I've gone on
and on this past year about "discovering my roots". Started last year,
around this time, after a delirious evening hanging out Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and Stuart David Schiff. Having
only read mostly Stephen King, Dean Koontz and Peter Straub, I was
astounding - staggered, actually - at the genre history confronting me
that night, writers and stories and magazines I'd never heard about.
I
grew up in a small country town. Attended a small public high
school. Our school library only had so much, and the book stores in
the city and at the mall, I didn't get to much. I read A LOT as a kid,
but it was very generalized, my interests spread all over the
place...because nothing caught my interest, really. Wasn't until my
college years I stumbled into science fiction (mostly new stuff, with
the exception of Jack L. Chalker), and my late college years, when I
finally tuned into Steve and Dean and Peter.
And
it's taken until NOW (well, last year, at least), for me to really dive
into genre history, specifically horror. And there's such a rich
tradition there, one I often feel like I've missed out on, and I wonder
if we'll ever see anything like that again.
Anyway, came across this wonderful essay about Karl Edward Wagner.
It's stuff like this I've been feeding myself on, along with fiction
and writing, of course, because I've kinda gotten obsessed with reading
the work of those who have come before me, lately...
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