Customer Reviews

Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm 40 years old, having been a gamer since I was 10. I'm also a husband, a home-owner, have held a professional job for over years, and I don't personally have any difficulty reconciling my love of fantasy and role-playing games with my normal, day-to-day life. It seems that the author has had difficulty in this, and this book seems to be essentially his rambling and occassionally awkward attempt to find out if it's possible to be both mature and have a love of geeky, escapist hobbies.

If you're someone who put the dice away a long time ago and are wondering whether it's okay to feel like dusting them off again...or if you never were involved in such hobbies and are wondering if it's okay for your significant other to be...then this book may be written just for you.

If you're still avidly into these pursuits, then you may come away from this book feeling a bit unsatisfied. I felt like I'd read a book that said "It's okay for you to be into this stuff", and I was saying, "Well...yeah. I knew that. Thanks." It's still worth reading the book, as he has a lot of enjoyable stories along the way...just don't hold your breath for any deep revelation at the end.

Being a "closet gamer/fantasy geek" myself I completely related to Ethan's book. His story is my own and I'm sure a large number of other guys out there. Trying to balance the desire to immerse yourself in fantasy, (be it Tolkien, D&D, or online gaming) and living in "reality" with its expectations of what is considered "normal" is a recurring theme in the book and in my own life.
I felt the angst that Ethan dealt with as he slipped back into gaming and fantasy after years of self-denial. Anyone who has felt that twinge of embarassment over being a gamer or fantasy fan will enjoy Ethan's journey and obeservations.
I certainly did.

I do not want to delve into too much info on the book and spoil it for others, but being a gamer since the age of 13 and now almost 40, I thought this book with make a sincere connection with me - and it did. Like Ethan, I too went though similar issues being a geek and since then, have boxed by geekdom in a shoebox (figuratively speaking as it is more like a chest)in my closet only to crack it open later in life to look for some kind of mid-life re-connection. And I applaud him for telling us his story - but I think there are a ton of us out there that also have very similar stories like his.

The book confused me a little and like a previous reviewer mentioned, you read and are left with "....well, and now what - what did I learn?" He identified an issue with his mother early on and I think he should have embraced that a bit more in his findings and carried through MORE - maybe the fact that there are many people he met who also were geeks and they all lived through this fantasy life at one point, but each of us have moments of harsh reality that will either not allow us to continue on on this path (for him, his mother's failing health) or you embrace it and become a geek regardless in the open. There were moments of this, but lots of empty pockets.

Hard to say, but the book was just flat from mid way (the online gaming part) through the end. Maybe for me there is no issue here for me - I am a geek in my heart and I also made that trek 3 years ago to my local gaming shop to see what has changed after 15+ years and I was ok with that. Did Ethan finally find the right balance here? Hard to say - maybe a second book will improve on a few of the issues I picked out.

This book has been my companion on business trips since I picked it up at Gencon 2009. It's the most thorough examination of the gaming subculture I've read so far (for example, "The Elfish Gene" and "Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds" mainly focus on D&D). I was particularly touched by the story Mr. Gilsdorf's mother, who's disability understandably affected him and his siblings at a tender age. D&D and Tolkein were escapes for me as a teenager too (although in a healthy way). Thank you for this insightful and poignant memoir of your journey through Fantasy/Gamer Geekdom.

In what could have been, with a little more work, a tremendous insight and very poignant look back at a life affected and in some ways effected by a strong, early exposure to fantasy fandom, Gilsdorf produces in a manner of speaking two books in this volume.

In the first and admittedly more readable piece, he outlines in tones of sad nostalgia the affliction of his mother, his escape from that and his marginalization at school, and the repercussions he feels now in his forties at choosing the easier road of escapism over trying harder to be there for a mother who was at the same time both suffering and very difficult to love. He provides through carefully chosen and striking imagery a potent glimpse into awkward adolescence in the 1970's even for a reader who wasn't alive then or did not experience the same difficulties, and is at once both emotional and objective. In this former part, he shows the roots of his entrance into fantasy fandom and much of his sentiment about how it affected him. It is, in and of itself, a touching memoir.

The second part, hinted at when he first speaks of going off to college and growing up past the phase of Dungeons & Dragons and J.R.R. Tolkien and begun at full speed after the near-cathartic moment involving the blue cooler, is rather like listening to a tape on a machine that's running out of batteries. The narrative begins strongly, connected through Tolkien to the world of fantasy fandom at large, but steadily slowing down and dwindling in energy and enthusiasm to the end, by which time we're left with the unfortunate impression of a grown man playing with toys in the woods and growing continuously more pissed off that he can't get a decent girlfriend who shares his interests. The latter half of the SCA segment and more or less the whole convention trip are pretty much disconnected from the rest of the work by an incessant, almost nagging theme of "I can't bed a woman." I found this to detract tremendously from the original intent of the book. In addition to that, the final chapter places the author in New Zealand (a thoroughly beautiful place), a journey "to Middle-Earth" which should be the culmination of a great personal and emotional journey. However, the entirety of the trip feels tacked-on, as if Gilsdorf didn't feel like he had enough to finish his book yet, but really didn't have anything left to explore. More than anything, the end of the work reads like the author gave up, shrugged, and said in a resigned tone, "That's good enough."

My recommendation is to pick up the book, to be certain. Read the first part, where he touches on some things that are universal to humans who have survived childhood. Read the beginning of his quest, on the pub crawl with the Tolkien society, as some of the people he meets and their insights prove equally relevant and wide-reaching. Read his adventure into LARPing. If nothing else, it provides some eye-opening examination of a world I had joined the larger society in snubbing. And then stop.

I picked up this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR. At the beginning it sounds like it would be an interesting ethnography of the Geek subculture. Instead of learning how they work, it ends up being a badly written travelogue.

The author does visit some interesting people, but instead of exploring them in any amount of detail, we get his boring whining and introspections. The book is not labelled as an autobiography and thus such ramblings should be kept out of it.

All in all, other books would be of better service to readers interested in this topic.

Like Gilsdorf, I've often asked myself "What was I doing, a forty-two-year-old, single, and childless man, traveling on his own, sleeping in youth hostels, and playing with toys?" I'm also a writer (Halibut Rodeo) and professor of creative writing. "Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks" had me from the opening page. The book is a mix of literary journalism and memoir, weaving together Gilsdorf's personal life and his quest to understand fantasy and gaming communities. He creates a nice balance between his own experiences as a child and investigative reporting. Much of my interest in the book stems from my obsession with "The Lord of the Rings." Before I bought the book, I was most interested in reading the chapters on Tolkien, and the author's visits to England and New Zealand. I've only played D&D once, and have never even attempted MMORPG, but I found myself equally interested in the chapters on gaming. Gilsdorf's final conclusions aren't necessarily surprising, but the quest itself is a blast.

The surprising first pages that tenderly and honestly reveal the rescuing role that Dungeons & Dragons played in Gilsdorf's early life serve as the perfect base camp for an elaborate and quirky quest into contemporary fantasy and gaming culture. Disarmed by the author's personal revelations, I found myself more open to the many unique characters he profiles than I might have been had the book taken a more purely journalistic approach. Gilsdorf's writing has the easy-going touch of a seasoned storyteller. His humane and wide-ranging investigation, (and the resulting discoveries of intelligent life and socially positive motivations) effectively rescues gamers from the phobic and demonizing lenses of prior media. Bravo.

Books about escapism and gaming too often swerve into cautionary tale territory. Negative and holier-than-though, they tend to lecture at length about the drawbacks to such pastimes and ignore the benefits of escapism. Thankfully, Gilsdorf's book is different.

It tells the a story of Gilsdorf's own journey back into the fantasy fold and his analysis of why we all seek out alternative realities. He spends time with SCAdians, LARPers and MMORPGers alike, and he does it with respect and poignancy. For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes. For those who have not, it will educate and enlighten.

Now 42 years old, author Ethan Gilsdorf finds that he has never quite outgrown his fascination with JRR Tolkien, Dungeons & Dragons, and other figments of the fantasy genre that colored his adolescent life. He returns to this past in Fantasy Freaks & Gaming Geeks, an exploration of the fantasy and sci-fi "escapism" culture that has entrenched itself in movies, on-line games, fiction, massive costumed conventions, and numerous other forms since Gilsdorf first started tossing 20-sided dice as a Massachusetts teenager.

FF&GG gives the reader a tight, efficient introduction to an oft ridiculed and generally overlooked slice of western culture. As an acknowledged "gaming geek" himself, who internalized the stigma and and mainstream disapproval of D&D as an eminent badge of nerddom, FF&GG was maybe a book only someone like Gilsdorf could write. Gilsdorf's authenticity is undoubtedly the most redeeming quality of the book. Unfortunately, Gilsdorf's nerdy character is also his downfall. His aggravating, immature references to beer and attractive women are incessant, as are the indelicate references to his own mother, who suffered major brain damage in an aneurysm during his youth. It's uncomfortable.