14 March 2008

Rest In Peace, Gary

I'm sure some of our Electric Spec readers and authors got into speculative fiction via Dungeons & Dragons. Sad news...

Gary Ernest Gygax, who co-created the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, died Monday, March 5 in his home at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, following several years of health problems including an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He was 69.

Along with Dave Arneson, Gygax developed Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1970s. They founded TSR. The game was played by millions and spun off magazines, books, movies and video games which lead some of those enthusiasts to read fantasy literature by authors such as Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and others. Many of todays authors credit Dungeons & Dragons with inspiring them to start writing.

Gypax wrote several associated books, as well as many fantasy novels, including the Greyhawk Adventures Series of novels and the Sagard the Barbarian sequence which were written with Flint Dille. Gypax's first fiction novel was an alternate history written with Terry Stafford titled Victorious German Arms: An Alternate Military History of World War II.

Rest In Peace, Gary.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Definitely sad news. When I heard the report yesterday, I immediately was transported back to being 15 years old. Four to seven of us would sit around my friend's dining room table for hours on Sundays creating supreme fighters, dueling with powerful magicians, and using the occasional thief to steal loot.

I'll miss your kind of imagination, Gary!