Some SF writers whose work I loved delved into fantasy. Donaldson violently turned me off right from the get. I started The Last Unicorn, but never finished it. In my naivete I, like so many others, proclaimed The Lord of the Rings to be “the best book ever written.” My love affair with fantasy pretty much started and ended with John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Oh sure, I read Tolkien when I was a kid. I was never much of a fantasy fiction fan. You’ve all seen those evil children covers and the ones with skeletons doing preposterous things. Crap was still crap, but it was generally packaged as crap. Sure, I got suckered into reading some crap, but things were clearer in the ’70s and ’80s. It was easier to see a good guy from a bad one, and also a good book from a piece of crap. There may be some truth to that, but I think that all too often real information is drowned in misinformation, distortion, misdirection, propaganda, and outright lies. Some will disagree, claiming that we are armed with information at our fingertips at all times. Before we all (yes, I am guilty as charged) had our faces perpetually locked into electronic pacifiers.Ī better time? I like to think so. A time when people got up and out of the house to buy books at stores. When damned near everything and everyone wasn’t available right at your fingertips.
When they went to libraries to do research. When people stopped their cars and jumped into a phone booth to make a call. Reading books from a time before cell phones. I’m only just getting started, but I am already enjoying this column.
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