Fantasy Trivia
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100 free Fantasy trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
47 free Fantasy trivia questions with answers. Fantasy runs from Victorian pioneers to BookTok bestsellers, and this quiz covers the whole shelf. It starts with the founders: George MacDonald, Lord Dunsany, William Morris, Baum's Oz, then Tolkien's Hobbit and Rings, Lewis's Narnia and the Inklings. Then the modern epics: Le Guin's Earthsea, Jordan's Wheel of Time and its Sanderson ending, Martin's Westeros, Pratchett's Discworld, Rowling's 600 million copies, Pullman, Gaiman's Sandman and American Gods. Sword and sorcery gets its due with Conan, Elric and Fritz Leiber's coinage; so do Dungeons & Dragons, The Princess Bride, Peter Jackson's eleven Oscars, the World Fantasy Award's Lovecraft bust and N. K. Jemisin's Hugo hat-trick. The new wave is here too: Sanderson's Kickstarter, the Cosmere, Sarah J. Maas, Fourth Wing, romantasy, The Witcher, Howl's Moving Castle and Wicked. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen the films; harder ones will test lifelong readers. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the books and authors, and the source line appears under each question after you answer.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what year was The Hobbit published?
1937
The Hobbit was published on 21 September 1937 by George Allen & Unwin; it was nominated for the Carnegie Medal and won a New York Herald Tribune prize for juvenile fiction.
Q 02How many dwarves accompany Bilbo and Gandalf on the quest to the Lonely Mountain?
Thirteen
Thirteen dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield's company, set out to reclaim their treasure from Smaug; Gandalf recruits Bilbo as a fourteenth member so the party avoids an unlucky number.
Q 03The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes for what reason?
Economics
Economics drove the split: with post-war paper costly, Allen & Unwin issued the book in three volumes in 1954-55 to limit risk, though Tolkien meant it as one work paired with The Silmarillion.
Q 04Roughly how many copies has The Lord of the Rings sold?
Over 150 million
The Lord of the Rings has sold over 150 million copies, making it one of the best-selling novels ever; it was written in stages between 1937 and 1949 and translated into dozens of languages.
Q 05Where was J. R. R. Tolkien born?
Bloemfontein, South Africa
Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State (now South Africa), on 3 January 1892; his mother brought him to England when he was three.
Q 06Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were both members of which Oxford literary group?
The Inklings
The Inklings were an informal Oxford literary circle of the 1930s and 1940s that met in C. S. Lewis's Magdalen College rooms and at the Eagle and Child pub; Tolkien read Lord of the Rings drafts there.
Q 07How many novels make up The Chronicles of Narnia?
Seven
Seven novels make up The Chronicles of Narnia, published between 1950 (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and 1956 (The Last Battle), all illustrated by Pauline Baynes.
Q 08Roughly how many copies have the Narnia books sold?
About 120 million
The Narnia books have sold about 120 million copies in 47 languages, placing the series among the best-selling book series ever.
Q 09A Wizard of Earthsea, the first of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, was published in which year?
1968
A Wizard of Earthsea appeared in 1968 from Parnassus Press; The Tombs of Atuan (1971) and The Farthest Shore (1972) followed, and Tehanu came in 1990.
Q 10How many main-sequence volumes did Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time reach?
14
The Wheel of Time reached 14 volumes, from The Eye of the World (1990) to A Memory of Light (2013), plus the prequel New Spring.
Q 11Who finished The Wheel of Time after Robert Jordan's death?
Brandon Sanderson
Brandon Sanderson finished The Wheel of Time from Jordan's notes after Jordan's 2007 death, splitting the planned twelfth and final book into The Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight and A Memory of Light.
Q 12The 2022 Kickstarter by the author of Mistborn to self-publish four novels raised roughly how much?
$41.7 million
Brandon Sanderson's 'Surprise! Four Secret Novels' Kickstarter raised $41.7 million from 185,341 backers in March 2022, the most-funded Kickstarter campaign to that date.
Q 13Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive are set in which shared universe?
The Cosmere
Q 21Neil Gaiman's The Sandman ran for how many issues from 1989 to 1996?
75
The Sandman ran 75 issues from January 1989 to March 1996 at DC Comics (later under its Vertigo imprint), plus a 1991 special, The Song of Orpheus.
Q 22Michael Moorcock's albino anti-hero Elric wields which soul-drinking sword?
Stormbringer
Stormbringer, a black runesword that devours souls to feed Elric strength, is both his greatest asset and his curse; its twin blade is Mournblade.
Q 23Robert E. Howard's Conan debuted in which year in the pages of Weird Tales?
1932
Conan debuted in the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales with 'The Phoenix on the Sword'; Howard kept writing the Cimmerian's adventures until his death in 1936.
The Cosmere is Brandon Sanderson's shared universe linking Mistborn, The Stormlight Archive, Elantris and Warbreaker; the wandering Hoid turns up in all of them.
Q 14George R. R. Martin began writing A Game of Thrones in 1991; when was it published?
1996
A Game of Thrones was published in August 1996 by Bantam Spectra, five years after Martin began it in 1991; it won the 1997 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Q 15A Song of Ice and Fire is set on which two continents?
Westeros and Essos
The story unfolds on Westeros, home of the Seven Kingdoms, and Essos, the eastern continent of the Free Cities and Daenerys's journey; the world itself has no official name.
Q 16How many Discworld novels did Terry Pratchett write?
41
Pratchett wrote 41 Discworld novels, from The Colour of Magic (1983) to The Shepherd's Crown, published posthumously in 2015.
Q 17The Discworld rests on the backs of four elephants standing on what?
A giant turtle
The turtle is Great A'Tuin.
Q 18Which comic novel did Pratchett co-write with Neil Gaiman in 1990?
Good Omens
Good Omens (1990), co-written by Pratchett and Gaiman, is a comedy about a bungled Apocalypse starring the angel Aziraphale and demon Crowley; Amazon adapted it for TV in 2019.
Q 19As of 2023, the Harry Potter books had sold more than how many copies, the most of any book series?
600 million
By 2023 the Harry Potter series had sold more than 600 million copies, the most of any book series; Bloomsbury published it in the UK and Scholastic in the US.
Q 20Philip Pullman's Northern Lights was published in North America under what title?
The Golden Compass
Northern Lights (1995), the first His Dark Materials book, was retitled The Golden Compass for its 1996 North American edition, after the alethiometer Lyra carries.
Q 24Who coined the term 'sword and sorcery' in a 1961 fanzine, answering a request from Michael Moorcock?
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber proposed 'sword and sorcery' in the fanzine Amra in 1961 after Moorcock asked for a name for Howard-style fantasy adventure; Leiber's own Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tales define the genre.
Q 25William Goldman's The Princess Bride is framed as an abridgement of a book by which fictional author?
S. Morgenstern
Goldman presents The Princess Bride (1973) as his 'good parts' abridgement of a book by the fictional Florinese author S. Morgenstern; Rob Reiner's 1987 film starred Cary Elwes and Robin Wright.
Q 26Dungeons & Dragons was first published in 1974 by which company?
TSR
TSR (Tactical Studies Rules), founded by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye in 1973, published the first Dungeons & Dragons set in 1974; Gygax and Dave Arneson created the game.
Q 27The Return of the King won how many Academy Awards, from as many nominations?
11
The Return of the King won all 11 of its Academy Award nominations in 2004, tying Ben-Hur and Titanic for the most wins, and was the first fantasy film to take Best Picture.
Q 28Until 2015 the World Fantasy Award trophy was a bust of which writer?
H. P. Lovecraft
The World Fantasy Award trophy was a Gahan Wilson bust of H. P. Lovecraft from the first awards in 1975 until it was retired after 2015 amid criticism of Lovecraft's racism.
Q 29N. K. Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy made her the first author to do what?
Win the Best Novel Hugo three years running
Jemisin won the Best Novel Hugo three years running for The Fifth Season (2016), The Obelisk Gate (2017) and The Stone Sky (2018), a first; she was also the first African-American author to win Best Novel.
Q 30Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, drawing on Welsh myth, consists of how many books?
Five
The Chronicles of Prydain run five books, from The Book of Three (1964) to The High King (1968), which won the 1969 Newbery Medal.