Books
See also: Dungeons & Dragons (novels)Independent fiction derived from the Dungeons & Dragons game appeared with the Endless Quest series of books, published by TSR, Inc between 1982 and 1987. These provided a form of interactive fiction in the style of the Choose Your Own Adventure series. The success of the game then sparked an extensive series of authorized novels, initially published by TSR, Inc. The first of these were based upon the Dragonlance campaign setting, released in 1984. There proved to be a lucrative market for these works, and by the 2000s a significant portion of all fantasy paperbacks were being published by Wizards of the Coast, the American game company that acquired TSR in 1997.
Some works have been inspired by the impact of the game upon players and the role of the game in culture:
- Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, by journalist and gamer Ethan Gilsdorf; a travel memoir about D&D, role-playing games, and other fantasy and gaming subcultures.
- The Elfish Gene: Dungeons, Dragons and Growing Up Strange, by novelist Mark Barrowcliffe; a memoir of playing D&D and other role playing games in the 1970s.
- Author Shelly Mazzanoble wrote a humorous self-help guide called Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons: One Woman's Quest to Trade Self-help for Elf-help. This followed her guide book, Confessions of a Part-time Sorceress: A Girl's Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Game.
- American Nerd: The Story of My People is Time magazine writer Benjamin Nugent's study of the history and culture of people labeled nerds. It includes insights into why people play and enjoy D&D.
Several characters created for playing Dungeons & Dragons, or games derived from D&D, have later spawned popular fantasy series. Other novels make off-hand references to the game:
- In City of Bones, a novel by Cassandra Clare in her The Mortal Instruments series, the character Simon Lewis makes reference to Dungeons & Dragons.
Read more about this topic: Dungeons & Dragons In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word books:
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Critics generally come to be critics not by reason of their fitness for this, but of their unfitness for anything else. Books should be tried by a judge and jury as though they were a crime, and counsel should be heard on both sides.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“There are books so alive that you’re always afraid that while you weren’t reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?”
—Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941)