Adventures in Fiction: Andrew J. Offutt By Ngo Vinh-Hoi Our Adventures in Fiction series is meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. August 16th we celebrate the birth of Andrew J. Offutt, whose passion and talent cemented him into the ranks of Appendix N. Appendix N of the original Dungeon Masters Guide has become a Rosetta Stone for the study of the literary roots of D&D. One figure carved on that stone is Andrew J. Offutt, who is cited not for his own writing, but for editing the Swords Against Darkness heroic fantasy anthology series. Oddly, only the third volume of the five-book series is singled out and none of the other four books are even mentioned. Who then is Andrew Offutt, and why is he enshrined with the other Appendix N luminaries?  Andrew Jefferson Offutt V was born on August 16th, 1934 in a log cabin near Taylorsville, Kentucky. His parents had fallen on hard times during the Great Depression and were forced to rent out their farmstead and relocate to an older log cabin on their property that had “twelve-inch walls with gun ports to defend against attackers, first Indians, then soldiers during the Civil War.” Offutt revealed little of his youth other than his eagerness to escape a backbreaking farmer’s life by any means possible. He was an avid reader of adventure fiction, especially Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, Daniel Defoe, Alexandre Dumas, and Robert Louis Stevenson. By age 16 he had taught himself how to type, written two novels, and started drawing and writing comic serials. In 1951 Offutt won a Kentucky-wide high school fiction contest with his story “The Devil’s Soul” and also earned a full academic scholarship to the University of Louisville. Offutt’s first professional publication came while he was still in college when his story “And Gone Tomorrow” won a contest sponsored by If magazine in 1954. Offutt’s professional writing life truly began five years later with the sale of his story “Blacksword” to Galaxy magazine.  It took another decade for Offutt to become a full-time writer, as he and his wife Jodie McCabe Offutt had a rapidly growing...