This was a weird read for me. I thought I was pretty plugged in to the early history of TTRPGs in general, but there are often blind spots. I’d never heard of this Barker guy or the Empire of the Petal Throne.
Even weirder, I jumped over to his Wikipedia page to discover that he had a hand in writing at least one book that is on my shelf-- my partner is a member of the Klamath nation, and this weird dead racist was author or co-author on three books on the Klamath language, including a dictionary which I know for a fact we own. Strange connections.
Oh, and for the record, since it seems to be a hot topic in this comment section, I was a huge Heinlein fan as a kid. That doesn’t change the fact (and neither do his areligious tendencies) that he was a huge fascist and misogynist. Sometimes when you grow up you have to realize your heroes were not as great as you thought they were.
