Three-time Hugo Award finalist Jeffro Johnson of the Castalia House blog announces the release of his highly anticipated opus, Appendix N: A Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons.
Appendix N takes its name from the suggested reading list included in the original Dungeon Master’s Guide by D&D creator Gary Gygax. Jeffro set himself the herculean task of reading and reviewing every book on the list. Most of the material cited by Gygax as a foundational influence on D&D has long been relegated to the dustbin of sci-fi history by literary snobs in New York who warn against reading any SFF published before 1980. After all, those works are racist, sexist drivel written by old white men, so we’re not missing anything anyway.
What Jeffro found when he defied the gatekeepers and delved deep into science fiction’s “problematic” past was a lost canon of shared lore that every SFF fan would have been familiar with as recently as the 1970s. This genre-defining body of works now lies largely forgotten to the grave detriment of the field. With Appendix N, Jeffro lays the groundwork for a renaissance that affords science fiction the chance to recover its hidden roots.
Did you know that the line between science fiction and fantasy was once so blurry as to be almost nonexistent? That it was the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, more than Gene Roddenberry’s much later work, that inspired NASA scientists to put men on the moon? That a sci-fi generation gap divides the genre conceptions of new and old school SF fans?
Jeffro’s exhaustive research uncovered these, and many more, astounding revelations. Now you can benefit from his tireless work and learn the secret history that the self-appointed guardians of science fiction don’t want you to know.
With an introduction by science fiction grand master John C. Wright, Appendix N is required reading for fans of Dungeons & Dragons and science fiction in general. Neither gaming nor SFF can be fully understood without it.
And don’t forget Nethereal, the genre-bending novel that generated its share of Hugo buzz and that Jeffro analyzed in light of Appendix N.
