Heavily armored knights clashed swords at the Salt Palace Convention Center in December as the emcee yelled to onlookers.
“When you guys make noise, our fighters can hear it, and they’re driven by bloodlust!”
The audience cheered enthusiastically in response.
It was one of the events at Dragonsteel Nexus, the annual three-day convention celebrating fantasy author Brandon Sanderson.
He’s just one of many authors Utah has produced from that genre. Think bestsellers like Orson Scott Card, James Dashner, Ally Condie, Brandon Mull and Shannon Hale.
Utahns love fantasy and science fiction. At the convention, there was an air of excitement, joy and community. People complimented each other and took pictures with strangers dressed up as characters from the Sanderson book universe.
At nearby tables, convention-goers opened metallic packs of shimmery trading cards to make swaps –– and new friends.
That connection is partly why Meggan Baxter of Layton loves this genre.
“It’s so much fun. As soon as you know that somebody likes fantasy, or somebody likes Brandon Sanderson, you're instant friends.”
Baxter came with her daughter, Eden. She wore a self-made turquoise and rust, beaded dress, inspired by a butterfly teacup from the book “Tress of the Emerald Sea.”
“I just think it's really interesting to see the diversity in all the fantasy books and the crazy stuff that somehow everyone's still able to connect to each other,” she said. “And I think that it’s like, we can do that too. We're not as different as they are, and we can still be like that.”
And it helps Eden see her problems from a different angle.
“I'm not fighting a dragon, but I have to do this really stupid math homework, and I can do it, because I know this guy can do it too,” she said.
Catherine Weller of Weller Book Works in Salt Lake said fantasy is having a moment right now across the country. But in Utah, “science fiction and fantasy readers have always been here in large numbers.”
She said things have changed, though, since she began in the business about three decades ago.
“The culture was a little bit narrower. It was narrower. So fantasy provided a way to see other things and other ways of being that was a safe way to explore.”
But now, she said people aren’t as worried about keeping their fantasy purchases quiet in the store.
Weller tries to stock the store’s shelves with Utah authors, and that’s always been easy to do in the fantasy section.
Other Utah book industry experts KUER talked to agreed. The state carries a lot of weight when it comes to fantasy and science fiction authors. They point to Utah’s spirit of entrepreneurship and culture of reading.
And they said readers are more likely to become writers.
Back at the Sanderson convention, one new Utah County author, Lynn Buchanan, had another theory involving the large presence of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
“As part of that culture, we kind of are taught to value art and creativity, right? And I think that breeds a lot of imagination.”
Buchanan grew up surrounded by music as a member of the church.
“We sing hymns, we sing in our homes,” she said. “Just music everywhere, and that was a gateway drug for me into other forms of art and creativity.”
Her debut novel, “The Dollmakers,” was published by Harper Voyager, a HarperCollins imprint, earlier this year.
It’s hard to get published, but Utah authors helped her break into the industry. Buchanan took writing classes from Sanderson at Brigham Young University, and she was able to do a lot of networking in the state.
“We have such a community of fantasy authors already that just more and more are being bred here, practically,” she laughed.
Being different is in Utah’s D-N-A. Steven Pond of Provo pointed that out while dressed in a light blue costume with a huge balloon eye on top.
“The LDS church started as a bunch of outcasts, and so people who feel outcast are into the things that are more outside of the mainstream,” he said.
He has a YouTube channel all about Brandon Sanderson called “Read and Find Out.” Pond is a Latter-day Saint and thinks fantasy’s popularity in Utah also has to do with the church’s theology.
“You've got angels, you've got spiritual visitation, you've got individual like personal revelation and things, which sort of naturally lends itself to being more into things that are more fantastical and more stretching of the imagination.”
Whatever the reason, Buchanan is glad fantasy is strong in Utah.
“It's great to have such a huge community around me that enjoys the things that I do,” she said. “And it's also just so nice that fantasy has gone from like a nerdy thing to pretty much mainstream. So I'm like, ‘cool, I'm no longer a nerd.’”
She said that’s because we're all nerds.