When I was a young'un, I read and loved "The Hobbit." At some point after that, I discovered that Tolkien had written a lot of other things, and went looking for them. Someone told me that I had to read "The Silmarillion" before starting "The Lord of the Rings," and I dutifully did as told, getting perhaps 50 pages into that 1000-page expositionary lump. As you can imagine, I never did read "The Lord of the Rings," though I loved the movies.
Flash forward to last week, when I'm coming home from Seattle and my grading for class is done... nothing to do on the plane. Kij offered several books to read en route, and I picked "The Fellowhip of the Ring." OMG is that a great book! I'm loving it! I got about 140 pages into it just on the airplane, and did a bit more reading last night after the parents left for Omaha.
(Yes, it was another weekend of carport-building: Now almost done! All the structure is in place, the construction is reinforced to withstand anything short of a North Korean nuke, and the roof is tar-papered... just needs shingling to be complete. Was a great visit with them, too, including dinner out at La Familia, outside of which we listened for a minute to a live band taking up the street; Saturday afternoon at the RenFaire with lunch there - largest crowd I've ever seen there - and "dinner" at The Smoker [go next week if you haven't yet]; Sunday breakfast at the Slow Ride Saloon to entertain my Harley-lovin' 'rents; then building all day Sunday after the brief Saturday-morning building stint.)
A thought occurred to me recently: If I'd read "The Lord of the Rings" when I was a kid, I suspect I might have written a lot of fantasy rather than mostly hard-SF. Interesting, the things that make us who we are, and the things that could have made us different people.
Best,
Chris
Flash forward to last week, when I'm coming home from Seattle and my grading for class is done... nothing to do on the plane. Kij offered several books to read en route, and I picked "The Fellowhip of the Ring." OMG is that a great book! I'm loving it! I got about 140 pages into it just on the airplane, and did a bit more reading last night after the parents left for Omaha.
(Yes, it was another weekend of carport-building: Now almost done! All the structure is in place, the construction is reinforced to withstand anything short of a North Korean nuke, and the roof is tar-papered... just needs shingling to be complete. Was a great visit with them, too, including dinner out at La Familia, outside of which we listened for a minute to a live band taking up the street; Saturday afternoon at the RenFaire with lunch there - largest crowd I've ever seen there - and "dinner" at The Smoker [go next week if you haven't yet]; Sunday breakfast at the Slow Ride Saloon to entertain my Harley-lovin' 'rents; then building all day Sunday after the brief Saturday-morning building stint.)
A thought occurred to me recently: If I'd read "The Lord of the Rings" when I was a kid, I suspect I might have written a lot of fantasy rather than mostly hard-SF. Interesting, the things that make us who we are, and the things that could have made us different people.
Best,
Chris
Comments
But the book for me was and always will be Shadow of the Torturer (etc.), by Gene Wolfe.
So it probably was a book or a series that tipped me toward fantasy. I do know that I write the fantasy I do write because of two books, Watership Down and The Silk Road, but they both came out after I was inclined toward fantasy anyway. LotR? I did read it every year for years, but my memories of reading the Sylvia Louise Engdahl books or Perilous Gard are much more vivid.
A really good question.
Yay on the carport! This must be pretty cool. And really nice to see Linda and Mel so much.
Give me that Geek Membership card. You're on double secret probation mister.
I think I discovered SF about the same time, though mostly in YA format -- I especially remember Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, the Tom Swift Jr. books, and Eleanor Cameron's Mushroom Planet series.
I think my first adult SF read must have been Philip K. Dick's Counter-Clock World or Van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher, both of which were slimmer volumes than the copy of Dune on my brother's bookshelf.
I've alternated between SF and Fantasy all along. Which I guess explains why I'm always looking to combine my interests in science and technology with my interest in medievalism, which makes for some very strange papers.
just needs shingling to be complete
how did I know it'd end up being built ford tough?
Even so, I can't agree that Fellowship is good. The Hobbit is fabulous, but LotR is all about walking around and eating, and sometimes some unfortunate singing, strewn with copious amounts of running away.