Post by cadriel on May 1, 2014 7:08:44 GMT -6
I've been interested recently in some of the early post-apocalyptic work that I think was a sizable influence on D&D. The books that made the DMG's Appendix N are Margaret St. Clair's The Sign of the Labrys (a sort of proto-megadungeon as well as a disease-based science fantasy apocalypse and Wicca elements) and Sterling Lanier's Hiero's Journey (a wilderness bash with lots of psionics, very recent when the DMG was written). Indirectly, Andre Norton's Star Man's Son / Daybreak, 2250 A.D., a post-nuclear wilderness exploration from the early 1950s, is lumped along with Witch World and the Warlock/Forerunner stuff under Norton's entry.
A conspicuous absence is John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, a tremendously successful apocalypse caused by a type of plant (surefire material for a D&D monster type). And Richard Matheson's I Am Legend had not yet gained its full influence but it had already been adapted twice before OD&D came out, once as The Last Man on Earth and once as The Omega Man.
The other work I think about is how OD&D came about during the reign of Planet of the Apes and its increasingly low-budget sequels at the top of the sci-fi movie food chain. Star Wars wasn't out yet and the Apes franchise had to loom pretty large. Of course the big reveal of Planet is that it's a post-apocalyptic film, and the connections to the sort of post-apocalyptic science fantasy vibe get much more pronounced in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, with underground cities and psionic mutants.
Anyway I'm interested in people's favorites among this genre, both movies and novels, as well as how you see them as influences on D&D and on your own gaming.
A conspicuous absence is John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, a tremendously successful apocalypse caused by a type of plant (surefire material for a D&D monster type). And Richard Matheson's I Am Legend had not yet gained its full influence but it had already been adapted twice before OD&D came out, once as The Last Man on Earth and once as The Omega Man.
The other work I think about is how OD&D came about during the reign of Planet of the Apes and its increasingly low-budget sequels at the top of the sci-fi movie food chain. Star Wars wasn't out yet and the Apes franchise had to loom pretty large. Of course the big reveal of Planet is that it's a post-apocalyptic film, and the connections to the sort of post-apocalyptic science fantasy vibe get much more pronounced in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, with underground cities and psionic mutants.
Anyway I'm interested in people's favorites among this genre, both movies and novels, as well as how you see them as influences on D&D and on your own gaming.