Don't forget the wolves. Fant geeks have a thing for wolves too... must be the Belgarath in us all:)

Woof™.

By our cars!

You can recognize a fantasy reader when they are absorbed in an 800-page paperback on the subway. Very little mainstream fiction looks like like WoT/Game of Thrones/Malazan/Tad Williams at a distance. My favorite occurrence of this was actually seeing someone reading WoT on a Kindle; he happened to be at the beginning of a chapter and I saw the harp icon over his shoulder. :-P

hmmm,

Daughter named Avienda
online name of "alSeen"
rotating dragon, starwars, and other tor.com wallpapers

Our good looks, suave personas, and massive reproductive organs.
(This is fantasy, right?)

If I'm at a party, I just use the word "grok" or "mathom" in a sentence. It's the secret handshake, and it brings the readers out of the woodwork.

To build somewhat on thumbelinablues's comment... Ever since I started working at Tor.com I have seen nothing but science fiction and fantasy novel readers on the subway. In fact, in my very first week here I unwittingly sat down next to a young girl finishing Mistborn as someone at the other end of the car was cracking open a David Weber paperback. Since then I regularly see SFF books on the train. The people reading these books almost never fit the stereotype one would expect, even if the book covers and fonts always do.

I'm not sure if it's a genuine coincidence or simply causation. It does seem to come in waves. When Watchmen was coming out I saw that book all over and these past couple weeks I've seen more than a few people rereading Deathly Hallows.

When it's not undies, it's small-clothes.

You can rocognise a fantasy reader by their exceptionally well defined wrist muscles...

Holding up a hardback Erikson, Jordan or Wolfe for hours on end is hard work.*

* I know where your mind went before my qualifying comment. Make no mistake, I'm judging you, you filthy minded wretch. ;-)

Ok, the dragon jewelry is totally valid since I wear a dragon ring and my brother wears a dragon necklace all the time.

I can tell by how closely they look at the bookshelf in my living room. My roommate commented recently that she didn't realize so many of her friends were fantasy readers :)

GAH!

@I_Slap_Raptors - #9 That should, of course, read "recognise a fantasy reader by"

Rocognise, as everyone knows, refers to the process of turning someone into a very large mythological bird. My bad.

Their email addresses, their pets' names, their bumper stickers(Starfleet Academy?), the stuff scattered about their desks at work.

My husband plays Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft etc, calls himself Runeflame, wears a dragon ring and sometimes a cape, has a whole room full of fantasy books, and gets all the jokes on Big Bang Theory, but protested the other day that he is not a geek - he also acts in Shakespearean plays. Yes darling, the whole gamut of the non-geek lifestyle.

(PS I do all this stuff too. And our kid's middle names are Evenstar and Pendragon.)