Appendix N at Project Gutenberg

Gary Gygax's Dungeon Masters Guide included the famous "Appendix N," a list of fantasy and science-fiction writers and books that inspired the world of Dungeons and Dragons. The list was and remains an excellent starting point for exploring the golden age of fantasy literature. Some of the material in the appendix has escaped copyright and may be found in the cultural treasure trove that is Project Gutenberg. Since Project Gutenberg is excellent at maintaining stable links, it is worth the effort to gather links to various Appendix N resources on the site.

Major Works Available

The authors whose works are best represented on Project Gutenberg are the earliest ones, and much of their work has passed into the public domain.

• Edgar Rice Burroughs: although his later writings are still under copyright, the beginnings of three of his most famous series are free.
• The Barsoom/Mars series begins with A Princess of Mars.
• The Pellucidar series begins with At the Earth's Core.
• The Venus series is not yet in the public domain.
• Gygax does not mention Burroughs's most famous character of all, but the Tarzan series begins with Tarzan of the Apes.
• Lord Dunsany's early works are here as well, including The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924) and The Book of Wonder (1912).
• The majority of the Conan stories from Robert E. Howard are missing, but the novel and the last story are there: Hour of the Dragon and "Red Nails." We also find the eerie and unusual "Gods of the North" (published elsewhere as "The Frost-Giant's Daughter"). Sadly, the site is missing the essential and energetic early tale, "The Tower of the Elephant."
• A few of H.P. Lovecraft's major stories are available, but his complete works are freely available elsewhere on the internet. If, however, the seeker of major works is only looking for "The Call of Cthulhu," "The Dunwich Horror," and "The Colour out of Space," Project Gutenberg provides them.
• Two novels by A. Merritt may be found: The Moon Pool, which is explicitly recommended in Appendix N, and its sequel The Metal Monster, which is not.
• There are a few works by Fletcher Pratt, including the Gygax-recommended novel The Blue Star.
• Clark Ashton Smith is missing from Appendix N, but he so obviously belongs there that I am including him here. Project Gutenberg does not have his stories, but it does have two volumes of his poetry: Ebony and Crystal, and The Star-Treader. Smith's poems are full of pulp-fiction imagery, but take an elegiac tone: fantastical fever-dreams recollected in tranquility.
• Stanley Weinbaum's "A Martian Odyssey" is on Project Gutenberg. It is not a long story, but it marks a transition away from the planetary fantasy of Edgar Rice Burroughs and towards something that feels more like contemporary hard science fiction. The follow-up Mars story, "Valley of Dreams," is available, as are the three mad scientist stories that begin with "The Worlds of If."

Minor Works Available

Other authors from the Appendix N list do not have any major works on Project Gutenberg, but do have short stories, usually from classic genre magazines such as Galaxy, Weird Tales, or Planet Stories.

• Poul Anderson, Philip José Farmer, Fritz Leiber, Andre Norton are all represented by early stories from science fiction magazines, but not by any of the fantasy stories that are listed in Appendix N, nor by their later longer novels.
• The Leigh Brackett stories at Project Gutenberg seem to all be from Planet Stories, and presumably count as "sword and planet" stories in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs.
• Margaret St. Clair's page has a mix of planet stories and science fiction.
• None of Manly Wade Wellman's classic Silver John tales are on Project Gutenberg, nor are his John Thunstone books. However, there is a Weird Tales horror story called "The Golgatha Dancers" that gives the reader a good introduction to Wellman's pulp style.

There is very little material at all for August Derleth, Gardner Fox, Sterling Lanier, Andrew Offutt, Jack Vance, or Jack Williamson.

Finally, there are no stories from J.R.R. Tolkien, but his Vocabulary of Middle English is freely available, and could be handy in certain rather unlikely situations.

Entirely Absent

Some of the Appendix N writers have no work at all on project Gutenberg: 

• John Bellairs
• Frederic Brown
• Lin Carter
• L. Sprague de Camp
• Michael Moorcock
• Fred Saberhagen
• Roger Zelazny

Postscript

The Monsters and Manuals blog, by a writer called "Noisms," has its own "Project Gutenberg Appendix N," but the idea of that post is to list the writer's favorite public domain fantastical works, rather than to chase down Gygax's favorites. Noisms's list includes Coleridge, Voltaire, and George MacDonald.

A comment on that post recommends a role-playing game, the entire premise of which is to role-play in the future as envisioned by Victorians such as Rudyard Kipling or Arthur Conan Doyle. The game is called Forgotten Futures, and its website is a marvel of digital endurance. The game is so old that it was initially distributed as "shareware," and it is still maintained and freely available.

Finally, Goodman Games is a gathering place for Appendix N obsessives, and its "Adventures in Fiction" section is full of further information on all of the authors listed above.

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QUESTIONS FOR COMMENTERS:

• Of the Project Gutenberg short stories by Appendix N authors, are there any that should have been highlighted in this post but were not?
• Are there other authors with work in the public domain that would fit well on this list?