On the twenty third day of May ninteen ninety nine, just over ten years ago, I picked a new name and <a href=”http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.pratchett/browse_thread/thread/7b80b8b76847653b/20ac673315f0f59?q=author:Aquarion+group:alt.fan.pratchett#020ac673315f0f59″>posted to a new newsgroup</a>.
Alt.fan.eddings wasn’t my first usenet post, but it was my first online community.
I was eighteen when I joined, and I’d read David Edding’s books for years before then. I enjoyed them a lot, I found they flowed well, they were funny, and I liked the plots. Now I have the benifit of wide reading in the genre I can see the holes and the samey characters across series, and there’s a bit of a fashion nowadays to bash the books, but they’re still fun, still readable.
David Eddings has died, aged 77.
As much as he hated the online world – he was extremely sarcastic about the very existance of AFE, and quoted latin at us on the basis that nobody would understand it – his books led me, in part, to where I am, and who I am. I met a number of people whose existance has enhanced my own though the group, and that’s probably his fault.
I feel like rereading his books now.
