So I Want To Be A Fantasy Writer…

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Yeah, I know I said I was going to write this in the middle of the week. Blame the end of the school year craziness for that. But, as it turns out, I’ve long had a theme on my Facebook writing page of #SciFiSaturday (or, as I should say now, #SciFiFantasySaturday). So, maybe it was for the best that I saved this for now. Anyway, here’s the post.]

Genre fiction was my thing growing up. (Maybe I should have made this into one of my Writer’s Biography pieces. Oh, well, maybe another time.) Science Fiction I was into for a long time – I was a Star Wars and Star Trek kid and loved the classic scifi of the 20th century (Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, etc.)

Fantasy, however… it wasn’t unknown to me, but it wasn’t something that was near and dear to my heart. At least, it wasn’t at the same level as the science fiction was. But it always was there, lurking around the margins. When I was either in elementary or middle school, I discovered Lloyd Alexander and his series The Chronicles of Prydain. I remember The High King making a massive impression on me, the epicness of it, how Taran was forced quickly to become a man and the choices he had to face. I loved that book.

There were other fantasy things that fascinated me, both growing up and in recent years. The film Conan The Barbarian came out when I was in elementary school, and I dug that character so much. I saw The Dark Crystal in the theater, watched the animated series Dungeons and Dragons and even played the game it was based on once or twice. (I spent more time reading the dungeon master’s manual than playing it, however.) I never have read The Lord of the Rings series, although I’ve now seen all three movies.

And finally, I have seen a good portion of the series Game of Thrones, and have read the first book in the series A Song of Ice and Fire. I keep promising that I’m going to give a quick review of the TV series (maybe this coming week?). There have been many think pieces written about the final season, and the series as a whole, but I would describe the series as follows: a flawed masterpiece.

What I will say is that all of the comments about the series and the inadequacies of it’s writing (which can certainly be argued) didn’t depress me, and the fact that the series didn’t end exactly the way I wanted it to didn’t depress me. No, what it did do was inspire me. It was the same thing that has always inspired me, looking at something in a book or online or on the screen that immediately made me think “I can do that better.”

So, I started thinking of a scenario, of a new fantasy world, where civilizations representing the concepts of magic, chivalry, and science and progress would clash and face each other. It’s been a theme that maybe my mind has been… playing with for a while, taking the concept out for a test drive. The more that I’ve watched Game of Thrones and what they’ve done right and wrong, the more this idea of writing fantasy intrigues me. Now I’m starting to look over fantasy map building sites and thinking about what these civilizations would be like.

Yeah, it looks like I want this to happen. I’ll let you know more about it later.