10/02/2026
We’re in favor of whatever gets people to enjoy reading.
A breakout book series is leading fiction’s latest innovation—and transforming how a new audience engages with reading, Sophia Nguyen writes. https://theatln.tc/U63qJwQy
In “Dungeon Crawler Carl,” a series by Matt Dinniman, aliens invade Earth, vaporize most of civilization, and force the survivors to compete in an intergalactic reality show. “The books read as if the dystopia of ‘The Hunger Games’ were adapted for the Twitch era, but with much more comic gore and a distinctly fratty sense of humor,” Nguyen writes. Since Dinniman began self-publishing his books online in 2020, eight volumes have been rereleased in print so far.
“Dinniman has written the breakout hit of litRPG, a sci-fi subgenre that draws on the mechanics of role-playing video games, or RPGs,” Nguyen continues. “Typically, the plot concerns a hero stranded in a strange realm. He—most of the time, it’s a ‘he’—traverses this new world, accumulating experience that’s measured in points, adding assets to his inventory, and selecting new powers from a menu.”
To some readers, this style of reading might seem “like a rather clunky and clinical mode of character development,” Nguyen continues. But when she attended Dragon Con, a pop-culture convention in Atlanta, she saw the passionate following the books have created, which could reflect a broader shift among some readers. The “success of ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ may reflect the shake-up of the books business by self-published outsiders, and the mainstreaming of video-game culture. Gamer jargon has permeated everyday vocabulary; even the very offline know what it means to grind and speedrun and rage quit,” she writes. “The spread of litRPG suggests that those habits of mind go deeper than language, and are now shaping, for many readers, their sense of what makes a satisfying story.”
Read more at the link.
📸: Melissa Golden for The Atlantic
