What got you hooked on the fantasy genre?

[johnsemlak]

I'm not sure what got me hooked, I had a general interest in history and mythology, as well as in medieval weapons.

I read CS Lewis's Narnia series at a young age. That may have been the first Fantasy series I read.

I was given the D&D Red Basic set as a present when I was around 10.

 

[drnuncheon]

The Hobbit hooked me, when Mom read it to me when I was but a little sprout. From there it went to Narnia (naturally), then to Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books, Lord of the Rings...

J

 

[hong]

I read Terry Brooks' Shannara books, and I've been trying to recapture the spirit ever since.

 

[Allanon]

The first thing that tickled my fancy was the NES game The Legend Of Zelda... The artwork in the manual just inspired me to find more like it. I then bought a boardgame called Heroquest in which you had a Gamemaster who was the evil and four hero's a barbarian, elf, dwarf and a mage (mmm... need to play that one again...)I then began following Dungeons&Dragons on television. Soon read LotR and that was that, D&D the game was just the next logical step.

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

Kung fu - the original tv series with David Carradine. I used to try to duplicate the staff fighting using cricket stumps - until my parents caught me. Hand-to-hand combat has always had a special place in my heart.

I think it all goes back to that - though there's a lot of other adventures mixed up in my memories, like Journey to the Centre of the Earth (film), the Famous Five, Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds. It's all just an eclectic mix of ideas. By the time I was seven - when I saw Star Wars IV: A New Hope - I was already known by family and schoolmates as an sf fan (the only one I knew).

It wasn't until my late teens though that my preferences definitely resolved to fantasy above all others.

 

[davewoodrum]

I was intrigued by the cover art of Dad's Nazareth records as a small child and had the Hobbit story record...which I messed with at the time with only half interest... also this really cool hippie guy lived next door who was probably 18 when I was like 6 and I idolized him. He showed me how to draw and was big into doing wild original fantasy art...then I got into He-man and about that time the hippie dude was playing around with a thing called "Dungeons & Dragons" and had these miniatures all painted up and thus my parents bought me the boxed set and the hippie dude bought me five figures for Christmas... and had painted one... I was sold.

 

[Warduke]

It's hard to pinpoint the one thing that got me hooked.
I think it began in children's stories about trolls, witches, and dark forests, then continued via Narnia, The Hobbit, Earthsea, Star Wars, Masters of the Universe and Lord of the Rings to D&D, AD&D and here I am today. Star Wars was sort of a watershed moment since it also is a bit scifi, and the older I get, the more I'm interested in scifi.