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How did I get into fantasy?

This is something I recently thought about when I stumbled upon a book cover to a book that I had forgotten I had ever read. It's interesting how the mind can forget something as simple as that, and have the memory brought back with a simple nudge.

If you had asked me how I got into fantasy before the stumble, I would had said it was from reading Dragonlance novels written by Weiss and Hickman. Those books were magic, and held me in awe, and perhaps that is why they would have been the answer.

But my interest in fantasy actually started well before that. It started with Conan!

Although not the prose stories of RE Howard. It was Conan in comic book form. I had purchased two color comics that had been printed in paperback during a school book sale. I weighed the decision of which one to buy because I didn't have enough for both. I had bought the first, read it quickly, then went back and purchased the second before the book sale ended.

Generally, the comics I collected were of the super hero variety. Yet, after those first two Conans, there were a handful of the black and white "Savage Sword of Conan" thrown in the mix.

The SSoC had interested me because of Buscema's art and the lack of the Comic Code that allowed SSoC to be drawn with more risqué artwork.

There was also Elf-Quest, by Wendy and Richard Pini, which I read in the wrong order. Three first, then two, then one, then finally four which was the only one I had to wait for it to be published.

They were big, thick, graphic novel sized tomes with slick, glossy pages. The artwork was incredible, the adventures of the Wolf-Riders amazing.

It was sometime after that, or during, that the Dragonlance Chronicles entered my life and I began to read fantasy in prose form.

Fantasy has been a part of my life ever since.

For me, I've been reading fantasy & SF pretty much for as long as I've been reading. I'm pretty sure Lloyd Alexander's Prydain books were some of the earliest on the fantasy side; ditto C.S. Lewis' Narnia books.

The main event, though, was 1977 -- not only was I sitting in the theater seeing the original Star Wars for the first time, but the Rankin-Bass Hobbit animated movie was on broadcast TV and I started reading Tolkien about as soon as the closing credits on the movie were finished.

The other important moment was probably a couple years later when Dad gave me a copy of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars -- I know I'd read Tarzan books already, but Barsoom was a whole new world.

I basically spent all of junior high and high school reading my way through the SF section at the public library (and the school library -- the high school library had a copy of Michael Moorcock's The Eternal Champion).

Also of crucial importance: Getting into D&D at around the same time. I never actually played all that much, but I got just as much enjoyment from reading the various books & modules as I did from reading fiction; and there was also Appendix N in the original Dungeon Masters Guide, and, more importantly, all of the book reviews in Dragon Magazine in the mid-1980s, which steered me to a lot of stuff I might otherwise have missed.

Oh, and apparently somebody in my hometown had an assortment of Ballantine Adult Fantasy paperbacks which they sold to the local used book store -- that's where I got copies of Hyperborea and Poseidonis and a bunch of William Morris novels (although those took me longer to appreciate).

Oddly, I didn't really start reading Robert E. Howard until I was in college -- the Conan comics never really called to me, but the public library in the town where I went to college had a copy of Conan, and when I actually read the stories (even with the de Camp & Carter additions), I knew I needed more.

Joseph wrote: "Also of crucial importance: Getting into D&D at around the same time. I never actually played all that much, but I got just as much enjoyment from reading the various books & modules as I did from reading fiction..."

LOL! I totally forgot about D&D!

I thought that was just me playing by myself. The problem with D&D is similar to the problem with a lot of board games...

1. You need a certain amount of people who want to play

2. It's easier to get into if you start with someone who is already familiar with the game and can explain it to everyone else. If everyone is a newbie then it can be a very complicated game to get the hang of.

( I purchased the red box set that had a swordsman fighting a dragon. I don't know what edition it was ).

I did play some of the choose your own adventure, D&D style, books. You would role your character at the beginning of the book and then fight creatures as you try to make your way through the book.

My favorite ones were by Steve Jackson. The Shamutanti Hills
(Fighting Fantasy: Sorcery! #1)

Great topic: my story is much the same as others. I was a huge comic book nerd. But it wasn’t until I saw 1982’s Conan the Barbarian that I became a Conan nerd. This led into the comics. My favorite was Savage Sword of Conan.

I read the Tor Conan pastiche novels constantly. Eventually I discovered D&D which bled into other Fantasy. The Sword of Shannarra. From there I read every Tolkien imitator I found.

Oddly, I did not read Tolkien himself until College. I did not discover the joys of REH until I was 30 (a tad over 15 years ago). The only REH I read prior to getting my hands on the pure stuff, was the Ace decamp Carter paperbacks. I jumped way down the REH hole. Now I get kicks out of reading Clonans and catching up on all the great S&S I somehow missed out on.

I more or less got into fantasy through video games and Saturday morning cartoons...And lucky bags. Back in the elementary school you could find the cult black and white Conan comics in there.