A while ago, I Tweeted this message in reply to Adam Rakunas: “While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion.” The initial conversation was about contemporary science fiction fandom, readership, and our influences as writers. During my teenage years, when I was “supposed” to be reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion. Adam pronounced this statement a big fat “WIN,” and then he made a button out of it:
Adam is in fact such a nice guy that he decided to let me keep any and all cash from this little endeavour. That’s right, me. At $2.45 each, if you buy five you will have bought me a six pack of Tankhouse Ale. If you buy ten, you will have bought me one bar of Pacifica soap and 8 oz of their body butter, just in time for the cruel Toronto winter (Mediterranean Fig scent, so I’ll smell nice for my next con). If for some obscure reason you decide to buy twenty of these puppies, I’ll go really crazy and buy the Mushi-shi boxed set. Or a season of Supernatural. Or, or, or…the mind boggles.
Please, support my frivolous spending. Buy the buttons. Thank you.
My dad tried to start me on Tolkein at the tender age of four and got approximately nowhere. This was back when the concept of tea parties revolted me rather than making me think, “Awesome! Little sandwiches!” It probably didn’t help that I was convinced Gollum lived in the toilet.
I did, however, attach myself to his copies of Dune and Godel, Escher, and Bach like a barnacle. Eventually I got round to Tolkein…when I was eight, maybe?
I read The Hobbit, then tried LotR and got approximately nowhere. I enjoyed the Silmarillion, though, when I finally got around to it. *shrug* My dad had Herbert and Asimov and Heinlein lying around the house, though, so I could get to those classics if I wanted — though I spent more time with my mom’s Dickens collection.
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While I did _try_ to read LotR in my teens, I never got past the first hundred or so pages. Bored the hell out of me. NGE, on the other hand, I didn’t even know of until fairly recently, but I loved it. A comparable work in a comparable timeline would be Dune – and while I recently re-read it, Tolkien’s still collecting dust back home – I think that speaks for itself.
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