My Life in Fantasy
Okay, ever since I entered college I have been stunning and confusing people whenever I try to explain my experience in the sci-fi and fantasy genres.
You see, I've been a voracious reader all my life, and because I always read above my grade level, in elementary school my teachers would often just send me to the library to find something for myself. So I would go wander the stacks. Which means that half of my reading experiences were based on random findings in the library, and the other half were influenced by my parents. Now, my parents were and are voracious readers with great taste. But their ways of communication about books were maybe not normal. Until I was in about sixth grade I was unaware of the concept of "genre." My dad was the stay-at-home parent, and his tastes transcend genre; he'll read from pretty much any genre, but genre is, as far as I can tell, never really the reason he chooses the book. So I always had this idea that the main types of fiction works were "kids' books," "young adult books," and "literature." I discovered in third or fourth grade that the young adult section at the B. Dalton's contained mainly scary books and books about vampires, so I assumed that was mainly what young adults liked to read. It was around fifth or sixth grade, when I upgraded to Dracula and Stephen King, as well as random things from his bookshelves at home, that I think it really clicked internally that "mystery" and "horror" and "true crime" were specific genres within those broader fiction categories. Mysteriously, though, the possibility that there were other "genres" out there did not really occur to me.
In contrast, Mom is a genre reader. She likes fantasy and mystery and biography and some sci-fi. But Mom didn't really talk about books other than mentioning a specific book that she liked that we might also like. My main literary interactions with her when I was young were that she read to us kids. All through our early childhoods, and at least a couple of years into middle school for me because my siblings were still younger. That was our "Mom time." And a normal person would have looked at what she read us and thought, "Oh, I see, she reads them fantasy novels." Because she read us The Hobbit, the whole LOTR trilogy, the Narnia books, the Dark is Rising sequence, the Earthsea books, and the Redwall books. But the result of this in my brain was not "This is a genre called fantasy"; it was "These are bedtime stories." It also means that to me, Lord of the Rings is actually an oral tradition passed down from parent to child, and not something that one sits down and reads. It's a told story, verbally told. It works quite well that way, but confuses your friends when you say that you're unfamiliar with fantasy and they go "Not even Lord of the Rings?!" and you blink and say, "What? That's a bedtime story."
Yeah. So I've got it figured out now, but until college it was kind of confusing what "fantasy" and "sci-fi" actually were, and therefore when people talked about them in these terms I assumed they were talking about some sort of mysterious type of book that other people read and which I had never previously encountered. Possibly because they were some sort of obscure occult thing that required ritual initiation.
Many friends tried to "get me into fantasy" and failed miserably because fairly common tropes would throw me off and upset me which people who grew up in the genre were like, "Why are you even paying attention to that part?!" I remember telling seishonagon that I just didn't think I liked fantasy at all, because I didn't like Mercedes Lackey and the handful of other authors people had recommended to me as gateway drugs. She made an amazingly incredulous facial expression and then gently explained to me that if I liked Le Guin and Tolkien I would probably like other fantasy, but that I should henceforth run recommendations by her first. To this day, only seishonagon, seigyoku, and rushthatspeaks have had any success telling me what I will like, what I will not, and what will be beyond me until I've read other stuff first. At this point I am confused by my own experiments with the genre and get intimidated really quickly.
So here, for your reference and my own, have a meme about stuff I've read and not read.
From seishonagon.
NPR compiled a list of the most popular science fiction and fantasy books/series (determining whether things got listed as whole series or individual books by whether they tell a continuous story-so the Vorkosigan series gets a single entry, while Discworld does not, though they've clearly screwed up in some cases, like only listing one book of the Thursday Next series, and listing the Culture series all together), and excluding YA and horror. Bold if you've read, italicize if you plan to, underline if you've read part but not all.
1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien <--I think I only actually read one of the books, but Mom read them all to me.
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song of Ice and Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury <--I really liked Ray Bradbury in high school. seishonagon and rushthatspeaks later explained to me that this was science fiction.
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov <--My mother has these books. I found them once and asked who Isaac Asimov was. She said he was a great science fiction writer. I said, "You read science fiction?!"
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman <--I saw the movie...
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood <--I read The Blind Assassin and I think also Alias Grace before I decided I hate Margaret Atwood with a fiery passion. They didn't seem like genre books, though (?).
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King <--When seishonagon told me she was reading this fantasy series, I was like, "Wait, Stephen King writes fantasy?!" I think I plan to read it, but I have to ask her if I should or not first.
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King <--I saw the movie...
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman <--seishonagon and rushthatspeaks both told me to read this. I think this was around the time that rushthatspeaks tried to explain American comic books to me.
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams <--This is fantasy?! I did not even know that. I remember the movie, but it never occurred to me that it belonged to a genre.
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White <--This was on the same shelf of Mom's books as Asimov. She handed it to me as the one to read, so I did so. I liked it. I did not realize it was a fantasy novel. (Are all Camelot things fantasy?)
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman <--seishonagon and rushthatspeaks told me to read Neil Gaiman.
49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan the Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe <--My dad sent me this book in the mail once after I told him about my discovery of sci-fi/fantasy, but it was very thick, and I became wary of it. I told seishonagon and she said it was not necessary for me to read it.
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis
In conclusion, a good half of these books I have never even heard of.
You see, I've been a voracious reader all my life, and because I always read above my grade level, in elementary school my teachers would often just send me to the library to find something for myself. So I would go wander the stacks. Which means that half of my reading experiences were based on random findings in the library, and the other half were influenced by my parents. Now, my parents were and are voracious readers with great taste. But their ways of communication about books were maybe not normal. Until I was in about sixth grade I was unaware of the concept of "genre." My dad was the stay-at-home parent, and his tastes transcend genre; he'll read from pretty much any genre, but genre is, as far as I can tell, never really the reason he chooses the book. So I always had this idea that the main types of fiction works were "kids' books," "young adult books," and "literature." I discovered in third or fourth grade that the young adult section at the B. Dalton's contained mainly scary books and books about vampires, so I assumed that was mainly what young adults liked to read. It was around fifth or sixth grade, when I upgraded to Dracula and Stephen King, as well as random things from his bookshelves at home, that I think it really clicked internally that "mystery" and "horror" and "true crime" were specific genres within those broader fiction categories. Mysteriously, though, the possibility that there were other "genres" out there did not really occur to me.
In contrast, Mom is a genre reader. She likes fantasy and mystery and biography and some sci-fi. But Mom didn't really talk about books other than mentioning a specific book that she liked that we might also like. My main literary interactions with her when I was young were that she read to us kids. All through our early childhoods, and at least a couple of years into middle school for me because my siblings were still younger. That was our "Mom time." And a normal person would have looked at what she read us and thought, "Oh, I see, she reads them fantasy novels." Because she read us The Hobbit, the whole LOTR trilogy, the Narnia books, the Dark is Rising sequence, the Earthsea books, and the Redwall books. But the result of this in my brain was not "This is a genre called fantasy"; it was "These are bedtime stories." It also means that to me, Lord of the Rings is actually an oral tradition passed down from parent to child, and not something that one sits down and reads. It's a told story, verbally told. It works quite well that way, but confuses your friends when you say that you're unfamiliar with fantasy and they go "Not even Lord of the Rings?!" and you blink and say, "What? That's a bedtime story."
Yeah. So I've got it figured out now, but until college it was kind of confusing what "fantasy" and "sci-fi" actually were, and therefore when people talked about them in these terms I assumed they were talking about some sort of mysterious type of book that other people read and which I had never previously encountered. Possibly because they were some sort of obscure occult thing that required ritual initiation.
Many friends tried to "get me into fantasy" and failed miserably because fairly common tropes would throw me off and upset me which people who grew up in the genre were like, "Why are you even paying attention to that part?!" I remember telling seishonagon that I just didn't think I liked fantasy at all, because I didn't like Mercedes Lackey and the handful of other authors people had recommended to me as gateway drugs. She made an amazingly incredulous facial expression and then gently explained to me that if I liked Le Guin and Tolkien I would probably like other fantasy, but that I should henceforth run recommendations by her first. To this day, only seishonagon, seigyoku, and rushthatspeaks have had any success telling me what I will like, what I will not, and what will be beyond me until I've read other stuff first. At this point I am confused by my own experiments with the genre and get intimidated really quickly.
So here, for your reference and my own, have a meme about stuff I've read and not read.
From seishonagon.
NPR compiled a list of the most popular science fiction and fantasy books/series (determining whether things got listed as whole series or individual books by whether they tell a continuous story-so the Vorkosigan series gets a single entry, while Discworld does not, though they've clearly screwed up in some cases, like only listing one book of the Thursday Next series, and listing the Culture series all together), and excluding YA and horror. Bold if you've read, italicize if you plan to, underline if you've read part but not all.
1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien <--I think I only actually read one of the books, but Mom read them all to me.
2. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
3. Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
4. The Dune Chronicles, by Frank Herbert
5. A Song of Ice and Fire Series, by George R. R. Martin
6. 1984, by George Orwell
7. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury <--I really liked Ray Bradbury in high school. seishonagon and rushthatspeaks later explained to me that this was science fiction.
8. The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov <--My mother has these books. I found them once and asked who Isaac Asimov was. She said he was a great science fiction writer. I said, "You read science fiction?!"
9. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman
11. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman <--I saw the movie...
12. The Wheel Of Time Series, by Robert Jordan
13. Animal Farm, by George Orwell
14. Neuromancer, by William Gibson
15. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
16. I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov
17. Stranger In A Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein
18. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
19. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
20. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
21. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
22. The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood <--I read The Blind Assassin and I think also Alias Grace before I decided I hate Margaret Atwood with a fiery passion. They didn't seem like genre books, though (?).
23. The Dark Tower Series, by Stephen King <--When seishonagon told me she was reading this fantasy series, I was like, "Wait, Stephen King writes fantasy?!" I think I plan to read it, but I have to ask her if I should or not first.
24. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
25. The Stand, by Stephen King <--I saw the movie...
26. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson
27. The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury
28. Cat's Cradle, by Kurt Vonnegut
29. The Sandman Series, by Neil Gaiman <--seishonagon and rushthatspeaks both told me to read this. I think this was around the time that rushthatspeaks tried to explain American comic books to me.
30. A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
31. Starship Troopers, by Robert Heinlein
32. Watership Down, by Richard Adams <--This is fantasy?! I did not even know that. I remember the movie, but it never occurred to me that it belonged to a genre.
33. Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
34. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
35. A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller
36. The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells
37. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne
38. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keys
39. The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
40. The Chronicles of Amber, by Roger Zelazny
41. The Belgariad, by David Eddings
42. The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
43. The Mistborn Series, by Brandon Sanderson
44. Ringworld, by Larry Niven
45. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
46. The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien
47. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White <--This was on the same shelf of Mom's books as Asimov. She handed it to me as the one to read, so I did so. I liked it. I did not realize it was a fantasy novel. (Are all Camelot things fantasy?)
48. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman <--seishonagon and rushthatspeaks told me to read Neil Gaiman.
49. Childhood's End, by Arthur C. Clarke
50. Contact, by Carl Sagan
51. The Hyperion Cantos, by Dan Simmons
52. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman
53. Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson
54. World War Z, by Max Brooks
55. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
56. The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman
57. Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett
58. The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephen R. Donaldson
59. The Vorkosigan Saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold
60. Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett
61. The Mote in God's Eye, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
62. The Sword of Truth, by Terry Goodkind
63. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
64. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke
65. I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
66. The Riftwar Saga, by Raymond E. Feist
67. The Shannara Trilogy, by Terry Brooks
68. The Conan the Barbarian Series, by R.E. Howard
69. The Farseer Trilogy, by Robin Hobb
70. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
71. The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson
72. A Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
73. The Legend of Drizzt Series, by R.A. Salvatore
74. Old Man's War, by John Scalzi
75. The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
76. Rendezvous With Rama, by Arthur C. Clarke
77. The Kushiel's Legacy Series, by Jacqueline Carey
78. The Dispossessed, by Ursula K. LeGuin
79. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
80. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
81. The Malazan Book of the Fallen Series, by Steven Erikson
82. The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde
83. The Culture Series, by Iain M. Banks
84. The Crystal Cave, by Mary Stewart
85. Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
86. The Codex Alera Series, by Jim Butcher
87. The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe <--My dad sent me this book in the mail once after I told him about my discovery of sci-fi/fantasy, but it was very thick, and I became wary of it. I told seishonagon and she said it was not necessary for me to read it.
88. The Thrawn Trilogy, by Timothy Zahn
89. The Outlander Series, by Diana Gabaldon
90. The Elric Saga, by Michael Moorcock
91. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
92. Sunshine, by Robin McKinley
93. A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge
94. The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
95. The Mars Trilogy, by Kim Stanley Robinson
96. Lucifer's Hammer, by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
97. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
98. Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
99. The Xanth Series, by Piers Anthony
100. The Space Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis
In conclusion, a good half of these books I have never even heard of.