Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning

I.

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

II.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

III.

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

IV.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

V.

As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (``since all is o'er,'' he saith,
``And the blow falIen no grieving can amend;'')

VI.

While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

VII.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among ``The Band''---to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps---that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now---should I be fit?

VIII.

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.

X.

So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers---as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.

XI.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. ``See
``Or shut your eyes,'' said nature peevishly,
``It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
``'Tis the Last judgment's fire must cure this place,
``Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.''

XII.

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness?'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

XIII.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

XIV.

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

XV.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards---the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

XVI.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

XVII.

Giles then, the soul of honour---there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good---but the scene shifts---faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

XVIII.

Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

XIX.

A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof---to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

XX.

So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of route despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

XXI.

Which, while I forded,---good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
---It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

XXII.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage---

XXIII.

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV.

And more than that---a furlong on---why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel---that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood---
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

XXVI.

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII.

And just as far as ever from the end!
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap---perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains---with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,---solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when---
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts---you're inside the den!

XXX.

Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

XXXI.

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII.

Not see? because of night perhaps?---why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,---
``Now stab and end the creature---to the heft!''

XXXIII.

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,---
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet, each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. ``Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.''

The Dark Tower Volume 2: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The Dark Tower Volume 2: The Drawing of the Three
By Stephen King
Copyright 1987

The book starts off where the first left. Roland is on the beach, pondering how and where he will meet the members of his ka-tet that will join him in his quest for the Dark Tower.

As he sleeps, he is attacked by carnivorous lobsters who bite deeply into his foot and bite off two of his fingers, making him a one-handed gunslinger. He begins walking down the beach with no clear destination. Infection sets in and he becomes more and more delirious. Just as he realizes that he’s dying, he comes a door standing in the middle of the beach. Seemingly, there is nothing on the other side but more beech. Written on the door is, “The Prisoner.”

Roland opens the door and enters the body of Eddie Dean, a heroin junkee who is aboard an commercial flight, smuggling cocaine into the United States. While inside of Eddie, Roland is able to wade through the extreme culture shock and language barrier to determine that Eddie is in deep trouble because he will not be able to complete the ritual of “Clearing Customs.” Roland takes control of the jittery Eddie and moves quickly to hide the cocaine where Customs will never find it. After intense questioning, Customs officials are forced to let him go for lack of evidence. Eddie and Roland, inhabiting the same body, head for Eddie’s home in New York.

Roland and Eddie have two crises to deal with. First, Roland is dying and needs medication available in Eddie’s world. Eddie procures some aspirin to help soothe the fever, but the infection rages unabated and Roland needs antibiotics.

There is also the matter of the rightful owner of the cocaine who has learned of Eddie’s interrogation at the hands of Customs officials and suspects Eddie is trying to set him up.

In the end of the first chapter, Roland and Eddie escape with their lives back to Roland’s world where Eddie has come to except, he must dwell for awhile.

Roland’s fever and infection abate some and Eddie joins him as they stroll down the beech. Roland, now a one handed gunslinger, reluctantly gives Eddie his other gun. He plans to train Eddie as a gunslinger.

They come to a second door in the middle of the beech. On it is written, “Lady of the Shadows.” Eddie wants to get back to New York and to a heroin fix. But her learns that the New York beyond this door is the New York of the early 1960s. He stays behind, angry and holding a knife to Roland’s prostrate body.

Roland jumps into the body of Odetta Holmes who is also Detta Walker. Odetta is a wealthy black woman active in the civil rights movement. He is bound to a wheelchair because, years before, an unknown assailant pushed her off a subway platform into the path of a train. Her legs were amputated. She is refined, educated, and graceful.
Detta Walker is the opposite. She speaks in a comical caricature of African-American patois. She curses and she steals. She’s vindictive and mean. She is suspicious of everyone and hates white people more than anything.

Both women inhabit the same body. Neither is aware of the other, although both are coming to suspect something is amiss in their lives. Odetta’s/Detta’s mind changed when, as a young girl, she was randomly struck on the head by a brick that just happened to fall form an abandoned building as she and her parents walked by.

Roland enters Odetta/Detta just as Detta is about to steal some cheap costume jewelry at Macy’s. Detta’s incredibly shocked and angry to find Roland – a white man – inhabits her body. Roland wrestles her for control and takes the wheelchair through the store to the door where they are catapulted back into Roland’s world.

Roland is in bad shape in his world. Using penicillin Roland stole in Odetta’s/Detta’s world, Eddie nurses him back to health as they travel along the beech, Eddie carrying Roland on a litter.

When they arrive in Roland’s world, Odetta moves to the fore with no idea how she has arrived in Roland’s world. Eddie tries explaining it to her, but she won’t hear reason. As they begin to travel, Odetta disappears and Eddie, dragging Roland’s litter, must push the contrary Detta down the beech with Detta sabotaging him constantly.

Eddie is finally forced to leave Roland, recovering and still weak, to scout ahead and find the third door. Eddie must take Detta with him to keep her from harming the gunslinger.

After a day of travel, the beech comes to an end and the travelers can see forest ahead of them. At the very edge of the forest, they find the third and final door, labeled, “The Pusher.” Eddie leaves the calm and civil Odetta behind, taking her wheelchair to transport Roland back to the door. Eddie gathers Roland and they head for the door. When they get there, Odetta is gone.

Eddie searches frantically for Odetta. Roland makes his jump into another world, arriving in New York of 1977. He is in the body of Jack Mort, an accountant who is about to push a 10 year old boy into traffic to kill him. That boy is none other than Jake Chambers whom Roland allowed to die as he pursued the Man in Black. Roland acts quickly to stop Mort from killing Jake. Jake of 1977 goes about his business with no idea he was supposed to die on that New York street corner.

Roland searches Mort’s mind and finds that it is he who pushed the brick from the abandoned building that struck young Odetta Holmes, fracturing her skull and her mind. He also learns that, coincidently, 20 years later, it is he who pushes her off the subway platform.

Roland acts to end Jack Mort’s life and return to his world. The death of Jack Mort allows Odetta/Detta who is about to kill Eddie, to become one whole person who takes a new name of Susannah.

The book ends as they prepare to resume their journey with their ka-tet half complete.

This second book of the series really expanded upon the budding plot and character in the first book. We don’t get any more of Roland’s backstory, but we come to know Roland better through his thoughts and deeds. Roland is not especially gifted with insight, nor his he particularly introspective. He is decisive and thinks well on his feet.

The book delivers two new interesting and well developed characters. Eddie is a flawed hero and despite his best efforts, those flaws often show. But Roland senses something noble in his character. Eddie frequently gives voice to his worst thoughts, but acts with best intentions. Eddie’s backstory demonstrates how he set himself on a path of self destruction because of the love of his brother.

Susannah’s development is yet to come. She is Detta through most of the book, but we get a large dose of Odetta’s backstory and how she co-existed with the demon-like Detta in her head.

The Gunslinger was written early in King’s career when he had not yet developed his full potential as a writer. When The Drawing of the Three was written, King was on top of his game and this book, standing alone, ranks as one of his best works.

King is parsing his story carefully. The first book served to define the quest. The second book was dedicated to introducing and developing new characters to accompany Roland on his quest. But his ka-tet is not complete. It is still short by two, and those two will join Roland, Eddie, and Susannah in book three of the series, The Wastelands which is the first step on the journey toward the Dark Tower.

The Dragonlance Chronicles, Vol. 1 Dragons of Autumn Twilight By Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

The Dragonlance Chronicles, Vol. 1
Dragons of Autumn Twilight
By Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman
Copyright 1984
TSR

Dragons of Autumn Twilight is the first in the Dragonlance Chronicles which also includes Dragons of Winter's Night and Dragons of Spring's Dawning

These three books, published by the same publishers that published Dungeons and Dragons, spurred a publishing boon for TSR. 190 Dragonlance books would be authored by more than a dozen writers.

The epic quest for the Dragonlance begins with the meeting of five friends at the Inn of the Last Home in the village of Solace in the world of Krynn. Each has been on a five year quest to find evidence that the true gods, forsaken by the people who found them too demanding, had returned to the world hundreds of years after the cataclysm.

The novel is populated with thin, but entertaining characters. Tanis is a half-elf who can find comfort with neither humans nor elves. Twin brothers Caramon and Raistlin are as different as two people could be. Caramon is a muscle bound fighter. Raistlin is a frail but powerful magician. Flint Fireforge is a surly dwarf fighter who is the unlikely best friend to Tanis. Then there is Tasslehoff Burrfoot, a Kender which resemble hobbits to a degree. Small in stature and merry in nature, they are natural born thieves who steal without malice.

They return to find their former home uneasy. Rumors of invasion and war are rampant. Tales of strange lizardmen roaming the countryside are told by fireside. They are forced to flee when soldiers come looking for these “stangers.” They flee with a human couple, a man and a woman who carry with them a strange staff with the mystical powers of the old gods.

They are pursued by Draconians, dragonlike men who are the footsoldiers for the invading army. They learn that they must travel to an ancient city, destroyed in the Cataclysm, to return the staff to where the plainsman Riverwind found it while on a quest to win the hand of his beloved.Goldmoon.

They find out that the staff they carry is an instrument of the ancient old gods and that they, both good and evil, have returned to Krynn to battle for it. They also find that dragons, thought to be creatures of myth and children’s stories, have returned.

The first installment of the tale ends with the defeat of the Draconian Highlord – an evil priest who commands dragons and draconians – and his red dragon mount. The true gods have returned to Krynn and the companions are to be footsoldiers in a war between the good gods and the evil gods.

Being written by two Dungeons and Dragons game developers for the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons, the books read like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure. Much of the dialogue is the stilted stuff Dungeons and Dragons players speak to each other when playing. The character classes – fighter, thief, cleric, magic user – are all clearly delineated just as they are in the game.

This is because the books sprang from a game setting and set of modules (adventure games) developed in 1982 by Hickman and Weiss. Hickman was one of TSR’s most prolific developers of games and wrote some of the best known titles in Dungeons and Dragons history including Ravenloft which was ranked second of all time behind Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

As fantasy literature goes, this story has the intellectual nutritional value of a gummy bear. The tale is simple and simply told. There are simple backstories for the characters. Their motivations are singular.

However, the story is epic in its scope if not in its telling. While one would not want to make gummy bears the staple of one’s diet, sometimes its fun to eat a handful of them. Just as, sometimes, its fun to visit a simple tale and just revel in the joy of the story. Dragonlance is fun and I’ve enjoyed this trilogy several times since I bought it upon its publication in 1984. Occasionally, light reading is good reading.

The Dark Tower: Book 1 The Gunslinger By Stephen King

The Dark Tower: Book 1
The Gunslinger
By Stephen King
Copyright 1987 (trade paperback)

The Man in Black fled across the desert and the Gunslinger followed.

The first volume of King’s magnum opus introduces us to Roland of Gilead, last of the Gunslingers and his pursuit of the enigmatic Dark Tower.

Roland Deschain travels across the desert, pursuing the Man in Black. We know scarcely anything about Roland’s quarry or why he pursues him. The desert west of the town of Tull is barely inhabited. As he runs low on water and his mule is at the brink of death, Roland finds a homestead inhabited by a man named Brown and his pet bird Zoltan.

Brown encourages Roland to tell him of his unfortunate experience in Tull and the trap the Man in Black left for him. Roland partakes of the man’s food and water, shares his tobacco and recounts the events in Tull that left almost 60 of its residents dead by his hand.

It is Roland’s time in Tull that we can use to link the world of Roland with our own. The Beatles “Hey Jude” plays on a jukebox. The town preacher is a devout Christian. The residents of Tull and other places say the world is “moving on” meaning it is moving toward its end. It’s always been my belief that this is the world, several hundred, perhaps thousands of years removed from The Stand.

Further along in the desert, as he is nearly dead of dehydration, Roland happens across a way station inhabited by a young boy named Jake Chambers. Jake is just 10 years old and last remembers meeting a bad end under the wheels of a car as he walked to school. He was pushed into traffic. This is the first link to our time. Jake Chambers, 10 years old, is of 1977 New York.

He relates to Jake the story of his coming of age. He talks of his best friend, Cuthbert Allgood with whom he underwent his Gunslinger training at the hands of the merciless Cort, trainer of gunslingers in Roland’s native land of Gilead. Cuthbert and Roland, apprentice Gunslingers, expose a traitor in the midst of the school. Roland, who had always appreciated the man’s mercy to counter Cort’s abuse, watched him hang.

Roland quickly develops a strong affection for the boy. He learns from a demon trapped in the basement of the building that he must ultimately betray the boy to his death if he is to continue his pursuit of the Man in Black and the answers to Roland’s questions about his destiny. Roland’s heart is rent.

Roland and Jake manage to cross the desert into a more temperate climate with lush grass and trees. While camped there, Jake is seduced by an oracle whose lust is so great that she would kill the boy through sexual intercourse. Roland intercedes, wielding the jawbone of a demon he took from the demon in the basement He holds her at bay and, in a mescaline induced stupor, has sex with her in exchange for information about his quest. He learns that he will soon be joined by two companions.

Jake and Roland pass through a mountain on a hand cart. As they travel, Roland relates to Jake the childhood trauma that led him to demand the test of a Gunslinger at the age of 14. Roland learned that his mother was having an affair with the court magician, Marten. In his anger and desire to get revenge upon Marten for putting his family asunder. He approaches Cort and demands to be allowed to take the test.

Cort is unwilling to oblige. Roland is a promising student, but not prepared for the test, he argues. Roland won’t relent. Cort agrees to meet him in battle. Roland will either defeat his teacher and become a Gunslinger or be sent west to live alone in shame – which is Marten’s design.

Roland meets Cort in combat, using his pet hawk as his weapon. He defeats Cort and earns his guns and the title of Gunslinger.

While traveling and talking, they encounter Slow Mutants, humanoid monsters who dwell in dark passages. As Roland battles them with his guns, Jake falls into a cavern and holds on for his life. As Roland goes to rescue him, the Man in Black appears and taunts him to let the boy go and continue the chase. Reluctantly, Roland lets him fall and follows the Man in Black.

On the other side of the mountain, Roland catches up to his quarry. He finds the Man in Black, Walter by name, to have been an magician in Marten’s employ in his home. Walter performs a Tarot Card reading for Roland. Roland is given vague clues to the three other beings who will form his ka-tet in pursuit of the Dark Tower.

Roland goes to sleep and wakes up seemingly years later. Bones are all that remain of Walter. Roland proceeds to a nearby beach and ponders what he has learned and what he must do next in his quest. Soon, he will set out on his search for The Sailor, The Prisoner, and The Lady of the Shadows.

The Gunslinger stands apart from the rest of King’s work. Most of it was written before King was an accomplished writer. He has not yet developed his signature narrative style. He has not mastered character development as he would come to do. The story was originally introduced to the public as a serialized account, published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1978. While more seamless than Ray Bradbury’s series of linked stories like The Martian Chronicles or Dandelion Wine, each chapter works as a stand alone story.

Because it was written so early in King’s development as a writer, it is the weakest of the books. The characters are thinner than we are used to from King. The backstories that King sometimes takes dozens of pages to weave are absent. Nonetheless, it is compelling fantasy writing and kicks of a tale as epic as any ever produced in the genre.

Book to Movie: The Martian Chronicles (1980)

The Martian Chronicles
Television mini-series
Original air date: January 27, 1980
Screenplay by Richard Matheson
Directed by Michael Anderson

In 1979, The Martian Chronicles was made into a three part miniseries. Legendary screenwriter and novelist Richard Matheson was brought in to adapt the Ray Bradbury stories to television and weave them into a continuous story.

The book is a series of vignettes about the rise and fall of man’s civilization on Mars. Matheson strived for greater continuity by taking Captain Wilder of the successful fourth expedition and promote him to Colonel and have him serve as the head of the manned mission to Mars. Wilder is played aptly by Rock Hudson.

The story aired in three installments. The first installment was called “Expedition.” The first mission meets with doom at the hands of Ylla’s husband, just as it does in the book. The second mission – the one where the astronauts find themselves in a Martian asylum for claiming they were from outer space – is not in Matheson’s script.

The second mission on television is the legendary Mars is Heaven. Unfortunately, it lost something being brought to the screen. What is so prevalent in the radio adaptations is the exuberance with which each member of the crew meets their dead relatives. There is immediate acceptance of what the astronauts are seeing as reality. They never question what it is. That excitement is missing on television. What we see is the captain falling into a sedate home life before he puzzles everything out with his older brother who tells him he’s right before he kills him.

It’s the third expedition that is the most powerful on screen. To weave the stories together, Matheson constructs interludes that show some of the internal politics and personal lives of the characters involved with the missions. Major Spender, who goes on to nearly wreck the third expedition is denied a seat on the first and second expeditions. He starts to express reservations about the morality of exploring Mars and submits that expeditions will inevitably lead to colonization which will ultimately lead to a cultural clash with the indigenous population.

Here, Matheson has improved upon Bradbury’s work to make the tale of the third expedition work on the screen. We already know Spender’s mindset going into the mission. It manifests itself quickly once the expedition, led by Colonel Wilder himself reaches Mars. The rest of the story unfolds just as it did in the book.

Great casting also help make for a climactic ending for the first installment. Rock Hudson turns in a strong performance as the low key but effective leader. Spender is played by character actor Bernie Casey. The quarky Sam Parkhill is played by Darren McGavin. McGavin is best known in the mainstream as the father in A Christmas Story. Fans of fantasy and science fiction know him best as the fearless reporter Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

Of the three episodes, the first had the strongest feel of being just a series of vignettes rather than a woven tale. The interludes written in were much like the brief interludes Bradbury wrote. They lent nothing to the story except to transition it and reconcile it with the next chapter.

The second installment opens with the story, The Martian, which actually appears much later in the book. It opens with the father seeing his dead son standing in the rain and inviting him in where he and his wife accept this entity for the son they lost. In the television story, the son was one of the astronauts killed by Spender during the third expedition.

The scene breaks to Father Peregrine (Fritz Weaver) and Father Stone (Roddy McDowell) entering the desert to search for the blue orbs that are rumored to inhabit the nearby canyon. This story plays out just as it did in the book with Weaver and McDowell both performing strongly.

We then go back to the Lustig (LaFarge in the book) family that’s taking their fateful journey into town. There, the scene where the Martian is recognized by the townspeople as the person they most want to see, is perhaps a bit overproduced with the rapid flashing transformation of the Martian from one person to the next before being sapped of energy and collapsing into a heap.

The second installment finds Sam Parkhill, a survivor from the fourth expedition, who has constructed the first diner on Mars. This scene plays out just as it did in the book as well. McGavin is comical in the rhinestone cowboy getup and the wig of long hair. The scene of the sand ship chase across the sea of sand was well made by 1979 standards.

The show closes as Parkhill and his wife watch the Earth erupt in flames and his wife predicting “an off season,” at their diner.

The second installment worked better as a continuous story than the first. Colonel Wilder interacts with all of the participants. It’s he who figures out the Martian is moving about their town. It is he who goes into the desert to look for the missing priests. It is he who ventures out into the frontier to tell Parkhill and his wife that war is coming to Earth and they have been summoned home.

This is a striking difference between the book and Matheson’s interpretation. In the book, it was out of fear for loved ones that people fled Mars, headed to Earth. I questioned this reasoning in my review. Perhaps Matheson surmised the same thing when, in his interpretation, the people of Mars were summoned home by the government.

Installment three opens with the sad tale of Benjamin Driscoll (Walter Gripp in the book) and Genevieve Seltzer who find each other by chance on an otherwise uninhabited Mars. There is a striking distance between Bradbury’s characters and Matheson’s characters. In the book, Seltzer is a woman with an unattractive figure, doughy face, poor manners and questionable hygiene. In the movie, she is played by the shapely Bernadette Peters. As played by Peters, Genevieve is a woman of exceptional vanity and vapidity. She sees Wilder as nothing more than a tool or handyman. Finding her an unwilling mate and totally disgusted by her, he flees in his gyrocopter for solitude. This was to serve as a comical interlude, but the comedy was flat.

Meanwhile, Dr. Peter Hathaway, another survivor of the third expedition, and his wife and daughter have been living on the Martian frontier. He does his research while his family tends to his needs. Colonel Wilder and Father Stone return from Earth and find him. Wilder realizes that while his old subordinate has aged in the seven years since they parted, his wife and child have not.

The ending of this segment was much different than the book and Matheson’s twist I thought worked masterfully on television. It was the saccharine sweet performance of the late Nyree Dawn Porter that made it creepy.

Finally, Wilder has decided that, to prevent the mistakes of the past from being repeated, he and his family must become Martians. The family takes the “camping trip” just as they did in the book and that is how the mini-series ends.

According to IMDB, Bradbury found the movie incredibly boring. If sci-fi fans were looking for shoot-em-up action, they weren’t going to find it here. The television miniseries was nearly as cerebral as the book, with Matheson occasionally explaining things readers were able to figure out on their own.

The sets were top notch and it’s easy to see that the producers were willing to invest in sets, props, and special effects. The Martian cities resemble the imagery constructed by H.P Lovecraft in tales such as Call of Cthulu and many of his Dunsanian works with its off kilter geography of triangles and spheres rather than right angles. The models and other props used in the special effects were among the best of their day.

The Martian Chronicles stands at the pantheon of science fiction literature. As a television mini-series, its merely above average. Bradbury’s writing is nearly pure emotion. He’s not an action oriented writer. His work needs to be retooled when brought to the screen to keep the audience engaged. Richard Matheson deserves a great deal of credit for making this cerebral series of vignettes work on television.

Mars is Heaven Dimension X radio broadcast

Mars is Heaven
Dimension X radio broadcast
Original Air Date: January 7, 1951
Story by Ray Bradbury
Adapted for radio by Ernest Kinoy

This adaptation was written by Ernest Kinoy and aired on the Dimension X radio program on Friday, January 7, 1951.

I really enjoy old time radio, having become hooked listening the CBS Radio Mystery Theater as a teenager. The Internet introduced me to a much larger world of radio broadcasts from the 1930 through the 1970s.

Radio shows like Dimension X and X Minus 1 have allowed me to enjoy the works of writers, such as Murray Leister, whose books are now out of print.

Dimension X was probably the best of a number of science fiction shows. The show adapted the works of Golden Age giants such as Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Robert Bloch, and Murray Leinster. However, it was radio writer, Ernest Kinoy that adapted Bradbury and he always did a magnificent job.

The distinguishing characteristic between Bradbury’s story and Kinoy’s radio play is the nature of the crew. In the story, they are scientists and soldiers. In Kinoy’s story, they are Navy men. They are simple men, much like one would find on a naval ship of the 1950s. The script even notes that the rocket is a naval vessel. Perhaps this was done to contemporize the story for a radio audience of the 1950s who were familiar with classic naval portrayals through film, newsreels, and real life experience in World War II.

Other than that, Kinoy is true to the story. The 1951 recording, transcribed onto vinyl and then digitized for the Internet does hurt the voice actor’s ability to emote. Radio drama requires strong verbal emotion from the actors since there is no visual medium through which to emote. When the actors scream, the distortion makes the sound comical.

This, however, is a minor point. Bradbury’s short tale of the Third Expedition to Mars is brought to life for the first time on Dimension X. The voice talent did a fantastic job with an excellent Kinoy script.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Copyright 1950

Preface by Kim Stanley Robbins
Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robbins provides a modern examination of the phenomena of life on Mars and how it revolutionized science fiction writing. The origins of the belief of life on Mars are found in a misinterpretation of Giovanni Schiaparelli’s use of the term canali in describing his telescopic observations of Mars. Astronomer Percival Lowell took the word’s Latin meaning – channels – to mean literally the discovery of canals on Mars.

This pseudo revelation of construction by sentient beings on Mars touched off a phenomena of popular culture in science fiction writing. H.G. Wells authored a terrifying tale of invasion of the earth by creatures from Mars called War of the Worlds. Edgar Rice Burroughs was soon writing his own account of a heroic warrior fighting the men of Mars in his John Carter of Mars series of books.

The possibility of life on Mars was accepted by fact by the scientific community with the primitive astronomical resources of that era. That scientific mantle was carried forward to writers of fiction who popularized the notion in literature. The most prolific of those authors was Ray Bradbury.

1997 introduction by Ray Bradbury
The inspiration for The Martian Chronicles comes from a classic American novel of small town life in the American Midwest. It was when Bradbury read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio that he was inspired to transfer Anderson’s evenings on the front porch in the mythical Ohio town to Mars that inspired Bradbury to write a series of short stories telling the story of the rise and fall of human civilization on Mars.

I am embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read Winesburg, Ohio. I do know that it is loosely based on the northern Ohio town of Clyde which is approximately an hour from where I live. I know enough about the stories it contains to know that it must have also influenced Bradbury’s writing of a similar book he wrote about his own hometown of Waukegan, Illinois entitled Dandelion Wine.

January 2030: Rocket Summer
The stage for the conquest of Mars is set as a rocket lifts off from a small Ohio town. The winter air is instantly heated by the rocket’s vapors and for just a few seconds, the small Ohio town warms to summer like temperatures as the rocket escapes the atmosphere. The first manned mission to Mars is one its way.

This story was a mere 500 words or so. Spare, lyrical prose is Bradbury’s trademark on display here. This was originally published in Planet Stories in Spring 1947.

February 2030: Ylla
A Martian woman is haunted by dreams of aliens from the third planet landing in a neighboring town. Her husband is distraught and jealous over these dreams and tries to dismiss them as aberrations. However, as Ylla’s dreams become more vivid and she more consumed by them, her husband resolves to be on hand to greet the visitors from the third plant.

We are left to observe the fate of the first Mars expedition from afar. However, there is no doubt as to their fate. Was originally published in MacLean’s January 1, 1950 edition.

August 2030: The Summer Night
A Martian lounge singer starts crooning a tune in Earth English, startling bar patrons and her band with her strange speech. Martian children start reciting an old earth nursery rhyme as they play their Martian games. The second expedition approaches. . .

A short interlude between the first and second Martian expedition. Bradbury builds the tension as the mental effects of the approaching earth men stretch beyond the tragic Ylla to the masses of Martian Society.

August 2030: The Earth Men
The second Mars expedition arrives on Mars on a hot summer day. They find a remote country home. Despite their pleas that they are arrivals from the third planet on Mars to find life and establish relations with it, the matron of the house is too preoccupied with housework to take the time to help them. But it doesn’t take long for them to attract the attention of the natives. They do to the earth men what we would do to a person who claimed to be an alien from outer space. . .

Bradbury shows us he can write mild irony. I’d forgotten this story and the twist came as a pleasant surprise.

March 2031: The Taxpayer
An irate Ohioan stands along the fence of the rocket base and declares, as a taxpayer, he’s got the right to be aboard that rocket.

A brief interlude between the second and third expeditions.

April 2031: The Third Expedition
The third expedition land on the village green of a quaint, Midwestern town. Its name is Green Bluff, IL and it is inhabited by the dead friends and relatives of the 16 man crew. They are warmly received. . .at first.

This is the best known (and the best) of the stories from The Martian Chronicles. It was originally published in 1948 as a short story entitled Mars is Heaven. In 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted to name it one of the best science fiction stories of all time.

It is also one of the most adapted works by Ray Bradbury. It was adapted for radio for radio shows such as Escape, Dimension X, and X Minus 1 in the 1950s. Richard Matheson adapted it (and the entire book) for television in a television miniseries in 1980 and Bradbury himself adapted it for his Ray Bradbury Theater that ran on HBO in the 1980s as well.

This story represents one of the world’s most brilliant writers at his very best.

June 2032: -- and the Moon Be Still as Bright
The fourth Mars expedition arrives safely and most of the crew is eager to celebrate. The captain remains pensive and one crew member, Spender, is downright lugubrious and refuses to participate in the celebrating and merry making that the crew feels necessary after a successful mission. Soon, Spender disappears and comes back with information about the Martians, and a sample of their technology.

This story was originally published in the magazine, Thrilling Wonder Stories in June 1948. Some versions of the book split Spender’s story into two parts, adding it to “The Settlers.” In my recently published version, Spender’s story is encompassed in this story and The Settlers is an interlude between the fourth, semi-disaster Mars mission and the arrival of settlers.

This is another of Bradbury’s stories that made its way into other media. It was transcribed in radio shows, Dimension X and X Minus 1, although told in a different manner to give it more “action” necessary to make it work in an electronic medium. It is also a pivotal part of the Martian Chronicles television miniseries, adapted by Richard Matheson for television. It is perhaps the highlight of the entire six hour broadcast.

August 2032: The Settlers
Troubles on Earth and the ability to travel to the fourth planet lead to a large immigration from Mother Earth to the new frontier of Mars.

December 2032: The Green Morning
A young man dedicates his life to planting trees on Mars. A Martian version of the American folklore hero, Johnny Appleseed. So begins the ecological transformation of Mars into something more closely resembling Earth.

February 2033: The Locusts
Humanity arrives on the doorstep of the new Martian colony. Early colonies are established and man’s conquest of its newest colony begins in earnest.

This is a short vignette to illustrate the rapidity of and enthusiasm for man’s colonization of Mars.

August 2033: Night Meeting
A man on his way to a party passes through the ruins of an ancient Martian town. On the road, he encounters a Martian who insists that the ruins are actually a bustling city where he lives. The man insists the human colony on the horizon is the establishment of man upon a planet of extinct natives. Neither is able to see the other’s reality, nor are they able to make physical contact. Perhaps there is a duality of time and place on Mars.

This story makes me wonder if Ray Bradbury wasn’t experimenting with LSD at the time of its writing. Descriptions of smelling and tasting time seem born of hallucinogens. Great story demonstrating that all civilizations rise and fall capriciously.

This is the only full length story in the Martian Chronicles book that was not published elsewhere first.

October 2033: The Shore
Much as those seeking a new lease on life, whether it be fortune seeking or simple employment, waves upon waves of settlers move to Mars, landing in rockets upon its “shores” much as the European immigrants landed on the shores of America seeking the promise of a new life in the 19th and 20th centuries.

First came the colonists who arrived in The Locusts. Now arrive the tradesman, the entrepreneur, and the laborer to add a new dimension to human society on Mars. The new arrivals are all Americans fleeing political turmoil on earth. No Europeans, no Asians, or any other race express interest in establishing themselves on Mars.

November 2033: The Fire Balloons
With civilization shaped by man comes organized religion and Christian Episcopal priests arrive on Mars with hopes of finding the natives and bringing them to Christianity. Father Peregrine and Father Stone set off for the Martian deserts to find the natives, forsaking their mission to provide religious guidance to the multitudes of humans in the new colonies. There, they find an ancient race having already achieved spiritual harmony and perfection.

We get a glimpse of Martian culture as it was eons before its demise. This race gave up its passions, prejudices, and strong emotions to find peace within themselves and evolved from physical beings motivated by physical sensations into beings of pure energy and intellect.

These concept of superior beings composed purely of energy and intellect is pervasive in science fiction. In Star Trek, Space 1999, and in several movies, this alien so far above us on the evolutionary scale is a frequent ally, enemy, or provocateur. This is an excellent stand alone story with rich characters.

February 2034: Interim
With new American colonists and settlers comes American architecture and culture. This short story details how a Martian colony -- built by Ohioans – very closely resembles a small Midwestern town.

Another of those short vignettes to illustrate the rapidly progressing colonization of Mars.

April 2034: The Musicians
A group of kids secretly travels to a ruined Martian city to see the remains of the natives after crews have gone through and burned their bodies in their abodes. They tickle the scorched ribs like a xylophone.

This story is a Martian Chronicles original.

May 2034: The Wilderness
Two women of Independence, MO prepare to leave their home town, their homes state, their home country for a new planet. They take one last tour of their old haunts, reminiscing and enjoying each other’s company. When they arrive home late that night, a message arrives from one woman’s boyfriend Mars, of which but one word is intelligible – love. The next day, they join hundreds of other women in the migration to Mars to join the men who pioneered the Red Planet.

One could easily reach the conclusion that The Martian Chronicles is an allegory for European settlement of America. There are parallels. The various missions that meet with disaster. The native population wiped out by chicken pox much as small pox took so many Native Americans. Bradbury taps that allegory here as the women, as they slip into sleep, imagine this is how women must have felt the night before boarding the Conestoga wagons and heading west.

This story first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1952

2035-2036: The Naming of Names
From small communities of settlers the towns evolve into communities of men, women, and families. Entrepreneurship thrives. The towns bearing names such as Detroit II dot the Martian landscape.

This brief narrative transitions the story from one of settlers conquering a frontier to the development of a society on Mars.

April 2036: Usher II
With the evolution of society comes government and with government comes those who want to govern. Censors arrive on Mars to prevent the spread of decadent material such as fiction. A wealthy Mars settler holds a party with a Poe theme in his very own replica of the House of Usher. When the censors, known as the Moral Climate Monitors arrive to shut down the party, they get their own education in the works of Poe. . .

We see the roots of Fahrenheit 451 in this early Bradbury work. The censors purged the world of Earth of all fiction and works of imagination. They were determined to get to Mars before it could become a refuge for renegade bibliophiles.

This story was originally published as Carnival of Madness in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1950

August 2036: The Old Ones
Mars was heaven, now it’s Florida! The elderly make their way to Mars to retire in this brief interlude.

September 2036: The Martian
An elderly couple come to Mars to retire and try to put the death of their only son behind them. But one cool Mars evening, their son returns to them, just as he was when he died years prior. They welcome him and try to pretend that he is their son and his death never occurred. But a tragic trip to town reveals what the father had always known to be true: the being was not his son. It was all things to all people and his involuntary doppelgangery starts a near riot as each person in the colony sees the person they want to see most.

This is a signature Ray Bradbury story. After the Golden Age passed and the techies took over science fiction, the writing that evoked emotion in the reader got lost in the need to explain exotic technologies. This story is on of Bradbury’s finest.

It first appeared in Super Science Stories, November 1949

November 2036: The Luggage Store
Father Peregrine stops by the luggage store to discuss the rumors of war eminent on earth. The purveyor of travel accoutrements realizes that business is about to take a turn for the better as Mars settlers begin the mass exodus of Mars to return to Earth to be with loved ones left behind.

This story is the turning point in the saga of Mars colonization. For almost five years, men of Earth looked to Mars as a sanctuary from the political and social strife rampant on Earth. Now, with war on Earth an almost certainty, it looks as if Mars may be abandoned nearly as quickly as it was colonized.

I wonder about Bradbury’s perspective here. It would seem to me that the people on Mars would be grateful for being so far removed and so detached from the unpleasantness about to unfold on Earth. Logic would dictate more and more people would flee – legally or illegally from Earth to the refuge of Mars, not the opposite.

November 2036: The Off Season
A retiree from Earth has constructed the first hot dog stand on Mars at the crossroads of two major highways. But a visit from a few of the world’s remaining Martians frightens him into murder. The Martians pursue him, not for revenge, but in an effort to inform him of important developments. After a chase through the ruins of Martian cities on sand boats, the man is caught. The Martians give him a land grant that entitles him to half the plant. That evening, as he and his wife watch the blue-green light of Earth turn a fiery red, they realize that the 100,000 settlers due into the new colony probably won’t be arriving. Instead of incredible riches from their entrepreneurial effort, they will instead see an off season in their trade.

Martians appear in several stories in the Martian Chronicles, always in a different guise. They appeared as lost love ones to the men of the second expedition. They appear as blue balls of light to Father Peregrine as he seeks to bring them to Christ. Here, they are blue robed beings wearing gold masks. This would appear as discontinuity by most established writing paradigms in science fiction. But if you look at the only advanced civilizations we know, none of them dress exactly alike. Bradbury is subtly demonstrating that different cultures and different races existed on Mars just as they do on Earth, each with its own way of dressing, communicating, and behaving.

This story first appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1948.

November 2036: The Watchers
All across Mars, people venture out into the night to watch as Earth dissolves in a ball of fire. Radio reports from Earth reach Mars, indicating that nuclear war is under way and the planet Earth is all but doomed. The people watch. At first their hearts ache, but they quickly pacify their fears with whispered false platitudes of reassurance.

December 2036: The Silent Towns
The towns of Mars are silent now. All but a few humans have returned to Earth and its war. Left behind is a miner, who did not hear the cries to return to Earth and was left behind. For days, he basks in material wealth and physical pleasures in solitude. The solitude is shattered when a phone rings. Missing the call, he sets about finding what he believes, and hopes, is a woman. Prayers are answered, but hopes unfulfilled.

This tale works well as a stand alone story. The man’s deductive reasoning in finding the right phone number strains the writer’s credibility, but somehow, Bradbury makes the reader accept it by creating strong anticipation.

This story was First published in Charm, March 1949.

April 2057: The Long Years
There’s one last rocket on Mars, captained by Captain Wilder, who led the fourth expedition to Mars. Wilder encounters Dr. Hathaway, his ship’s physician from the successful fourth expedition. Thirty years have passed since they landed on Mars, and Hathaway shows every one of those years on his face. Yet, time has not touched his family. His wife has not aged. His children have not grown. Wilder learns of the greatest technological achievement in Mars-human history.

This is definitely one of the stronger stories in the book. Bradbury has a knack for plumbing traditional emotion in the science fiction setting as Hathaway’s conflicted emotions about his creations and leaving his artificial family behind develop. This was perhaps the strongest story brought to the screen in the 1979 television adaptation written by Richard Matheson.

August 2057: There Will Come Soft Rains
Man is gone from Mars. All that’s left behind are the deserted towns and decaying technology that was man’s life on Mars. The reader observes an automated home going through its daily routine of cooking, cleaning, playing music, and maintaining a household that left years ago. Time grinds finely on Mars as it does everywhere else in the universe. As the years pass and the daily tasks go on, the machinery begins to malfunction.

I enjoyed this story but would not categorize it as one of the strongest in the book. It does lend itself well to radio drama. It was recorded for numerous radio shows through the 1950s and 60s, including X Minus 1 and Dimension X This story is radio drama at its best.

The title comes from the Sarah Teasdale poem of the same name. It was originally published in Colliers, May 6, 1950.

October 2057: The Million Year Picnic
A solitary rocket lands on Mars, discharging a family on a “fishing” excursion. They travel down the canal as their father explains the true nature of their trip to Mars. They find a town along the canal to call home. The father burns all of his “earthly” papers and declares the family to be Martians.

The entire story itself was told in abbreviated form on an episode of Escape! which at that time was hailing Bradbury as one of the young, great writers on the science fiction scene.

So it ends as it began on Mars. This story served as a masterful ending to a well told tale of the rise and fall of mankind on Mars. This story was another that worked well in the television miniseries, artfully written by Matheson.

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks
By Ethan Gilsdorf
Copyright 2009

This book was given to me as a birthday gift by a friend who games (plays roll-playing games) and knows that I have an interest in it as well. I admit that I played some Dungeons and Dragons in my lifetime and I’ll admit to enjoying it. This book provided a great deal of perspective on where gaming has gone since those days of the late 1970s and 1980s when we rolled dice, ate junk food, and adventured through dungeons and slaughtered monsters.

Gilsdorf’s introduction is an autobiographical account of coming across all of his Dungeon and Dragons books, materials, and dice in an old tote stored at his father’s house. He reminisces about how he played D & D all through high school to escape an unhappy home life with his brain-damaged mother.

Gilsdorf was 42 at the time and finding these relics of his adolescence motivated him to explore gaming today in all its forms. He is uneasy because, as an adult, he’s not sure he wants to return to adolescence. He seems to fear the siren song of leaving his adult concerns behind to engage in what he deems to be childish pursuits of gaming. But being a writer, he also sees the opportunity to engage in self reflection on his adolescent geekdom as well as to chronicle the evolution of gaming and geekdom from its birth in the 1970s to the modern Internet gaming.

He starts with a pilgrimage to England to meet with the Tolkien Society – a group of scholars and hard core fans dedicated to the study of the founding father of geekdom – J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the legendary Lord of the Rings trilogy. He also goes to the Tolkien grave to pay his respects to the British linguist who would create a global cultural phenomena that has endured for more than 50 years.

He also returns to Dungeons and Dragons, gaming with guys his age to see if it brings the same pleasures and joys it brought to him as a teenager. He goes to a local gaming store in Cambridge, Massachusetts for the launch of Dungeons and Dragons fourth edition – an updated and revised version of the original that had become more and more laden in statistics through its two prior evolutions.

He found that many gamers from the 1980s fell into the online experiences such as World of Warcraft, Runequest, and others, but decided the solitary experience of the computer monitor did not compare to the face to face interaction of playing with other people across the table.

As he engages in gaming to see if he can still do it, if he still enjoys it, and if it has fundamentally changed since he played 20 years prior, he reflects on the label that has dogged those who enjoy fantasy gaming in all its forms: Geek. He recalls the labels that were placed on kids in adolescent culture, jock, geek, etc. Gilsdorf finds many professional men and women of his own age, now successful in life, engaged in fantasy role playing. Each says they are comfortable in their skin, but acknowledge they still must fight the geek label even today when their professional pursuits and accomplishments should speak to their embrace of traditional pursuits and lives.

Gilsdorf quit gaming about he same time I did in 1986. By that time he had moved on to college, found new diversions such as girls, and put his geekdom behind him. Gilsdorf’s purpose in playing Dungeons and Dragons was to escape an unpleasant home life. That was behind him now.

He was much deeper into the game than I ever was. For me, gaming was a changeup in my teenage weekends when I usually attended parties or just cruised the town with my friends, consuming beer and looking for something to do. I never designed worlds or adventures. I never owned the rule books, always relying on a friend to have a set. I owned a set of dice that I often shared with friends who did not play enough to invest in their own. We played store-bought modules (adventures). Our adventures were usually two evening affairs rather than months long campaigns run by one game master. We switched off as game master. Whomever had purchased a new adventure called a group together (and it was rarely the same group from game to game) and we played it.

Gilsdorf, by his recollection was heavily into the game and invested many hours in not only playing every weekend for years, but time invested in creating worlds, adventures, adventures, creatures, and lore. I lacked that amount of interest in the game and frankly, the ambition to undertake an extensive project like creating a world.

As teens, a few of the hard core players in our group had always talked about making the journey to GenCon, the annual fantasy gaming convention held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, birthplace of Dungeons and Dragons and home to TSR, the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons. We wanted to play with the masters of the game, to see the new products rolled out, and perhaps commune, just briefly, with the creator of Dungeons and Dragons, E. Gary Gygax. Perhaps a more dedicated teenager would have saved the cash necessary to make the trip. A more avid gamer would have made the seven hour drive to Wisconsin to attend. None of us had the time or inclination to actually go. It was all just talk for us.

Gilsdorf makes that journey, as he had dreamed of doing as a child. His goal, to meet The Creator, to commune with and perhaps game with the man who started it all. Gygax faithfully attended these events and by all accounts, was accessible to all. He ran games for players who wanted to play. He showed them new ideas that they took back to their own games. For a Dungeons and Dragons player, playing with Gygax is like a fan of chess sitting across the table from Bobby Fisher. You know you are in the presence of a master.

Alas, Gilsdorf’s opportunity to kiss the ring (of Protection?) of the creator eluded him as Gygax died just three months prior to the convention. Like Gilsdorf’s mother, Gygax succumbed to an aneurysm.

At GenCon, Gilsdorf finds several other people our age who have come for a weekend of fantasy gaming. Most of them are, in the lexicon of the modern gamer, Grognards. In French, this means “old warrior.” In gaming parlance, it means a person who eschews the updated and modernized versions of games for the old school games of their youth. Graying ponytails abound at the resurrection of Chain Mail, the combat game that Gygax and David Arenson invented as a forerunner of Dungeons and Dragons. Male pattern baldness prevailed at the gaming tables where the 1970s Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (known to some as Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition). Gilsdorf was by no means the only middle aged warrior on the convention floor. It would seem that young people were few and far between.

Gilsdorf talks to a convention attendee who laments that kids today have eschewed all tabletop games in favor of digital interaction. He took it a step further and lamented that kids were no longer running around outside playing cops, knights, Star Trek characters (a favorite backyard game of my childhood). The imagination, developed by this creative role playing with the uninhibited creativity of childhood, seems absent in children of today. The action need no longer be imagined. It unfolds digitally before their eyes.

Gilsdorf moves beyond tabletop gaming in his exploration of freaks and geeks and delves into LARPS (Live Action Role Playing). There are various levels of LARPS and Gilsdorf explores them in order.

First, there are those who simply act out battles as opposing armies. Props are homemade. Costumes are consignment store rejects. Swords are firm foam. A battle might take an afternoon, then everybody goes home tired and happy – like a pick up game of football, except instead of gridiron warriors, the game is played by fantasy geeks.

The next level resembles Dungeons and Dragons in that each person plays a character in an adventure. A game master establishes the characters and the stories. The players proceed to act them out, not breaking character for any reason. For some, this is a day trip diverson. But many make weekends or entire vacations out of LARPS.

Then there are the existing camps that run year round to entertain LARPers who demand total immersion. Here, you live just as they lived in the early part of the millennium. No technology intrudes.

As Gilsdorf travels through the LARP culture, he interviews people of diverse backgrounds who enjoy the hobby. For most, it is a diversion and hobby. For others, it is a way of life. Most of these people carry on normal lives on the surface, holding down jobs and maintaining households. But behind closed doors, they are the people that exist in that alternative existence that is the LARP setting.

The trek through the Geekdom of the world progresses through England, the eastern United States, and then to New Zealand where Gilsdorf takes in the lands that were Middle Earth in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. This is a trip many “ringers” can only dream of. Most of the movie set has been disassembled and carried away. However, many relics still exist and the Shire is very much intact for fans to tour. At one point, Gilsdorf approaches the spot on the trail when Frodo, Sam, Pippin, and Merry flee from the road to avoid being spotted by the Ring Wraiths. He decides to act out the scene and flies over the hillside. Later, he buries Lord of the Rings miniatures in a ritual. If there was a point to the ritual, I missed it.

Gilsdorf brings his chronicle of geekdom to modern times as he explores the video and online gaming worlds. World of Warcraft, Runescape, Second Life, and many others provide fantasy diversion for millions across the world and provides a global interaction network. For others, however, it can become an addiction.

Jokes abound about those addicted to online gaming. The term “World of Warcraft Widows” has been introduced into our cultural lexicon as these addicts have foregone friends, families and jobs to play the game.

I suspect that, while there are a few extreme examples, most of these stories are urban myths very similar to the myths about Dungeons and Dragons players killing each other in storm sewers.

Still, Gilsdorf manages to find computer game players who do see that alternative world as the place where their psyche exists. Most maintain jobs and lives, but their mind constantly returns to that world where they aren’t data entry clerks, executive vice presidents, or assembly workers. Their minds journey to a world where they are minstrels, fighters, thieves, wizards, lords, and damsels.

I used to enjoy video games a great deal. We Gen Xers were the first to have home video game systems. I owned Pong, but my friends had Ataris, Colecovisions, and APF gaming systems. When the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) hit big in 1987, I decided to buy one and check out the new games. I was hooked – particularly on The Legend of Zelda.

For the next 20 years, I played video games as a diversion when I was too tired to read. I enjoyed such games as Duke Nukem, Madden Football, Grand Theft Auto, and countless others.

I don’t play anymore. I gave it up sometime around 2007. My son owns a Playstation 3 and the only thing I ever use it for is a BluRay player. Perhaps it’s the slow deterioration of my reflexes and my eyesight that has made me give up gaming. I never delved into online play on Playstation 3. It is one of my son’s favorite activities.

Nor have I played any of the online games like World of Warcraft. I’ve read about them and they sound intriguing. But they also seem to require great investments of time and I have other pursuits that interest me more.

Having made two Tolkien pilgrimages – one to Oxford to commune with the Tolkien Society and one to New Zealand to see a physical replica of Middle Earth, Gilsdorf embarks on the ultimate Tolkien experience – one available to very few people even though it is not far from our own backyard.

Marquette University is the repository of many Tolkien papers, including parts of the original manuscript of Lord of the Rings and many conceptual drawings in Tolkien’s own hand. First, Gilsdorf was able to view holograph renderings of Tolkien’s edits to his first draft of Fellowship as well as several of his drawings. He was then offered the ultimate treat: viewing actual pages of the manuscript.

This is a privilege offered to few. Marquette receives thousands of requests to see these unique artifacts of literature. Most are from fans of Tolkiens work. Only serious researchers are allowed access to these valuable papers. Gilsdorf’s geek credentials paid dividends!

Donning white gloves, Gilsdorf leafed through text set down in Tolkien’s own hand, drafted with a fountain pen and edited in pencil. He views sketches of the Book of Marzabul (the tome in Moria that describes the demise of the dwarves. Gilsdorf described the experience as feeling like “the kid who’d sweet-talked his way into Willy Wonka’s chocolate mother ship.”

With the journey at an end, Gilsdorf falls back into his autobiographical voice to describe what he’d learned from it all. The blue tote full of gaming materials had set him on the journey and he returned from that journey to confront it and delve deeply into his own past.

He discusses his mother, one he loved but lamented could not love him the way he wanted to be loved with her aneurysm addled brain and the decade long struggle after her death to make peace with his relationship with her. He made his peace with fantasy gaming as well. He found he did not want to return to gaming again, at least on a regular basis. It filled a need in him at a particular time that was no longer there.

Gilsdorf and I had dissimilar experiences with gaming. I was fortunate to have a perfectly functional mother. There was nothing in my life that I had to escape from through fantasy. While most of Gilsdorf ‘s gaming buddies were prototypical square pegs of the 1980s, most of my friends were close to normal. They had girlfriends. We were all involved in some school activities. None of us were outcasts.

I enjoyed this book primarily because it is written by someone my own age, who grew up in my time. I frequently complain about Baby Boomers still dominating our culture even as they approach retirement age. Reading works – especially autobiographical works – by people my age is a rare treat and I found this book engaging. I thank my friend Jeffery for buying it for me because I’d not heard of it before it was given to me.