which fictional worlds, if any, absolutely wrapped themselves around your interest/spare time/imagination? Which have sustained?
I was a particular sucker as a kid for Discworld and Star Wars/Trek. All have remained home comforts when the world is getting a little too unbearable. Which are yours? Have they sustained or has a Rowling or equivalent nuked them?
No judgement on that score if you still think fondly of eg Harry Potter btw. It’s only one person’s fault that got poisoned and it ain’t people who enjoy wizard stories.
I used to love the David Eddings books as a tweenager. Wouldn’t go near them now (simplistic, race-based personalities, plus his whole slavery thing)
I reread Anne McCafferey’s Pern books the other year. A bit clunky and over detailed in it’s language, but the world and culture she imagined still stands up.
middle earth, discworld and trek were the big ones for me as a nipper, very into oddworld for a while too, thats a funny memory, forgot about that
morrowind big as a teenager
most recent ones was the expanse (tv show) and broken earth. saw the first real spaceship battle in the expanse, was buzzing my head off and showed a bunch of people who didnt really care or get why it was cool. weeks later my mate danny asked me if id seen the show and we spent an hour being giddy at how cool it is.
I misremembered - it wasn’t slavery, it was a conviction for child abuse (keeping foster children chained up in filthy cages and physically assaulting them)
Reading A Song of Ice and Fire a decade ago properly drew me in like nothing else had/has for a long time. Felt like a truly realised world more than any other fantasy book I’d ever read. Even reading Fire & Blood or whatever that history was that he released most recently properly got me.
I read all of the David Gemmell Bloodstone books as well, which has several strands including a post apocalyptic wild west, ancient Greece and Arthurian knights. Some of them were a bit repetitive (how many times can an old warrior train up an apprentice until their shoulders are broad and their hips narrow?), but I think it managed to speak beyond the setting and examined the overlap between misplaced faith, nihilism and a sense of duty.
The thing I liked about this was that it never felt like he was making it up as he went along - like, all the mythology, the history, geography and most importantly the physics of the magic felt totally believable.
It did mean that it often dragged as certain plot beats had to be hit in a certain sequence, but that made all the theories and speculation more fun.
Yeah, probably the best world building has ever been done. That’s why the start of the TV series was so… bad. They just fluffed any sense of making it feel real. S2 got better and S3 looks great, but that first look at the white tower left a bad taste.
FFVII. Loved it as a teenager, have fallen back for it hard playing the remakes with my daughter. With that second bit in mind I don’t believe it will ever be less than special to me.
All the Lucas Arts point n clicks. Monkey Island, Manic Maniac/Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Full Throttle, so many great characters and environments