Tourism in Worlds Without End
The first 'adult' fiction, I suppose, that I read was at the suggestion of my father. At a young age I liked reading nonfiction primarily (my copy of a youth audience edit of a Civil War history a favorite) but I mentioned being bored one day, and my father gave me his battered paperback copy of "The Hobbit". The first thing I noticed, of course, was there was a map. While this sparked my interest in fantasy and sci-fi, at that point I had already played Dungeons & Dragons, and seen Star Wars by this time, so the foundation had already been laid. I enjoyed the novel, but my thoughts at the time were "Where does the River Running go? What about the lands where Hobbiton lie? What was that business about Gondolin?" And I never stopped. The irony was that I wasn't even aware that the Lord of the Rings existed (even more amusing, when I saw a friend with the Fellowship of the Ring and learned it was a sequel, I excitedly borrowed it but did...
