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Honestly, I hope so. There is so much of the world out there to explore. Stories spanning so many centuries and genres. Why should we limit ourselves to boring ol' medieval Europe. Not to mention, D&D was never very good at maintaining the era, grabbing a hodgepodge of things from everywhere.
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No Medieval European settings ever pull in themes from the Eastern Roman Empire. That makes me sad.
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There's also never themes from the Holy Roman Empire! So much stuff from Medieval Europe that never gets used!
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More to the point, I doubt that you can get more than two people to agree on what precisely constitutes a "midieval european styled setting.". The closest one I think that TSR ever put out was Mystara.
You mean with the crashed starship (or two), a civilization of two being runaways from another planet, and magic radiation leaking from a reactor of an ancient device/starship buried deep under Glantri?
Cerilia (Birthright) was much closer to pseudomedieval-fantasy with a primary area culture being based on middle to late Medieval Europe, bordered by Saracens to the East, Vikings with some sprinkling of Celtic influence to the North, post-Medieval Netherlands/Germany/Scandinavia mix to the North-East and mix-up of Slavic, Mongol, and some East Scandinavian tones to the East-North-East.
And the elves and lost of nomenclature was Celtic-inspired.
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There's also never themes from the Holy Roman Empire! So much stuff from Medieval Europe that never gets used!
Because Warhammer beat that horse so dead that trying to use Holy Roman Empire inspirations might feel like ripping off Warhammer instead of actually history.
EDIT: Actually, the Holy Roman Empire with its complex splintered feudal structure almost certainly had influenced the shape and functionality of the Anuirean Empire in Birthright.
Dead?
Nah.
Rise of the Runelords, Giantslayer, Kingmaker, Shattered Star, Wrath of the Righteous, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Hell's Rebels all allow for plenty of "pseudo-Medieval European types face the forces of evil" if that's what you want to do.Of course, you can also send a quartet of catgirls, each a Kineticist of a different element through each and every one, playing up the comedic aspects of the situation.
It's really down to taste.
I tend to lean humanocentric, but there's also simple wear and tear to consider- I've played enough human archery-focused male rangers over the years that I don't really have a burning need to do so ever again-but a bomb-chucking Goblin Alchemist is something else altogether!
More to the point, I doubt that you can get more than two people to agree on what precisely constitutes a "midieval european styled setting.". The closest one I think that TSR ever put out was Mystara.You mean with the crashed starship (or two), a civilization of two being runaways from another planet, and magic radiation leaking from a reactor of an ancient device/starship buried deep under Glantri?
Cerilia (Birthright) was much closer to pseudomedieval-fantasy with a primary area culture being based on middle to late Medieval Europe, bordered by Saracens to the East, Vikings with some sprinkling of Celtic influence to the North, post-Medieval Netherlands/Germany/Scandinavia mix to the North-East and mix-up of Slavic, Mongol, and some East Scandinavian tones to the East-North-East.
And the elves and lost of nomenclature was Celtic-inspired.
I see where toy are coming from, but to be fair those are VERY LATE entries in Mystara, as they lost ground to the more heavily medieval Greyhawk.
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must, resist, urge, to open recruitment thread for
"classic, Basic D&D campaign"
You'd probably be shouted off the forums :p
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There's also never themes from the Holy Roman Empire! So much stuff from Medieval Europe that never gets used!
Taldor, maybe?
But yeah, "medieval Europe" was never the monolith that a lot of people make it out to be. I don't care if something is "ahistorical," per se, because it's fantasy anyway, but it's always more fun for me if I can tell a creator knows where the bits of their setting are coming from.
I like variety. Playing in standard pseudo-medieval-mostly-England is fun sometimes. So is tossing a little sci-fi in. So is psuedo-Sengoku-era Japan. So is pseudo-eighteenth-century-Venice. I mean, not all of these things are going to be everyone's cup of tea, but I don't think that's any reason for them not to exist.
There's also never themes from the Holy Roman Empire! So much stuff from Medieval Europe that never gets used!Because Warhammer beat that horse so dead that trying to use Holy Roman Empire inspirations might feel like ripping off Warhammer instead of actually history.
EDIT: Actually, the Holy Roman Empire with its complex splintered feudal structure almost certainly had influenced the shape and functionality of the Anuirean Empire in Birthright.
Not RPG, but Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series borrows heavily from Charlemagne and the much later Holy Roman Empire.
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Techno-pirate cyborgs shooting laser beams. Catfolk/fox people prancing around feudal Japan. These are the kind of things I read about on the forums. So I ask, is the classic European medieval inspired fantasy setting dead?
>>>Warning wall of text that may be a mindless rant<<<
Going to back up what other have said,
If the below looks to long here is a nice Hobbit song by Mr Spock,
showing you that Fantasy and SiFi can get along.
If your talking The Brothers Grim tails and classic Celtic stories
such as Celtic_folktales
All we know of them came about with the advent of printing, yes some bigger works like Beowulf and Nordic Faith tails lived before that in hand written book form, but all that inspired classic European medieval Was invented by the Victorians, The Once and Future King and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight come in the 1800s.
It was a mish-mash of old and new tails, cool thing is SiFi started then as well. yes you have the odd Golem and mechanical owl in older tails but the idea that devices could be used in plots, well look at Frankenstein and war of the worlds, 10,000 leagues under the see and Journey to the center of the earth, all good stuff. Even more in the Penny Dread-full's.
You get the odd medieval like tail after that, but its not till
The Hobbit / LOTR (series) and The Gormenghast (series)
and George_MacDonald whos works are fun to read.
Tolkien translated Beowulf and that got him going, with the whole The Silmarillion setting [Man that is one hard read]
[note: H. P. Lovecraft was writing at the same time, so you kind of wounder what was in the water back then]
Any who the idea of classic European medieval is really the Tolkien setting. Elves, Dwarf etc, you get the idea. With some other bits chucked in.
Games that started with a idea of LOTR as a core setting, well.
Tunnels and Tolls was set around that, but DnD was also based on the works of ALL of the above some others and here is what the point of this is
The works of Jack Vance, most of all
Fantasy
The Dying Earth
Main article: Dying Earth series
The Dying Earth (author's preferred title: Mazirian the Magician, collection of linked stories, 1950)
The Eyes of the Overworld (author's preferred title: Cugel the Clever, novel 1966)
Cugel's Saga (author's preferred title: Cugel: The Skybreak Spatterlight, novel, 1983)
The Laughing Magician (Omnibus containing The Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga, 2007)
Rhialto the Marvellous (collection of linked stories, 1984)
Where do you think Prismatic Spray comes from and Cantrips spells come from.
And the whole series was Sifi Fantasy, I kid you not.
If you want a game system that is set outside of the above then you need look no more than King Arthur Pendragon RPG, all Knights and classic European medieval inspired fantasy. You will love it, [Thats if you can get past the rules] 13th age is good, rules are simple.
But DnD and Pathfinder are based on setting outside of classic European medieval inspired fantasy I am sorry to say, From H P Lovecraft to Jack Vance its got to wide a catchment of ideas and setting to be placed in that one box.
All the best.
GM Panic.
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All we know of them came about with the advent of printing, yes some bigger works like Beowulf and Nordic Faith tails lived before that in hand written book form, but all that inspired classic European medieval Was invented by the Victorians, The Once and Future King and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight come in the 1800s.
Not quite. Gawain, in particular, is known from a 14th century ms. More generally, while The Once and Future King is 20th century, Le Morte d'Arthur is 15th century, and draws on a lot of manuscript sources (Alliterative Morte Arthure[i], Stanzaic [i]Morte Arthure, the prose Lancelot and the much older Historia Regum Britanniae and Historia Brittonum).
In fact, there's a huge collection of 13th century chivalric romances in French (Lancelot was himself supposed to be a French knight) that we have from the golliard poets. Many of the classic Grimm fairy tales were retold (and cleaned up) by the Victorians, but we've got medieval versions of most of them.
Any who the idea of classic European medieval is really the Tolkien setting. Elves, Dwarf etc, you get the idea. With some other bits chucked in. [?QUOTE]Actually, the classic European medieval is the Chanson de Roland and the Arthurian legends. Tolkien's primary influences (e.g. Beowulf, the Prose Eddas, etc.) were substantially older -- or substantially newer. The Shire is basically Early Modern England, but the rest of the countries (e.g., Rohan, Gondor) are actually classical Celtic and/or Germanic.
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The Once and Future King is 20th century
I was thinking of Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court sorry got them mixed up, that is late 1800s.
Also don't forget the German and Italian writer, also the Polish and others all taking thire lead from Fairy Tales chivalric tales.
I was a Prague Book shop and they had a load of old Knightly Tales of daring do, all fighting the Turks etc.
Also a lot of Crusade_literature all talking about Knights and wars.
One other thing was that they Crusaders brought back literature as well so that added to the mix. See One Thousand and One Nights and even more impacting and better known in the meditation was The tails [Voyages] of Sinbad the Sailor. in all forms. [That set of tails shows up time and again]
Last of all the Furūsiyya literature from the Middle Ages Islamic world.
What was in the water back then? I would say, somewhat guardedly, that the departure from an at least vaguely realistic world had become possible to sell. I am certainly not claiming it was impossible before, there are examples far back, but if you look at earlier fiction, it is all pretty much realistic in execution. Even Jules Verne's stories are grounded in things he felt and expected COULD actually happen. Add in influence from the Romantic movement with its focus on the inner landscape, Freud's theories, and a world situation that made our current one look positively shiny, and yes, people bought escapism.
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Attacking this from a different angle, I would suggest looking at what's happening in other mediums. There are still plenty of video games, movies and books that focus on "classic" fantasy settings. If people are watching it and reading it, it's a safe assumption that they are also playing it.
Another angle is demographics. I'm going to make a safe assumption and assume most posters in the Paizo forums are in the 16-40 years old range. Most of those have already spent years playing the standard fantasy tropes, and so some of them are looking for something new.
But for all the twelve years old boys and girls who just watched Lord Of The Rings for the first time and discovered they can play as elves or hobbits and go on their own adventures with friends? Yeah, they are for sure going to give the good ol' classic fantasy setting a stab. They might also be inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy or Harry Potter or anything else, but for those who haven't gone through the process of epic fantasy fifty times like many of us here did, the setting is extremely compelling. I mean, people here are calling it "vanilla", but that is only in the context of those who have tried it many times and want something new. Taken at face value, classic fantasy is a great setting that is sure to resonate with most western audiences - there's a reason the setting caught on in the first place.
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Attacking this from a different angle, I would suggest looking at what's happening in other mediums. There are still plenty of video games, movies and books that focus on "classic" fantasy settings. If people are watching it and reading it, it's a safe assumption that they are also playing it.
Another angle is demographics. I'm going to make a safe assumption and assume most posters in the Paizo forums are in the 16-40 years old range. Most of those have already spent years playing the standard fantasy tropes, and so some of them are looking for something new.
But for all the twelve years old boys and girls who just watched Lord Of The Rings for the first time and discovered they can play as elves or hobbits and go on their own adventures with friends? Yeah, they are for sure going to give the good ol' classic fantasy setting a stab. They might also be inspired by Guardians of the Galaxy or Harry Potter or anything else, but for those who haven't gone through the process of epic fantasy fifty times like many of us here did, the setting is extremely compelling. I mean, people here are calling it "vanilla", but that is only in the context of those who have tried it many times and want something new. Taken at face value, classic fantasy is a great setting that is sure to resonate with most western audiences - there's a reason the setting caught on in the first place.
Balanced, as I said above by those who've been gaming for decades and still like "classic" fantasy. And by those younger players who've come to gaming from anime or other non-classic genres.
I don't think it's nearly as simple as "new players are happy with classic and long time players want something new."
Agreed. I was just pointing out reasons that I think the classic fantasy setting is far from dead. I wasn't trying to write a comprehensive list of everyone still playing, just bring attention to a group that may easily be overlooked in a forum like this, because it doesn't really show presence. I've seen people refer to classic fantasy as "vanilla" when really it is only so in the sense that it's something very familiar that most of us here have experienced a billion times. For a young player, there's a ton to discover in classic fantasy - the first time you steal a dragon's treasure is every bit as spicy as the first time your ratfolk samurai challenged the alien cyborg to a duel.
And, finally - as I have mentioned - not all younger players would be inspired by classic fantasy. I do think a majority will, but I don't have data to back this gut feeling by. There are enough awesome genres out there for everyone.
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And by those younger players who've come to gaming from anime or other non-classic genres.
Yep, this is me. Techno-fantasy has been my thing since the start - it was video games that got me into gaming and fantasy rather than books, playing the heavily-tech-focused Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI was what got me into the fantasy/sci-fi genre in the first place, and is generally the sort of feel I prefer in my games; my group's homebrew world greatly reflects this, with a lot of steampunk and magitek influences and greater acknowledgements of the tech-versus-nature debates and places where the debate has been completely bypassed for a blending of the two from day one, and the comparisons between the two approaches.
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I don't think it's nearly as simple as "new players are happy with classic and long time players want something new."
Definitely not. In my mind, if you try to bring a cyborg into the fantasy world that I am used to for TTRPG, you're doing it wrong.
At no point in the past twenty five + years that I have been playing have I gotten bored with the traditional fantasy setting and wanted to bring in anything obviously anime inspired. I'd rather not play than play in a world like that.
That being said, it's cool that there are so many different game systems which allow for different types of games. While I don't want to mix traditional fantasy and sci fi, I think some of the sci fi settings look cool in their own right (Monte Cook's new one looks interesting and I assume it is sci fi.)
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What is "traditional fantasy"?
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The works of Jack Vance, most of all
The Dying Earth
Where do you think Prismatic Spray comes from and Cantrips spells come from.And the whole series was Sifi Fantasy, I kid you not.
If you want a game system that is set outside of the above then you need look no more than King Arthur Pendragon RPG, all Knights and classic European medieval inspired fantasy. You will love it, [Thats if you can get past the rules] 13th age is good, rules are simple.
But DnD and Pathfinder are based on setting outside of classic European medieval inspired fantasy I am sorry to say, From H P Lovecraft to Jack Vance its got to wide a catchment of ideas and setting to be placed in that one box.
I haven't read any Vance in a long time, but from what I remember while it's science fantasy, it's science fantasy in a very different way from adding cyborgs with lasers into a setting with magic.
It's a world where the "magic" is actually mostly forgotten advanced science. That was a pretty common trope in fantasy of that era.
Vance, like Ray Bradbury,and Ursula LeGuin, is an author who demonstrates the weaknesses of trying to divide authors into neat science fiction and fantasy borders. Dying Earth is sort of science fiction, save where it's not, and sort of fantasy, save where it's not. Star Trek likes to pretend to be sciencey by padding it's dialogue with extended treknobabble which sometimes bears some relation or connection to true science but more often doesn't.
Much of the confusion is the arbitrary distinction between science fiction and fantasy,when for all intents and purposes, they're frequently one and the same beast. The tech in Star Trek is pretty much magic wrapped up in blinking lights, chrome, and plastic, instead of incantations, ritual candles, and pentagrams. But the narrative use and effect is generally identical. This is even more blatant in Dr.Who and the more recent crop of "sci fi" shows.
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What is "traditional fantasy"?
When a dungeon and a dragon love each other very much...
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What is "traditional fantasy"?
Horrific cautionary tales designed to frighten children with. Much of which have been tamed down for more modern sensitive tastes. Grimm's tales are a classic example.
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But the narrative use and effect is generally identical. This is even more blatant in Dr.Who and the more recent crop of "sci fi" shows.
The Doctor: Must be a spatial temporal hyperlink.
Mickey: What's that?The Doctor: No idea. Just made it up. Didn't want to say 'magic door.'
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What is "traditional fantasy"?
Anything recognizably derivative of Tolkien. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s, it seemed like half the novels on the fantasy shelf were so derivative they should have been put with the calculus textbooks instead.
Having said that, it's a formula that works well -- and that demonstrably did work well for a long time. TV Tropes, as usual, summarizes the formula well.:
No matter where a fantasy story may be written, whatever rich history the author's homeland might have, most fantasy stories take place in Medieval Europe (or a facsimile thereof, possibly reasonable). People will fight with swords and shields, and the government is usually vaguely feudal: it may not map well to any real-world political system, but it usually has hereditary monarchs and nobles (which many other cultures also have, but if European titles are used, you're in a Medieval European Fantasy). Medieval European Fantasy settings are sometimes littered with Schizo Tech, though Fantasy Gun Control is often a limiting factor.The modern age's Ur-source for Medieval fantasy is The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien based heavily on European folklore. This trope also has its roots in the tendency for pre-Tolkien fantasy works to outright take place in the Medieval era, especially if they were connected to or influenced by the tales of King Arthur.
And, yes, D&D qualifies -- it had "hobbits," for the love of Mike, until the Tolkien estate suggested that the term might be a trademark -- and by extension most of much of the D&D canon (see the TV Tropes exemplar list for details).
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What weird is, The Hobbit was published with a year of the first Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser story, which features what I can only describe (granted, in modern vocabulary) as an artificially intelligent smart house as the monster.
I know exactly what people mean when they say classic fantasy, I just think the genre's always been wider than that. Literally always. Like, literally literally always, from the time when we started differentiating between science fiction and fantasy.
Edit: Oops, make that 2 years.
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Vance, like Ray Bradbury,and Ursula LeGuin, is an author who demonstrates the weaknesses of trying to divide authors into neat science fiction and fantasy borders.
Which is probably why the bookstore I go to just has one section called science fiction/fantasy.
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What is "traditional fantasy"?Anything recognizably derivative of Tolkien. Especially in the 1970s and 1980s, it seemed like half the novels on the fantasy shelf were so derivative they should have been put with the calculus textbooks instead.
Having said that, it's a formula that works well -- and that demonstrably did work well for a long time. TV Tropes, as usual, summarizes the formula well.:
No matter where a fantasy story may be written, whatever rich history the author's homeland might have, most fantasy stories take place in Medieval Europe (or a facsimile thereof, possibly reasonable). People will fight with swords and shields, and the government is usually vaguely feudal: it may not map well to any real-world political system, but it usually has hereditary monarchs and nobles (which many other cultures also have, but if European titles are used, you're in a Medieval European Fantasy). Medieval European Fantasy settings are sometimes littered with Schizo Tech, though Fantasy Gun Control is often a limiting factor.The modern age's Ur-source for Medieval fantasy is The Lord of the Rings, which Tolkien based heavily on European folklore. This trope also has its roots in the tendency for pre-Tolkien fantasy works to outright take place in the Medieval era, especially if they were connected to or influenced by the tales of King Arthur.
And, yes, D&D qualifies -- it had "hobbits," for the love of Mike, until the Tolkien estate suggested that the term might be a trademark -- and by extension most of much of the D&D canon (see the TV Tropes exemplar list for details).
The article you linked on TV Tropes is "Medieval European Fantasy", are you making the claim that this is "traditional"?
I'd point out, that if you look in the AD&D DMG, page 224, you'll find a lot of authors who get their work classified under different tropes on that website, such as Sword and Sorcery, which is held as different by most sources (including TV Tropes).
In fact, on that page you won't find many authors who fit Tolkien's mold, other than Tolkien. There are some similarities, but there are also significant differences as well.
Tolkien was definitely AN influence on D&D, but he wasn't the only one. Some of the other influences include science fantasy and science fiction writers.
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Anyone who thinks that Tolkien defines classic fantasy, has a painfully constricted definition of the genre. Michael Moorcock is about as anti-Tolkien as you can get, but he fits as classic fantasy as far as I'm concerned.
Then again, also note what I've said about genres earlier.
Anyone who thinks that Tolkien defines classic fantasy, has a painfully constricted definition of the genre. Michael Moorcock is about as anti-Tolkien as you can get, but he fits as classic fantasy as far as I'm concerned.
Then again, also note what I've said about genres earlier.
I wouldn't say "defines", but certainly was a huge influence on - long before the movies. Conan would also fit that broad TVTropes quote - vaguely feudal, there is magic and gods and fights with swords and shields - though he doesn't usually use a shield, anymore than Aragorn does. As would most of Moorcock's Eternal Champions books, certainly Elric.
Part of the divide here may be that we're talking setting more than genre. You can have very different genres with the same basic setting elements. LotR is High Fantasy set in a vaguely Medieval European setting. Conan is Sword and Sorcery set in a vaguely Medieval European setting.
But which one is "traditional fantasy"? Or is it Burroughs' Barsoom series?
I see plenty of PBP recruitments here with the qualifiers "No gunslingers, no ninjas, no samurai" so I'd say the Ye Olde Europe style of game world is plenty alive and well.
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Anyone who thinks that Tolkien defines classic fantasy, has a painfully constricted definition of the genre. Michael Moorcock is about as anti-Tolkien as you can get, but he fits as classic fantasy as far as I'm concerned.
Then again, also note what I've said about genres earlier.
I wouldn't say "defines", but certainly was a huge influence on - long before the movies. Conan would also fit that broad TVTropes quote - vaguely feudal, there is magic and gods and fights with swords and shields - though he doesn't usually use a shield, anymore than Aragorn does. As would most of Moorcock's Eternal Champions books, certainly Elric.
Part of the divide here may be that we're talking setting more than genre. You can have very different genres with the same basic setting elements. LotR is High Fantasy set in a vaguely Medieval European setting. Conan is Sword and Sorcery set in a vaguely Medieval European setting.
Tolkien's main contribution was to establish fantasy as serious reading in the post war age.. or at least fantasy books that someone in a business suit can read without being embarrassed to be caught doing so. It gets far more credit than it deserves for defining the roleplaying genre, as any look at Gygax's biliography will demonstrate.
C.S. Lewis christianized fantasy contemporaneously with Tolkien, so there's that, in terms of "serious reading" too.
Edit: If there's one person who ghettoized fantasy and science fiction, it's probably Hugo Gernsback. Nothing against the guy, but he's the one person who first decided that fantasy and science fiction were two different things, and fantasy was for lesser sort of mind. I mean, look, none of the science fiction from that age uses modern principles, but the fantasy is still totally fantastic.
Indeed, Drahliana, I've read the Prelandia series. Have you read Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany? :)
C.S. Lewis christianized fantasy contemporaneously with Tolkien, so there's that, in terms of "serious reading" too.
Now if you really want genre ambigous works,read his Perelandra series. The hero of the book makes his first planetary trip by spaceship, but after that he travels purely by the "Grace of God" or somesuch, as spaceships are evil.
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C.S. Lewis christianized fantasy contemporaneously with Tolkien, so there's that, in terms of "serious reading" too.
Edit: If there's one person who ghettoized fantasy and science fiction, it's probably Hugo Gernsback. Nothing against the guy, but he's the one person who first decided that fantasy and science fiction were two different things, and fantasy was for lesser sort of mind. I mean, look, none of the science fiction from that age uses modern principles, but the fantasy is still totally fantastic.
Indeed, Drahliana, I've read the Prelandia series. Have you read Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany? :)
I have the large paperback with illustrations. One of my favorite stories is the one about Jack.
I have the large paperback with illustrations. One of my favorite stories is the one about Jack.C.S. Lewis christianized fantasy contemporaneously with Tolkien, so there's that, in terms of "serious reading" too.
Edit: If there's one person who ghettoized fantasy and science fiction, it's probably Hugo Gernsback. Nothing against the guy, but he's the one person who first decided that fantasy and science fiction were two different things, and fantasy was for lesser sort of mind. I mean, look, none of the science fiction from that age uses modern principles, but the fantasy is still totally fantastic.
Indeed, Drahliana, I've read the Prelandia series. Have you read Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany? :)
Distant Stars, with the Michael Whelan cover? And the one about Jack is "Prismatica"? My mother read that story to me when I was sick in bed at a young age.
Later, I read Empire Star until I got to the illustrations, figured I'd finished the piece, and walked away. Much, much later, I read the entire story and, reaching the conclusion, realized that the illustrations had probably been at the center binding, and there was still a good 50 or pages that I'd missed. I'd never finished the story as a child, but having done so as an adult, I'm not willing to say I would have understood it at that age. Hell, I'm not entirely sure I understood it as an adult!
Simplex, complex, multiplex. :)
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I have the large paperback with illustrations. One of my favorite stories is the one about Jack.C.S. Lewis christianized fantasy contemporaneously with Tolkien, so there's that, in terms of "serious reading" too.
Edit: If there's one person who ghettoized fantasy and science fiction, it's probably Hugo Gernsback. Nothing against the guy, but he's the one person who first decided that fantasy and science fiction were two different things, and fantasy was for lesser sort of mind. I mean, look, none of the science fiction from that age uses modern principles, but the fantasy is still totally fantastic.
Indeed, Drahliana, I've read the Prelandia series. Have you read Empire Star by Samuel R. Delany? :)
Distant Stars, with the Michael Whelan cover? And the one about Jack is "Prismatica"? My mother read that story to me when I was sick in bed at a young age.
Later, I read Empire Star until I got to the illustrations, figured I'd finished the piece, and walked away. Much, much later, I read the entire story and, reaching the conclusion, realized that the illustrations had probably been at the center binding, and there was still a good 50 or pages that I'd missed. I'd never finished the story as a child, but having done so as an adult, I'm not willing to say I would have understood it at that age. Hell, I'm not entirely sure I understood it as an adult!
Simplex, complex, multiplex. :)
That'st he one! Sent by a wizard so great, so terrible, and so powerful that you and I need never worry about him. I think an essential element to groking Empire Star is some reading on Michal McLuhan, who said that the best way to read a book is to buy 2 copies of it, tear out the pages and stick them to a wall.