Quote Originally Posted by Corvus View Post
For epic fantasy. Other authors, like R. E. Howard, set the tone for sword & sorcery gritty fantasy.
Fritz Lieber, Moorcock, Burroughs, and the entire Arthurian cycle, Greek Mythology, Norse Mythology, and even Chinese legends (where do you think Gold dragons came from? Original D&D) and I think McCaffrey's Pern ... speculative fiction of all sorts fed it. (Lovecraft => mind flayer was apparently confirmed by E.G.G.).
Quote Originally Posted by Vahnavoi View Post
BECMI's relative dominance was largely due to receiving largest number of localizations and bulk of its sales were made during TSR era. I'd argue up until 5th edition, there were way more people who transitioned from BECMI to AD&D or only played BECMI,
That squares with what I recall
with people who transitioned from AD&D, 3.x. or 4th edition to BECMI being a drop in the ocean.
Weirdly, I did this for a few years when I introduced my kids to D&D. But as we oldsters usually do, what I actually ran was a mish mash of multiple editions. Mostly B/X with some of my AD&D 1e world stuff in it also.

Since then, WotC has made D&D's back catalogue more accessible in PDF format. So if BECMI has grown a fat tail due to digital distribution, I wouldn't know.
I got B, E, C and M off the shelf, but I also got the whole suite and some neat maps from DTRPG .pdf recently.