Lately, I've been reading Elizabeth Moon's "Vatta's War" series...well, technically I'm only on the second book. She writes excellent Science Fiction and the fact the protagonist is female is a refreshing change-of-pace. Ky Vatta is a believable, three-dimensional heroine who manages to pull off the impossible, but when she does, it doesn't seem improbable. In fact, the reader goes, "Whew!" with her at the conclusion of a crisis (at least, I do any way).
However, my first love is Fantasy rather than Science Fiction, probably fueled by the fact that I watched the Hobbit and The Return of the King (the Rankin-Bass cartoons) as a child (I was 9 or 10 at the time). In the sixth grade I went on to read Tolkien's Silmarillion before ever reading The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.
For Christmas, 1981, I persuaded an aunt to buy me TSR's "Gamma World" RPG
(A note about the Gamma World setting...it is self-described as "Science Fantasy." If you have ever seen the Heavy Metal movie/cartoon or Thundarr the Barbarian, you have a pretty good grasp of what GW is like.)
Well, I guess I posted all that to say that I've been a gamer almost 27 years now. The worlds that we create in our imaginations and by the playing of games at our dining room tables sometimes seem as real as a well-written story...or even a history. So what if that makes me a geek? Personally, I don't have the time to run around and judge others for their failings and idiosyncrasies, so why do they judge mine?
Until next time,
Tony
