Gary Gygax

Thoughts on his suggested reading list:

Ideological diversity in science fiction and fantasy was a given in the seventies. We are hopelessly homogenistic in comparison to them.

The program of political correctness of the past several decades has made even writers like Ray Bradbury and C. L. Moore all but unreadable to an entire generation. The conditioning is so strong, some people have almost physical reactions to the older stories now.

All part of the reason that I don’t read anywhere near as much SF as I did as a kid.

One thought on “Gary Gygax”

  1. I never read much of that list until I was well into my twenties, years after I first saw the list. But some of the names I did recognize as being on the list just the same.

    A thing that is interesting about D&D is how educational it was despite being pure fantasy. In addition to having a reading list, it also clearly defined a lot of medieval words, many which are still applied today in similar contexts. When I started I had no clue what a battlement or a crow’s nest was, the difference between a catapult, ballista, and trebuchet, or what was higher rank sergeant or lieutenant. While the treatment was somewhat superficial and tainted with strongly fantastical elements, it still was a profound history lesson wrapped in fun.

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