A friend asked the hive-mind for book suggestions—preferably science-fiction/fantasy/speculative fiction—to flesh out her summer reading list and (naturally) she got more titles than she could probably read in a year. I tossed in one title I’d read recently; it was less “spec-fic” and more what I’d call “magic realism,” but I had found it delightful and passed the title¹ along.
In perusing the suggestions from others, I saw a mix of genre classics along with (what I assumed were) newer titles. I used to read nothing but sf/f novels—they were my introduction into fiction, back in the late ’60s/early ’70s—but over time, for reasons (painful or practical), I drifted away from the genre, and have zero experience with many of the newer authors.
There was one particular suggestion, however, that caught my eye, It was a title² of which I’d not thought in decades, even though I adored the series when I was young. I was in my teens when the books were first published and I devoured them, thankful there was only a year between release dates.
In recent years, I’ve occasionally gone back to re-read some old favorites, but that proved a dicey proposition. At sixteen, seventeen, I had no comprehension of—much less appreciation for—writerly things like structure, characterization, world-building, foreshadowing, allusion, or pacing. If you gave me a brisk plot and a compelling reason to turn the page, I was all yours. Going back to those old, familiar titles led, more often than not, to disappointment. Clunky dialogue, predictable plots, heavy-handed setups, wooden characters, and banal prose were common, and that’s before considering the rampant sexism and gender dynamics of the period.
But, oh, I did so love these books, this series, this world. So I gave the first in the series a try.
What I found within shocked me.
It’s not that it is bad; far from it. Yes, the author has some annoying (to me) quirks, and is inordinately fond of multi-syllabic adverbs, but the characters are full and distinct, the world has a long and detailed history that affects the current action, the social structure is coherent, strong with rituals and patterns, and there is humor and passion and drama and risk aplenty.
What shocked me, though, were the echoes I recognized between these books and my own. Understand, between the time I read these books and the time I began writing fiction, two decades had passed. When I was writing my own books, I never thought back on these titles, not for inspiration, not at all.
And yet, as I re-read these old books, I see in them the seeds of the worlds I have built. From the psychic connections along ley lines in “Spencer’s Peace” and my Ploughman Chronicles, to the bonding between riders and walkers in The Fallen Cloud Saga, to the convolutions of time travel in Unraveling Time, here in these books lie the kernels from which my own books grew. These books, this series, they are my source, my wellspring.
All writers, I believe, are influenced by the writings of others. We’re all, as Stephen King once said, like “milk in the fridge,” picking up flavors from whatever we’re near, accreting reverberations from the artistry of those we admire. But to find so many thematic origins in one place, well, it’s like finding a loved one, long-lost, long-forgotten.
I’m exceedingly glad I took a chance on these old friends, and I will definitely read the six or seven titles that I read when I was a boy. I feel a need, after this difficult year, for an infusion of youthfulness and hope, and these books, for me, flow with those gifts.
k
¹ The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods
² Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey, first in the Dragonriders of Pern series
Book-learning, while useful, can only get you so far on the path toward competence. This is especially true in the arts. To learn a thing, often you simply have to do a thing.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 