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In the summer 1976, twelve-year-old Mark Barrowcliffe had a chance to be
normal. He blew it. While other teenagers were being coolly rebellious,
Mark-and 20 million other boys in the 1970s and 80s-chose to spend his
entire adolescence pretending to be a wizard or a warrior, an evil priest or
a dwarf. He had discovered Dungeons & Dragons, and his life would never be
the same. No longer would he have to settle for being Mark Barrowcliffe, an
ordinary awkward teenager from working-class Coventry, England; he could be
Alf the Elf, Foghat the Gnome, or Effilc Worrab, an elven warrior with the
head of a mule.
Armed only with pen, paper and some funny-shaped dice, this lost generation
gave themselves up to the craze of fantasy role-playing games and everything
that went with it-from heavy metal to magic mushrooms to believing that your
bike is a horse named Shadowfax. Spat at by bullies, laughed at by girls,
now they rule the world. They were the geeks, the fantasy wargamers, and
this is their story.
What the critics are saying:
“Barrowcliffe… wonderfully captures the insensitivity, insecurity and
selfishness of the adolescent male. His eye for the oddities of 1970s
British life is equally astute…. Barrowcliffe renders all the comedy and
sorrow of early manhood, when boys flee the wretchedness of their real
status for a taste of power in imaginary domains.”
- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Mark Barrowcliffe, author of the uncomfortably confessional memoir The
Elfish Gene, lived the geek life back in the ’70s, when it was a plague on
your house. See, he fell into the world of Dungeons & Dragons … during
that precarious period between boy and man. Thanks to his immersion in D&D,
Barrowcliffe was an emotional and social wreck. Luckily, he emerged a funny
one, and his gently knowing style makes the pain of identification a
pleasure.”
-Entertainment Weekly
“The Elfish Gene is a marvelous read. Mark Barrowcliffe’s brilliantly
self-deprecating humor perfectly skewers coming-of-age during the first wave
of Dungeons and Dragons. It’s a good thing he didn’t become a cartoonist, or
I’d be in real trouble.”
- John Kovalic, creator of Dork Tower comics
“As the recent cult documentaries ‘King of Kong’ and ‘Darkon’ have shown,
geeks make for great entertainment - even for those who don’t necessarily
share their weird interests. Mark Barrowcliffe’s humorous, self-deprecating
memoir of his misspent youth, The Elfish Gene, is another welcome addition
to the growing nerdsploitation genre… He is far from alone, and that’s
where the book’s appeal lies. Many of the experiences he describes resonate
because they are universal to adolescence. Gamers, especially, will
recognize themselves in the author’s follies…His ability to look back at
his experience with humor and grace is what gives his story a happy ending.”
-Associated Press
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