Month 17: Where Dungeons Come From

Month 17 of 260 (6.54 percent)

Size of list: 83,045 pages (6.8 percent greater than starting size)

Pages read: 9,722 (11.11 percent)

H-list: 2,793/22,674 (12.32 percent)

N-list: 2,978/36,116 (8.25 percent)

O-list: 3,455/24,255 (13.44 percent)

Finished: Sign of the Labrys

Reading: The Dragon Reborn

Added: Revenge of the Sith, Dark Lord

This is the amazing back cover to Sign of the Labrys, a 1963 novel by Margaret St. Clair, who was called out by Gary Gygax in his original Appendix N; this novel was one of three listed on the 5th Edition update. Another Appendix N writer pointed to this novel as specifically inspiring what we now think of as the Gygaxian mega-dungeon, and that's certainly there, with a multi-level complex connected by tunnels and guarded by traps and populated by groups that might as well be weird cults; each level is different, but a common theme runs through them. But this novel is explicitly post-apocalyptic, most of the population having been wiped out by a plague, and not much government left. It's very late-'60s, and the ending is so not compelling that, a week later, I don't really remember what happened. (It's almost like a song that fades out because the writer couldn't think of a good ending... which is sort of how I feel about the ending of Infinite Jest, but for a completely different reason.)

I also started reading Labyrinth of Evil, a prequel-era Star Wars book; I've read enough accounts saying the novelization of Revenge of the Sith is better than the movie, and even better as the middle portion of a trilogy, that I added the second and third volumes to my list. (And in the wake of The Uplift War and Sign of the Labrys, I wanted something fast, familiar and modern as a palette cleanser.) And I've been slowly, slowly, working my way through The Dragon Reborn, the third volume of The Wheel of Time (and last of my rereads); the story of Egwene, Nynaeve and Elayne in the White Tower is some of the most interesting the series has been so far.