Appendix N – Literature
Blake, William – Anything at all. Everything. A man who had to invent his own mythic and symbolic vocabularies because nothing we already had could hold him. Extraordinary poet, mad prophet of the Industrial Revolution and graceful integrator of text and illustration. When I think ‘grimoire’ I think ‘engraved by W. Blake, London’ instinctively.
Bradley, Marion Zimmer – The Mists of Avalon. Society, sex, gender, religion and politics explored in Arthuriana with, by turns, obvious straw-womanning and insightful “why can’t it work this way?” Poster girl for representative mythology.
Cervantes – Don Quixote. Everyone with the remotest interest in rag-tag heroes and the chronically adventurous, or in the picaresque genre that many played RPGs fall into, should at least be passingly familiar with the Mad Knight of La Mancha.
Chaucer, Geoffrey – The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Cresside, and a good biography of the author. I love Chaucer. His collection of types and archetypes is a showcase for any GM with an eye to imitating medieval Europe. The man himself is a template for the adventuring scholar and spy within that world.
Clarke, Susanna – Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Superlative. Meticulously footnoted, painstakingly constructed, and evokes the Georgian period, the eldritch mystery and cruelty of Faerie and the monumental impact just two gentleman magicians can have on a world where magic is unknown. High magic works the way it does in my games because of Clarke, and she achieves a level of completeness in world-building to which I may only aspire.
Dickens, Charles – anything at all. Dicken’s depictions of character and scene are masterful and the mutating of a long-running serial narrative to suit the whims of readers should give comfort to the GM who has to improvise in a hurry. Spontaneous combustion of a character was good enough for England’s foremost popular writer…
Gordon, George (Lord Byron) – Don Juan, Childe Harold, Mannfred. The Byronic persona – tragically charismatic, keenly erudite, wronged and wrongdoing, desperate and decadent and perverse – is that of a truly great villain, or a fascinating anti-heroic PC.
LeGuin, Ursula K. – Earthsea. All of it. Including, and especially, Tehanu. LeGuin ‘discovers’ her marvellous world organically, explores the structures of men’s power and women’s power and the powers in relation. Earthsea is about knowledge, and sex, and identity, and status, and safety, and what happens when these things are taken from or given to us. Tehanu is about what happens to the heroes when the epic story is over.
Moorcock, Michael, and Storm Constantine – Silverheart. Each co-author tempers the excesses of the other; Constantine humanises Moorcock’s abstract pontificating and metaphysical showing-off, while Moorcock philosophically justifies Constantine’s gothic sexuality and aesthetic postures. The result is a fine showcase for both the power of collaboration in narrative and for the ‘what a society with high magic can be like’.
Peake, Mervyn – Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone. Heed not those who will warn you off the first and third books. Marvellous caricatures caricature themselves throughout; the mood of the whole is not dark brooding neo-gothic nonsense but bright and brilliant Gothic perversity. Everything I learned about mood and setting and distinctive NPCs I learned from Peake.
Pratchett, Terry – all Discworld but especially Equal Rites, Guards! Guards! Aside from a general ironic streak that shoots through my take on the fantasy genre, these two are singled out for Pratchett’s take on different kinds of magic and the building and operation of a low fantasy city.
Tolkien, J. R. R. – The Lord of the Rings. Everything about the way I devise worlds is in some way a reaction against what I dislike in Tolkien’s process and product and see imitated so thoughtlessly and reflexively elsewhere in the genre, and so he’s in as an influence precisely because I spend so much time railing against him.
Thomas, Scarlett – The End of Mr. Y. Excellent depiction of both inner and outer lives, astral journeys and forgotten gods. Ignore the shaggy-God-story epilogue, though. Strong influence on my idea of spiritual journeys and metaphysical encounters, and unlocked Mage: the Awakening for me.
White, T. H. – The Once and Future King. White’s retelling of the Arthur story grows up with its protagonists and articulates much about boyhood, learning, the lie of progress and the perils of idealism. If your game is suddenly About Things instead of smacking orcs upside the head, despair not: White got there first. Also, he’s hilarious.
White, T. H. – Bestiary: A Book of Beasts. A far, far better read than any monster manual, fiend folio, or like supplement you would care to name.
‘Yeovil, Jack’: The Vampire Genevieve. Defines the Warhammer World as it exists between battles and behind the lines, and shows its potential as a vehicle for pastiche. Must-read for any WFRP GM; skip every other fantasy book they’ve ever printed except, maybe, The Laughter of Dark Gods.
