My 2 credits' worth: (Dang, getting one's name mentioned as an "authority"
can loosen one's tongue! |-> )
I don't read. Seriously, I don't. I write and perform my own music, create
my bown gaming adventures and rules, and occasionally write for gaming
magazines, when I'm not working on my thesis. I stopped reading assiduously
right about the time that Spider Robinson was first published, if that tells
you anything. Among the various people whom y'all probably worship whose
stuff i've never opened are David Brin, Jack Chalker, William Gibson, and
a young fellow I used to be friends with back in my SF-fan days, who shared
dreams with me but actually DID something about them too, Somtow Sucharitkul.
Such is life; I anticipate even less time for this stuff after I'm married,
as I expect Suzanne to drive me mercilessly to finish my album and the stuff
I've been preparing for GDW and/or DGP. (Behind every successgful man there
stands a woman with a well-aimed meat fork--sigh....)
As for what I USED to read, well, that's straightforward.... try Heinlein
of any vintage. His view of women borders on the psychotic, but the rest
of it is good fodder for space opera. I highly recommend E.E. "Doc" Smith,
as he was the man who CREATED (in the 1920's!) all of the space opera
ideas we now consider cliched. Larry Niven, with or without Pournelle,
bandies about some good ideas, as do Poul Anderson and Fritz Lieber.
For more generalized background, I also recommend books from outside of
SF; Ian Fleming's James Bond books are wonderful, at least the first
ten or so. I also recommend, for those of you with strong stomachs and
a sick twist to your psyches, Carlos Castaneda for psionics and Yukio
Mishima for one man's view of an aristocracy. If you can read his last
four books (the "Sea of Fertility" tetralogy, comprised of SPRING SNOW,
RUNAWAY HORSES, THE TEMPLE OF DAWN, and THE DECAY OF THE ANGEL, the last
being completed on the morning he committed public suicide in the
traditional manner) without throwing up, then you're either too jaded to
live or you've just gotten some GREAT game fodder, or both.
I'm curious about the new releases; are reviews forthcoming, Mac? there
aren't any game stores to speak of in Tennessee....
And on "what constitutes a good adventure," I favor mysteries to be solved,
a great deal of personal interaction and character development, intricate
plots, and brief, sudden, and highly unpleasant bits of violence to keep
things hopping. I keep my characters relatively poor and weak, give and
take away riches and power quite casually, and hit them with foes that are
too powerful for them, secure in the knowledge that gamers of the calibre
of those with whom I play will always improve themselves to the point of
being able to handle things before the situation becomes hopeless. I pace
things quickly, and I never open a rule book if I can help it.
metlay
PS. Oops, almost forgot: GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon and DHALGREN
by Samuel R. Delany. Both good head-straighteners.