J. R. R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings “Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky ...”  Meanwhile, I happen to own half a dozen different editions of the “Ring Trilogy”, most of them with better covers and less mistakes, and printed on better paper. However, the first version I ever read was the notorious Ace Books edition of 1965, at 75 ¢ per volume, which had been printed without the author’s consent, but then effectively helped to prepare his sucess in the United States and as a worldwide publishing phenomenon. My personal obvsession with Tolkien and his work came later, and it’ still going strong. E. R. Eddison: The Worm Ouroboros A gorgeous book. I read it at nineteen, between leaving school and attending university, mostly on the train commuting between home and the mental hospital where I worked during my community year as a concientious objector. Looking backwards, I really can’t tell how much of the text I actually comprehended at that time. More than twenty years later, I translated the novel into German – the book that was supposed to be untranslatable. I still think it my best translation I ever did. Poul Anderson: The Broken Sword »[Today] I would not myself write anything so headlong, so prolix, and so unrelievedly savage«, Poul Anderson states in the preface to the 1971 Ballantine Adult Fantasy reprint. First published in 1954, the novel shows certain parallels to The Lord of the Rings, but with a quite different feel to it: not a Christian but a heathen book. Anderson, himself of Danish descent, was fascinated by the Viking culture, but he never wrote a similarly impressive Dark Age fantasy in his later years. As a reader, you even don’t take exception to Skafloc’s tragic end. Leslie Barringer: Gerfalcon No book from the fantasy mainstream, even if a German translation was published in a series called ‘Library of Fantastic Adventures’ by my colleague, Verena Harksen, at Fischer. I had been trying to get hold of the publishing rights at the same time, but she beat me to it. Barringer rather wrote in the tradition of the historical boys’ novel by authors as G. A. Henty, rarely read these days anymore. The novel is situated in an imaginarly country resembling fifteenth century France  – without magic in a literal sense but full of it anyway. Austin Tappan Wright: Islandia Some may have heard of this book, although very few have actually read it. But if you do meet somebody else who has, you feel as if you were both members of a secret community. Wright, a professor of corporate law at Harvard, had been working on it thoughout is life, and apart from his famliy, nobody ever knew about this secret life of his. Published in 1942, eleven years after the author’s death, it was never a bestseller but seems to be a book that stubbornly refuses to die. It is sutated on a fictitious continent of the Southern hemisphere and is neither utopia nor fantasy. It has never been translated. Robert E. Howard: Conan of Cimmeria The first book I ever read in English, apart from set texts for school. I’ve still got that old Lancer edition with interlinear notes written in pencil. At sixteen, I found Conan much more interesting than Frodo. The covers by Frank Frazetta, which gave a totally new imagery to “sword & sorcery”, were a visual revelation and took me by storm. And even if Howard – just as Tolkien – has come to be viewed in his historical and local context now, as a major Texan writer of pulp adventure stories, his stories still have such a power and drive that his many imitators seem bland and bloodless in comparison. Ursula K. Le Guin: A Wizard of Earthsea Le Guin managed to know, and cherish,Tolkien’s work and still not to be influence by it to such an extent that it overshadowed her own. Ged, the wizard of Earthsea, a man with many faults, who nevertheless tries to make the best use of his abilities and to learn from his own mistakes, is a sort of role model for me. And Le Guin’s concept of a “true language” underlying all magic is a fascinating idea, for a linguist and writer. Apart from that, I like her restrained, unpathetic style. Besides Tolkien, she is the writer whose work I have been collecting as completely as I could, even some of her poetry and children’s books. Joy Chant: Red Moon and Black Mountain In my honest opinion a much underrated novel. What starts out as a children’s book in the style of C. S. Lewis’s »Narnian Chronicles«, turns into a quite different kind of story. The clash of cultures shows its full impact only when the children who have been stranded in the fantasy realm meet again and realize how they themselves have been changed by their experiences. The riders of the Hurnei leave even Tolkien’s Rohirrim in the dust. And the final confrontation has some moments for which you may easily ditch a handful of other novels. Not to mention the marvellous final scene at the dancer’s fountain and the bittersweet ending. Rudyard Kipling: Puck of Pook’s Hill Kipling is mostly known today for The Jungle Book and, possibly, his novel Kim. But apart from being an imperialist, he was a man who loved his country and, in a way similar to but also quite different from Tolkien, tried to create his own “Mythology for England”. The result were two books in which Puck (from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) vividly displays the whole history of England to two children in a series of interconnected stories. The interspersed poems, some of which have become part of popular culture, are heard even today as filk songs on science fiction conventions. Another much underrated author. Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials Northern Lights is the British title of the novel known in the USA as The Golden Compass, first book in the “His Dark Materials” trilogy. The general rule here applies as well: If you have just seen the movie and haven’t read the book, you are much the poorer. Pullman writes in the tradition of the Victorian novel, which is not quite my cup of tea, but his novels have an ingenuity and originality rare to fantasy writing. The idea of having humans accompanied by an external soul in the form of an animal they can talk to, is simply brillant. And he is no fan of C. S. Lewis, which makes two of us.