin, and now I’m listening to the Lies of Locke Lamora.

That last is one of the greatest fantasy novels I've ever read. The rest of the trilogy is good too, but Lies really knocked it out of the park for me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This one surprises me as, even though I really am not a fan of Elric, Moorcock was someone you heard about all the time in the 90s.

Yes. And he was in print in the '90s, thanks, oddly enough, to White Wolf.

And Moorcock has published new works over the last 20 years, but his older stuff hasn't consistently been in print, AFAICT.

I remember talking to a girl my age who was into fantasy novels when I was like 17 (so in the 1990s!), and trying to explain Moorcock to her, and she's like "Oh you mean the crusty old dude who is in a bad prog band?" (Hawkwind, she specified, she was kind of a metal fan), and honestly, that's probably a good summary of the higher levels of understanding of him from most fantasy fans in my generation.

I've also had people, especially ten or more years younger just outright deny that Moorcock is of any importance, because they "know" that Tolkien started it all. Even if you point to specific things, some people can be very dismissive because it doesn't fit with their view of fantasy history, which is often wildly simplistic and is basically just:

1) LotR is published
2) [SCENE DELETED]
3) A Game of Thrones and Harry Potter are published (maaaybe some other '00s stuff if you're lucky)
4) and often then [SCENE DELETED] again until Brandon Sanderson or Sarah J. Maas appears

And this is actual genre fans!

It's not totally blank. People do bring him up. And Glen Cook and Gene Wolfe and a few others. You can definitely win some nerd cred by doing so, but equally, people can be just bizarrely dismissive about the influence of honestly any SF/F writer who isn't Tolkien.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think audiobooks are a symptom, not the cause. Our lives are much busier than they used to be, with a great deal of cultural pressure towards productivity, which coupled with shortening attention spans makes very uncomfortable with inactivity. We want information quickly, and we don’t want to just be passively consuming it; we feel the need to at least multitask while we consume that media. Hence, audiobooks become popular.

I have replaced a good portion of my pleasure reading with podcasts, mostly history stuff and some Tolkien analysis. Easier to fit into my day.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Been thinking more on this topic as it is obviously right in my professional wheelhouse. A lot of the changes to fantasy as a genre have to be understood in the context of massive changes to how people entertain themselves. Howard was being published at a time when reading really was mass entertainment in a way that is difficult to appreciate today. This dated back to the rise of serial publications in the 1800s, and culminated in the pulp publishing industry of the 20s and 30s.

The result was a huge demand for material to publish, and genre fiction was particularly popular with, and targeted at, in literary terms, a less educated and sophisticated audience. Underpaid, overworked writers really were churning out potboiler material, a lot of it of dreadful quality (go review any particular issue of, say, Amazing Stories, etc. from back then). This led to genre fiction being widely disparaged amongst the literati, and usually not without reason.

However, as other entertainment options have flourished, reading has become a more specialized form of entertainment. And a lot of kids who grew up on those pulpy stories kept that love for the genre as they became older and more sophisticated readers and, occasionally, writers. So there has been a lot of blurring of the lines between genres, and writing genre fiction is no longer as disreputable as it once was (there are exceptions; one of my former writing students is a best selling adult romance author, and she still publishes under an assumed name).

Consequently, the boundaries of fantasy have greatly expanded and blurred since Howard's time, and IMO the quality of the writing is generally much higher.

Something that might interest you professionally is the growth of Web Novels. These feel very similar to pulp IMO. There is a whole genre of it in China that has been translated into English (and a lot of it is xianxia but some of it is very reminiscent of the LitRPG stuff people have discussed as it will sometimes use terms borrowed from video games)

 

[GobHag]

Yes. And he was in print in the '90s, thanks, oddly enough, to White Wolf.

And Moorcock has published new works over the last 20 years, but his older stuff hasn't consistently been in print, AFAICT.

I remember talking to a girl my age who was into fantasy novels when I was like 17 (so in the 1990s!), and trying to explain Moorcock to her, and she's like "Oh you mean the crusty old dude who is in a bad prog band?" (Hawkwind, she specified, she was kind of a metal fan), and honestly, that's probably a good summary of the higher levels of understanding of him from most fantasy fans in my generation.

I've also had people, especially ten or more years younger just outright deny that Moorcock is of any importance, because they "know" that Tolkien started it all. Even if you point to specific things, some people can be very dismissive because it doesn't fit with their view of fantasy history, which is often wildly simplistic and is basically just:

1) LotR is published
2) [SCENE DELETED]
3) A Game of Thrones and Harry Potter are published (maaaybe some other '00s stuff if you're lucky)
4) and often then [SCENE DELETED] again until Brandon Sanderson or Sarah J. Maas appears

And this is actual genre fans!

It's not totally blank. People do bring him up. And Glen Cook and Gene Wolfe and a few others. You can definitely win some nerd cred by doing so, but equally, people can be just bizarrely dismissive about the influence of honestly any SF/F writer who isn't Tolkien.

You can't have Sephiroth without Elric, and Sephirot basically defines 90% of what weeb girls want yeah.