Mearls talks about his inspiration for the 4e classes

[Obryn]

Huh! I honestly didn't know Jack Vance was still alive. Or that he was still writing books... And I generally consider myself pretty well-read...

Still, reading The Complete Dying Earth omnibus last year was one of the more pleasurable excursions into classic f/sf that I've made. I still can't get into Elric, no matter how hard I try, but I adore Cugel.

-O

 

[Mercutio01]

Someone posted a few pages back that Vance was obscure

That would be me.

and getting more obscure every day.

That I did not say or indicate. His books have come back into print, in small print-runs and available online-only or in very few select stores, and which books are not available at any Barnes and Nobles or Borders within 25 miles of my house in Revere, MA. While he may be experiencing something of a renewal now, my contention was that when I first got into D&D (~1990), his fiction was not in print, not easily obtainable, and highly obscure.

The term "Vancian magic" wasn't something I'd heard until 3rd edition D&D, so that was 10 years of formative gaming and fantasy reading (high school and college) where I'd never heard of Vance. In the last decade (which is 3rd edition and later, notably), his books have come back into print, but as I mentioned above, are not available in any bookstore within a reasonable distance from my house in metro-Boston.

EDIT - added a screencap showing Barnes and Noble not having Tales of the Dying Earth in stock.

 

[Stoat]

I picked up the Dying Earth omnibus at a Barnes & Noble in Charleston, SC. I've seen the same book at the Borders here in Augusta, Ga.

 

[amysrevenge]

According to the infallible Wikipedia (infallible I say!) Tolkien has the 8th best selling book of all time List of best-selling books - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and also the 13th.

PS

I apologize for the hyperbole.

 

[JeffB]

I picked up the Dying Earth omnibus at a Barnes & Noble in Charleston, SC. I've seen the same book at the Borders here in Augusta, Ga.

Yeah I've seen TotDE locally as well- not every Borders or B&N has it but several I've been to do.

 

[SirFrog]

Gandalf is a parfect match for an Invoker (robe + staff + subtle magic + divine origin).

I don't know the character that inspired the Avenger, but I get a strong "Solomon Kane" vibe from it.

Back on topic...I agree with the Avenger being based on Severian in principle. (See below for artwork) If you have never read Gene Wolfe, I suggest you actually start with The Knight and The Wizard, both of which are fairly new and a bit simpler to get into. After you have gotten a taste for Wolfe's style, then you should read The Urth of the New Sun. Bring a dictionary and a search engine - those help with Wolfe.

 

[Voadam]

According to the infallible Wikipedia (infallible I say!) Tolkien has the 8th best selling book of all time List of best-selling books - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and also the 13th.

PS

What's that you say?

Neat link.

Agatha Christie surprised me.

Dragonlance and Foundation both at 20 million. both series dwarfed by the 250 million choose your own adventure ones which are apparently not D&D ones.

 

[Orius]

That's because Conan, even in its mangled, L. Sprague de Camp Lin Carter perversions, was starting to fall out of print around the same time the Red Box came out and brought many of us, as little kids, into the hobby. I think Robert E. Howard and Conan and (for that matter) Jack Vance and Edgar Rice Burroughs were more influential to the D&D gamers who are in their 40s or older at this point (a lot of the OSR crowd) than in my own age cohort or younger (I'm 34) because those books were not as reliably in print and available to us during the time we came into the game as adolescents and even into high school.

Maybe. I'm 32, and I was reading a bunch of Conan before I got into D&D. Granted, a good deal of that was de Camp's mangling of REH's work and later TOR pastiches, but I still read them. My father had a bunch of old Conan books, and I had a lot of fun reading then during my mid-teens. It certainly influenced the way I played my first D&D game, and it ended up getting me killed. As for actually available, this was the early to mid 90's so, and the local Barnes & Noble/Waldenbooks really didn't carry much of it. I did pick up a copy of the first book in the Ace paperback series, and they'd have a handful of some of the TOR books, but that was about it. Certainly, they were getting crowded out on their section of the shelves by the Star Trek novels, the growing number of Star Wars novels, and yes, various D&D novels.

 

[Hussar]

I was lucky enough that my local library carried much of the De Camp Conan stories. To be honest, I had no idea that they were different from the original Howard books until only a few years ago. I'm now rectifying that with Stanza and an Ipod Touch.

 

[kibbitz]

Huh! I honestly didn't know Jack Vance was still alive. Or that he was still writing books... And I generally consider myself pretty well-read...

Still, reading The Complete Dying Earth omnibus last year was one of the more pleasurable excursions into classic f/sf that I've made. I still can't get into Elric, no matter how hard I try, but I adore Cugel.

-O

Three of my last books were all by Moorcock, two of them about Elric and the other about... Hawkmoon, I think. While I don't regret the purchases, I really, really didn't like them. I'm fine with his style of writing; guess I just don't care for the subject matter. I suppose just want heroic fantasy where the hero triumphs after a long hard struggle.

The last time I tried to read something again, I borrowed a copy of A Game of Thrones on a friend's recommendation. Not sure if that killed my interest in reading fantasy, but I don't think I've ever had the interest in reading fantasy ever after that. Then again, I don't think I've read any book ever since that wasn't a tech manual or guidebook of some sort...