D&D Fantasy Fiction by TSR Publications

Prepping for ENGL 378: Fantasy Fiction has been a rollercoaster ride for two solid months -- I'm doing all my lesson plans ahead of time, but since I'm taking a literary history approach to genre fantasy, I've needed to fill in several gaps in my own knowledge. Partly, that's necessitated an insanely deep dive into sword-and-sorcery (more on which soon).

Another part, though, has been a dive into Dungeons & Dragons fantasy fiction.

For fantasy readers of a certain age, the D&D novels produced by TSR publications define the essence of "genre fantasy." Even for someone like myself who never really got into the whole D&D thing, avoiding these books simply wasn't possible. Back during the 1980s and 1990s, I still remember walking into Waldenbooks and seeing half the fantasy section -- already much larger than the SF section -- filled with nothing but Forgotten Realms or Dragonlance novels.

Trying to learn more background, I discovered a wonderful website providing a "fan-level" knowledge of these things: Let's Read TSR: Lit Crit and Reviews for Trashy D&D Fantasy Novels. (And "fan-level" is meant as a compliment of the highest order: this site is clearly coming from someone who loves these books and has a genuine feeling for them, even the bad ones, meaning they're already doing better criticism than most academics could for any TSR publications.)

Some of the posts I've found especially illuminating:

• An introduction to the Forgotten Realms gameworld.
• An introduction to the Dragonlance gameworld.
• An index, grade, and Bechdel test for TSR novels.

This last entry is especially illuminating, as it's helped jog my memory over a lot of old D&D fantasy novels I completely forgot about. And it's snazzy that several novels I liked well have earned excellent grades.

For instance, maybe my single favorite D&D book is Azure Bonds (1988) by Kate Novak and Jeff Grubb (the link takes you to the review). It earns an A, one of only four in the entire reviewed oeuvre, which really pleases me. Alongside the Avatar trilogy, this novel's scenes and characters have stayed with me, and I still remember it insanely well.

Speaking of that AVATAR trilogy (1989), alas .... its reviews weren't as good. Terrible, actually. All three books recount the Time of Troubles when the gods were cast down into Faerûn, and the initial book, Shadowdale, earned a C. The second book, Tantras, earned a C+, and the third book, Waterdeep, a B.

Nor can I even say these reviews are unmerited. I re-read the trilogy back in the early 2010s and it was .... painful. (Interestingly enough, two other reviewers re-read Shadowdale and reviewed it, Sean Guynes and Rob Bricken; both are worth checking out.) Nonetheless, I'll always remember this series for its relationship between Cyric and Midnight, and Kelemvor's curse as a man who wants to do good deeds but cannot.

All in all, out of the 79 novels listed here, I remember reading 13 of them ... "remember" being a loose term. There's also several Dragonlance that I vaguely remember reading, but which weren't included in this showing of Let's Read TSR.

Anyway, why aren't more D&D novels being written? Another excellent blogger, Adam Whitehead from The WertZone, answers this question in: "Leaving Money on the Table: Why is There No New D&D Fiction Being Published?" I wish there were some citations for his sales figures, but this article seems like a knowledgeable account of D&D fiction's popularity, and it passes the smell test ...  particularly in regards to the profit requirements of a corporate entity like Hasbro, which now owns Wizards of the Coast.

Yet part of me can't help but wonder if this disappearance of D&D fiction isn't a good thing. With a few notable exceptions like Azure Bonds, these books were never good fantasy, and they did crowd out other fantasy titles from bookstore shelves. So I can't lament their loss too much ... even had I been a bigger fan of them, which I'm not. Still, they're a vital part of fantasy history.

Moving off slightly from the TSR books but staying within the realm of D&D, I've also found two excellent re-reads of Gary Gygax's famous Appendix N -- the list of books claimed by Gygax to have influenced D&D.

• Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode, "Advanced Readings in Dungeons & Dragons", a blog series for Tor.com.
• Jeffro Johnson's book, Appendix N: The Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons (2017).

Despite not even being listed in the MLA bibliography, Johnson's Appendix N is surprisingly useful. I admit to learning something from his main theme, too: i.e., just how diverse fantasy fiction was in the 1970s. Not in terms of sales, maybe (Tolkien was #1 and barbarian fantasy a distant #2), but in terms of what the dedicated fantasy fan might have considered "genre fantasy." Under this account, L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter were big names in a way nearly impossible to imagine nowadays, and the type-range of fantasy worlds diverse in a way soon overwhelmed by the hegemony of the Tolkien-esque during the 1980s and 1990s.