Joshua P. Simon - The Accidental Author

When I was a kid, I unfortunately didn’t ready much fantasy. This is because I really didn’t know the genre existed as no one I knew read it. Therefore, most of my fantasy consumption resulted from films (i.e. the Conan movies, etc) which later drove me to find Robert E. Howard as an adult and finally be exposed to something I had always been looking for.

With that being said, I did read the fantastical as a kid. However, this mostly revolved around mythologies such as King Arthur and Merlin (loved these stories) and the ancient myths of the Greek, Roman, and Norse pantheons. When you think about it, isn’t the story of Jason and the Argonauts really just a Sword and Sorcery tale?

Anyway, the stories I loved the most involved Hercules. I read anything and everything I could find about him. I also watched every movie about the character from as far back as the Steve Reeves and Reg Park films (pretty good for their time) to the Lou Ferrigno atrocities and the Arnold Schwarzenegger B movie that is worth watching if only for a good laugh.

The problem I had with most of these movies was that they never really focused on the stories already there. Well, finally it seems that Hollywood is going to get it right. The new Hercules trailer (starring The Rock) came out the other day and I’m as giddy as the 6th grader who read the same novelization of the twelve labors four times in one school year.

Finally, we get the twelve labors (or at least part of them in a flashback), and finally we’re going to see the troubled character I remember and felt connected to as a kid.

I haven’t been this excited about a movie in a long time. Hopefully, it doesn’t fall flat.