What are you reading in 2025?

[Retros_x]

I also encountered a good insight into a common criticism of King, his tendency toward weak endings. [...] while King’s plotting is sometimes not the greatest, he does very reliably deliver intensely satisfying character arcs. They rise and resolve and descend in a way that feels right and satisfying even when the plot kind of dangles.

I read King for the first time this year and while I have a little break right now I definitely want to continue through his work - I was a bit surprised when I first read that this is a common criticism. I loved the endings up until now (I've read Carrie, The Shining, Dr. Sleep). Obviously I only have a small sample size, but while the plot might fade out a bit, his character arcs are great to the end. I think he is after all a character focussed writer and the plot is only his tool to make the characters collide and clash with each other and themselves. The Shining was never for me about the hotel and a mystery what is going on there, but mainly the family being brought to crisis by the hotel.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

On that note, what would you say are some others that have concentrated work that made its way into D&D, other than Vance?

Hmmm, Vance's Dying Earth would've been my second pick. For third place, it'd probably have to be Lord of the Rings. Without it, you don't have halflings or orcs, for example, and the depictions of elves would be very different. Not to mention the Cloak of Elvenkind, the Ring of Invisibility, and a bunch of other magic items and monsters.

I like it so far. It's very obvious that it's a foundational work for the genre of Cyberpunk.

It's not exactly what I thought it was thought. I was expecting something very straightforward. But it's actually a more challenging read than I was expecting.

Neuromancer is a surprisingly dense work. One that rewards repeated re-reading.

@jian , sounds great. Onto the list it goes.


William Gibson wrote his early stories with two big influences that weren’t always commented on. One is noir: there is a lot of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett in the Sprawl stories, including some direct quotes. This bit of dialogue from Chandler’s The Big Sleep could obviously nestle right into Neuromancer:



The other is William Burroughs, whom Gibson once described as “that old man who sent out so many of us with sealed orders”. Echoes of this description of Interzone from Naked Lunch are everywhere in the Sprawl stories:



Gibson, Sterling, Shirley, Effinger, Cadigsn, et al (like Brunner, Tiptree, and other forerunners) brought serious literary ambitions to their work that not a lot of later cyberpunk creators have.

Cyberpunk didn't spring out of nowhere, to be sure. It's no coincidence that the movie Blade Runner takes the plot of a Philip K. Dick book and marries it to the title of a William S. Burroughs book.

It's funny, at the time that Snow Crash came out, I completely wrote it off as an unserious parody - without realizing as I would later on, that it had a ton of depth in its own right.

 

[Autumnal]

Technically “blade runner” comes from Nourse, not Burroughs, but otherwise, carry on.

 

[Mistwell]

Hmmm, Vance's Dying Earth would've been my second pick. For third place, it'd probably have to be Lord of the Rings. Without it, you don't have halflings or orcs, for example, and the depictions of elves would be very different. Not to mention the Cloak of Elvenkind, the Ring of Invisibility, and a bunch of other magic items and monsters.

Ah right, of course. I should have asked the question differently. I am looking for additional slightly more obscure books to read. I am reading the Conan books for the first time now, which I'm enjoying. Looking for other authors.

 

[Voadam]

Ah right, of course. I should have asked the question differently. I am looking for additional slightly more obscure books to read. I am reading the Conan books for the first time now, which I'm enjoying. Looking for other authors.

Lieber is huge for D&D too. Greyhawk is a D&D version of Lankhmar, down to powerful thieves and assassins’ guilds being politically important. The Gray Mouser is a big influence on Gygax’s thieves with swords, sling usage, backstabbing, and even scroll usage with mishaps and backfiring.

 

[Mannahnin]

On that note, what would you say are some others that have concentrated work that made its way into D&D, other than Vance?

Hmmm, Vance's Dying Earth would've been my second pick. For third place, it'd probably have to be Lord of the Rings. Without it, you don't have halflings or orcs, for example, and the depictions of elves would be very different. Not to mention the Cloak of Elvenkind, the Ring of Invisibility, and a bunch of other magic items and monsters.

Ah right, of course. I should have asked the question differently. I am looking for additional slightly more obscure books to read. I am reading the Conan books for the first time now, which I'm enjoying. Looking for other authors.

Lieber is huge for D&D too. Greyhawk is a D&D version of Lankhmar, down to powerful thieves and assassins’ guilds being politically important. The Gray Mouser is a big influence on Gygax’s thieves with swords, sling usage, backstabbing, and even scroll usage with mishaps and backfiring.

I would say pretty much the same order. Three Hearts & Three Lions and Vance are way up there, LotR and Leiber's F & GM stories are right there with them. For Leiber (like I always say with Moorcock) always go with the earliest-published stories first. The Jewels in the Forest (1939) is practically a straight-up OSR D&D adventure in seven pages, for example.

After that maybe Pratt & de Camp's Harold Shea books, with some monsters and situations which clearly influenced AD&D and the Giants series of modules in particular.

For a bonus, I want to link to a short story by another author. While Clark Ashton Smith is NOT in Appendix N, his being left out has been a subject of long debate among old schoolers because there's definitely signs of his influence here and there. His prose style is somewhat similar to Vance, and to Gary when he's in High Gygaxian mode. I think this story is a great intro to his work, and showcases a kind of monster I haven't seen show up elsewhere than in D&D:

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith

 

[prabe]

I would say pretty much the same order. Three Hearts & Three Lions and Vance are way up there, LotR and Leiber's F & GM stories are right there with them. For Leiber (like I always say with Moorcock) always go with the earliest-published stories first. The Jewels in the Forest (1939) is practically a straight-up OSR D&D adventure in seven pages, for example.

I just came into a handful of Leiber's Lankhmar books, which I've not read heretofore I'll keep this in mind for the reading order. Thanks tons.

 

[Cadence]

This thread doesn't say for everything what it particularly influenced in D&D, but has some thoughts on the "core" of Appendix N.
D&D General - A shorter Appendix N

In particular, see also posts #s 6, 7, and 8 in that thread

 

[Mannahnin]

This thread doesn't say for everything what it influenced, but has some thoughts on the "core" of Appendix N.
D&D General - A shorter Appendix N

Good reminder! That was an excellent thread, which already covered a ton of this ground in terms of what elements can be traced to what books.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Ah right, of course. I should have asked the question differently. I am looking for additional slightly more obscure books to read. I am reading the Conan books for the first time now, which I'm enjoying. Looking for other authors.

Hmmm... Margaret St. Clair's The Shadow People was hugely influential on the Underdark, as is Merritt's The Moon Pool. Lumley's Burrowers Beneath is cited as the source of the Mind Flayer. Though, on that subject, I might also point to the short story Forringer's Fortune. Originally published in 1975, the same year that the Mind Flayer first appeared, and included in the Arkham House collection Nameless Places, it explicitly features a tentacled monster that extracts and devours someone’s brain.

I would say pretty much the same order. Three Hearts & Three Lions and Vance are way up there, LotR and Leiber's F & GM stories are right there with them. For Leiber (like I always say with Moorcock) always go with the earliest-published stories first. The Jewels in the Forest (1939) is practically a straight-up OSR D&D adventure in seven pages, for example.

The Jewel in the Forest is practically a textbook D&D dungeon. The concept of a living dungeon is also something that D&D would explore, again and again.

After that maybe Pratt & de Camp's Harold Shea books, with some monsters and situations which clearly influenced AD&D and the Giants series of modules in particular.

The Harold Shea stories are such fun! You also get a direct line to the folkloric influences on D&D.

For a bonus, I want to link to a short story by another author. While Clark Ashton Smith is NOT in Appendix N, his being left out has been a subject of long debate among old schoolers because there's definitely signs of his influence here and there. His prose style is somewhat similar to Vance, and to Gary when he's in High Gygaxian mode. I think this story is a great intro to his work, and showcases a kind of monster I haven't seen show up elsewhere than in D&D:

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros by Clark Ashton Smith

CAS is probably the biggest "should have been in Appendix N" misses. His fevered imagination, macabre vistas, and elegant-yet-archaic language are so enjoyable to read.