8 SF/F Writers Who Changed My Life (#WeekofJoy)
Books change lives, right? Well, they certainly changed mine. Books have been a part of my life since I was a kid, though I honestly didn’t understand their true value until much later in life. They were entertainment in my younger years. I read Goosebumps and Hardy Boys because they provided quick, fun narratives (and some of the former were actually kinda scary at times — they seem ridiculous today, of course). I even read comic books as a kid, for the same reasons everyone read comics in their youth: fun! But I wasn’t a literature nut in my younger years. I wanted to play video games or do stupid things on my bike — I honestly don’t know how I survived childhood, because I used to do some monumentally stupid things on my bike. Despite all of that, books eventually smacked me upside the head and changed the way I viewed them and the way I viewed life in general. I read or discovered these books during what I would consider to be pivotal moments of my life. Some of those moments were dark times; others were quite happy and exciting. But none of them were exactly same. In chronological order, here are the eight science fiction and fantasy writers who changed my life: Richard A. Knaak The first adult fantasy book I ever read was Richard A. Knaak’s Dragonlance novel, The Legend of Huma. I won’t pretend it’s a great work of art, or a great piece of fantasy (well, it’s a fun piece of fantasy, but Dragonlance isn’t exactly known for the best writing in the universe). I would later go on to read his DragonRealm series — a much more interesting and well-written set of relatively short fantasy novels. I think it’s fair to say that I was always a reader or viewer of genre fiction, having watched Star Wars so many times as a child that I eventually had to justify owning three different VHS copies to prevent ruining my really good copy (the Leonard Maltin versions, which I still own). But I had never really grown fond of SF/F literature. That was until someone introduced me to Dragonlance. The Legend of Huma introduced me to a whole new sea of stories, and reading that particular book would one day give me fuel for an interest in writing genre fiction (I’ve never wanted to write anything else, really). Without that book, I don’t know what I would be like today. A genre fan? Probably. A scholar in the field and a wannabe writer of SF/F? Probably not. (This is a familiar narrative, no?) George Orwell I also discovered the wonders of science fiction in high school. However, rather than having George Orwell’s incredible and canonical novel 1984 thrust at me by my friends, I had the novel thrust on me by a teacher (duh). And lucky me. I attended two high schools as a teenager: one in Oak Harbor, Washington, and another in Placerville, California. Of all the English classes I took while in Oak Harbor, only one managed to make reading interesting. That class had us reading things like Watership Down by Richard Adams, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare, and, of course, 1984. And since that class, I’ve re-read Orwell’s novel at least six times. The book made me realized that literature could have depth, that re-reading a work could actually change your experience of it. That book also helped turn me into a science fiction nut. And every time I re-read the book (less frequently now than when I was in my early 20s), I discover something new. That’s the mark of a good book, if you ask me! I think it’s safe to say that my interest in literature as an academic subject began here. The Person Who Wrote Beowulf The short version of the story goes like this: during my senior year of high school, my English teacher assigned Beowulf, as often happens in high school. Instead of having us write straight literary analysis, however, she asked us to take the core themes of the story and come up with our own poetic versions. Thus began a month-long journey to rewrite Beowulf (with a friend). The weird part? We actually took it quite seriously, while others in our class sort of dilly daddled the way a lot people do when it comes to these kinds of assignments. We went to the library and looked up British history (the place where we intended to set our version of the story), dug up maps of the pre-Norman-invasion British Isles, and tried our best to fit our re-worked version into that new world (Grendel’s lair ended up on the Isle of Man). We plotted the entire story, developed all of the characters, and then I started writing. And then came the all-nighters. After a weekend of intense writing (in what I then thought was proper “Old English” style — heh), I strolled into class on Monday with a 31-page epic poem in tow. I still have a vivid memory of my teacher’s eyes opening wider than should have been humanly possible at the sight of our work. She had expected something like 5-10 pages, not 31. And we got an A. You might be wondering how this changed my life. Throughout my youth, I recall writing a lot of stories. For the most part, these were horror stories (I still think that movie with the evil severed hand somehow stole my ideas); they weren’t very good. But it wasn’t until that Beowulf assignment that I realized I really had the writing bug. From that point on, I started writing with more fervor. Clearly that bug never truly left, because I still write fiction as often as I can (not as much right now due to PhD work, though). Without Beowulf, I’m not sure I’d be where I am right now: an English major and a published writer. Alan Garner I’ve written about my experiences with cancer here,