publication date: Monday, December 10, 2018 (part of Winter 2019)

category: Literature

clue: Dorothy was disappointed by the "wizard" that she and the scarecrow, tin man, and lion had followed the Yellow Brick Road to meet, but frankly, the real man behind the curtain was this imaginative American icon.

explanation: Baum wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and many subsequent works in the same setting. more…

intended difficulty: very easy

solved by: Russ Wilhelm, LaVonne Lemler, Samir Mehta, Chris Lemler, Richard Slominsky, Denise Sawicki, Matthew Preston, and Erik Bates

Gothic Goodbye: The RPG Gothic Earth> has been set in a world of literary creations roughly contemporary to its 1899 setting, with characters like Sherlock Holmes and Count Dracula driving much of the storyline. After a decade of play, the game is now in its final weeks. Here's sending it off with a two-week retrospective of authors of that era whose works captured the popular imagination, in the order in which they shaped the world of Gothic Earth.

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Edgar Allan Poe

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W. Somerset Maugham

This mostly gay would-be doctor wrote about human bondage, a razor's edge, and a magician not unlike Aleister Crowley. Go »

Nathaniel Hawthorne

This early American master gave us Hester Prynne, Hepzibah Pyncheon, Dr. Heidegger, and Giacomo Rappaccini. Go »

H.P. Lovecraft

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Go »

Mary Shelley

Daughter of philosophers, wife of a novelist, she had plenty of Promethean figures in her life before she created one of her own. Go »

H.G. Wells

This author, who wrote classic novels about time travel, genetic horrors, an invisible person, and alien attacks, created a deep well of science-fiction concepts to inspire later authors. Go »