I, like most here, have read a lot of fantasy books by many authors. What I have found is that everything original has seemed to have faded from the newest fantasy writings. I find that authors today have lost the fresh imagination that writers such as Tolkien and C.S. Lewis had when they wrote their books.
It seems that many, not all, writers today make up for their lukewarm efforts by adding many, to extreme amounts of sex, foul language, and adult situations. It appears that the days of dragons, elves, and examples of honor and goodness have been exchanged for base examples of human crud. Even the heros in today's books act in a manner that you and I would never act.
I think these are reasons why the majority of fantasy today is junk. Tavern girls and swearing soldiers have their place, but not as the main characters in every book.
I believe that fantasy has changed from one of the richest types of writing to one of the muddiest to read.

There is more to writing fantasy than merely going back to the year 900 A.D and adding magic.

Thoughts?

Not always. Take a look at Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series.


Not really. There are only so many words and so many different combinations they can be used in. Just as there are only so many idea's one can have. It follows logically, that any two authors, completely dissimilar, never having read the others work, will come up with similar idea's and concepts. Its called coincidence.


Women ARE stronger, at least mentally. This has been scientifically proven. Why shouldn't literature follow reality?


Yes, it is a good story. Its well written and posesses a great depth. However, I don't consider it to be the best. Its fame, and this is purely my opinion, stems from the fact that it is the first commercially published article of high fantasy. I wonder, if it were not the first, would it truly be as popular?

How can it not be the first? Without JRRT, fantasy wouldn't even have existed. If JRRT had died in the WWI trenches, fantasy would not exist, as JRRT wouldn't have pioneered it. No offense, but your question is just absurd.

And i don't think so many ppl have read LOTR because it is the first fantasy novel ever written. I think it is so popular because it's one of the best stories ever put to paper. No other contemporary fantasy novel has such a powerful, complex story with a complete history and background behind it. JRRT didn't just write a story, he created a world. JRRT didn't see himself as a writer, but more as a historian, a historian of a fantasy world.

LOTR is a whole world, with different races and languages, each race having its own history. This is exactly the fact why LOTR is so popular and why LOTR is superior to any other fantasy novels who appeared after LOTR. All other fantasy is just air compared with JRRT. When i read LOTR, i can really imagine that world to be real. Hasn't happened with any other fantasy books i've read until today, but i'll keep on trying!


No indeed, really.

In fact, to give an example : every contemporary fantasy novel with Elves, Trolls, Dwarves and what not in, is already based on something JRRT wrote, because JRRT was the first author who ever wrote a story with Dwarves, Elves, Trolls, Orcs, etc in. The fact that so many contemporary high fantasy novels have Elves, Dwarves, Trolls etc in, is not coincidence. JRRT was the first author who put Elves, Dwarves, etc into a story; ppl called it "fantasy". Then writers after JRRT --Terry Brooks was the first who wrote a fantasy novel after LOTR i believe -- thought "hey, i want to write a fantasy novel. What's fantasy again? Ah, the stuff with Elves, Dwarves, etc in. So if i wanna write a fantasy novel, i have to put those guys in!". Not to mention, Terry Brooks's Sword of Shannara is almost a carbon copy of LOTR.

Most contemporary fantasy novels involve a) a quest of good vs evil, b) involve powerful artifacts and c) from zero to hero and d) elves, trolls, dwarves, fairies,... and JRRT is the first ever who wrote a story, who invented a story, involving all those elements. All fantasy authors who came after him wrote a story involving all/some/at least one of those elements. So, you could say the typical "contemporary fantasy novel" elements are or based or developed further from what JRRT wrote.


"Rohan" winter. Rohan is a word taken from LOTR, written by JRRT. ;-) How imaginative that Michael took that word from Tolkien. Addleshaw Goddard : ATTACK!!!


Well obviously, i didn't mean that. I meant Xenarwen-like women.

Probably Feminist Magazine?


Bobby Fischer would've laughed heartily at that and would've said : "I can beat every woman even if i'd give them knight odds."

As we already have the best fantasy novel ever written, being Lord of the Rings, i don't see why they should keep on trying to mimic the genius. Why don't they try to prove that (wo)men are better than (wo)men instead? Probably because they need to earn a living of it. Keep spawning the books!!


The chessman Robert James "Bobby" Fischer. I didn't know there was more than one. Actually, there isn't. :-P


Well of course. Never heard of Big Bang and inflation?

*sigh* Is this where this site is going? Would it not be a better idea to post a post pointing in the direction you want it to go?

Apparently some ppl delibaretely want to push posts into a direction so it can become an argument, eh Milambar? (i will do some namecalling just as you in your previous post) Next time you post something, try to add something constructive to the discussion, instead of picking on everything someone posts and by adding your own opinions trying to prove another opinion wrong. And very smart of you, starting an argument and then saying from your high chair you're leaving.

Check facts? you haven't mentioned one fact in your previous post. You consider the list of books you posted there fantasy? Good for you then. Perhaps i should've said JRRT wrote the first "high fantasy novel", then to avoid the nitpick eh. Concerning Rohan, apparently you missed my ;-) ;-) ;-) *wink* !! *wink* !! in my previous post, which i added to show i was tongue-in-cheek instead of nitpicking.

I have read sword of shannara, otherwise i wouldn't be making comments about it. Try not to assume what ppl do or not do, but just ask ppl if you don't know.

What? JRRT wasn't the first who put dwarves or elves or orcs into a story? i wasn't talking about that. I was saying in my previous post JRRT was the first who put dwarves AND elves AND orcs etc in a story, alas the first high fantasy novel. Maybe my previous post was not clear enough due to the fact English is not my mother tongue. And btw : you yourself said in your first nitpick that JRRT was the first : So what made you change suddenly? Just to me annoy me, eh? Well you've succeeded.

I'll cease posting in this thread as well. There has already been enough topics closed and enough turmoil on this forum, in which i regret also to have had my share. I throw in the towel as well. I've had enough. Cheers, "sweetie".

I have to say I agree with Vir - not only is the writing superb but the whole background is woven so well around the characters that it is real. This is why I never thought of it as fantasy. For me the whole thing is real.

(Come on guys, we've had enough headbutting in here for a while - chill please. Pretty please?)

I don't think it's so much a case of failing to reach the high standards set by Tolkien, rather one of trying too hard. A lot of writers compare themselves to Tolkien too much. If they forgot about that and concentrated on doing something more original, the results would be much better.

It's hard to say who or what is the greatest in any field, because this question is so subjective the answer is different for every person. Still, i think it's safe to say it is one of the greatest books ever written then, definately a classic piece of literature which deserves its place among the great works who belong to the cultural heritage of the world.

The fact that LOTR and other works written by JRRT are so superior over modern fantasy, is the fact that most modern fantasy is not literature, mostly just books written to entertain the ppl and to cash-in, to make a living of it. JRRT didn't write LOTR because he wanted to make money, no because he just was very interested in creating a world, giving that world a history and sharing this history with us, readers. Did Goethe write Faust to cash-in or to entertain? Did Da Vinci paint the Mona Lisa to cash-in or to entertain? No, they and others did what they did because they just longed to create something and share that creation with the rest of the world.

Few writers today write a story because of the story itself. There are some of course, but very few. And certainly very very few in the fantasy genre.

You hit it Grev

What Tolkien did was to create the world where the legends and mythologies and religions we have now came from (well could have come from). Using present day knowledge of the so many mythologies of the world he created where all these things had its origin. With the passing of the ages humans began to forget the real story, though parts remainded. The valar, so simmular to norse gods and greek/roman gods, one almighty God, trolls, dragons, elves, dwarves..

He didn't create fantasy, he created history.

Men are better than women at some things, women are better than men at other things. Mens brains are bigger, but women have more connections between the different parts of the brain, and blablabla men this women that. The one is not better than the other. Mother Nature creates ballance and Mother knows best.

The name "Rohan" is also the name of a French aristocratic family (one de Rohan was a famous Marechal of France!).
As for fantasy genre, every Tolkien lover should go and read the "romances" of WIlliam Morris. In particular, The Well at the World's End, The Water of the Wondrous Isles, The House of the Wolfings, The Story of The Glittering Plain... They are all online, you can find them quite easily with Google. You will be astonished how many details known from Tolkien books can be found there. The style of Morris is extremely archaic, but his manner of "painting with words", of using well chosen details to dreate a dreamlike reality, is very very Tolkienish! Tolkien himself acknowledeged that he was influenced by the writings of Morris...

True as that may be, Tolkien's genius will inspire more and more writers taking ideas from Tolkine so if that happens, Tolkien's genius will dissapate, and we will have thousands of mini-Tolkiens saying that they didn't copy ideas.
~Celebrimbor

Of course Tolkien is not the best. He's the very best.

I have read and enjoyed most of the books in Eva lilith's above list. I would also include William Morris's The Wood Beyond the World (1894) and The Well at the World's End (1896). Both can be read online, if you google them. William Morris was a Renaissance man.

The new mantra is "better late than never."

Oo, oo, I know one that doesn’t! In Wheel of Time the plot is not a quest of good vs.evil (though there are several of these in the course of the narrative, but the Eye of the World alone isn’t really resolved like a traditional ’quest;’ there’s actually a debate about whether it was handled as meant to be.) There’s a conflict between them, but I think that is essential to Epic Fantasy. Powerful artifacts exist, but I can only think of three, and they aren’t really essential to the story (some might say one inhibits it due to its flaw.) I take it back four, though in that case it was more a matter of "OK, we're not all doomed anymore. Well, not automatically. Back to saving the world."

Zero to hero, well, the main characters start out as teenagers on the threshold of adulthood, so some of that’s inevitable. Elves=0,trolls, well, yeah, trollocs, but the only resemblance they have to trolls is they’re evil and share the name in a different form, which is a feature of WoT (unless Egwene Al’Vere has the same identity as Gueniviere, and I haven’t noticed it yet,) dwarves=0, fairies=0. There’s the Ogier, but you didn’t mention them and Tolkien didn’t either, and once again, in typical WoT fashion, without the name there’d be almost no similarity to ’ogres’ at all. Maybe if Shrek was a monk.

A large part of the charm for me is the way he takes traditional relationships we know by heart and says, ’what if it was different?’ No more derivative of Tolkien than the question about the duel between Mossk and Merk is derivative of the Cold War (took me a while to see that one, but Guinevere was so mangled and so different I didn’t see her at first either.) Ffakes you out though, using what you ’know’ against you.)

Couple other things, these just the ones I noticed in a particular post:

I can’t speak for all the others; I believe Lieber did predate Tolkiens work, if not by much (though Tolkien was creating Middle-Earth long before his publication, if not its inception; totally different scale regardless,) but the initial publication date of The Once and Future King (an excellent work) was ’58, and I believe RotK was in ’57 (or maybe it was FotR in ’57 and RotK was ’59, it’s been too long since I ’found out.’)

How much Tolkiens Elves are derived from the Norse mythos remains to be seen; there are certainly characteristics, such as the various names borrowed from’ hmmm, I wanna say the Elder Edda, but I don’t think that’s right. Song of the Wanderer? However, there’s no question about Elves entering English culture from there; it just didn’t happen. That’s a Celtic thing that precedes the arrival of the Angles and Saxons by over a millenium, and more like two, really. How big a role this legacy plays in Tolkien versus that of Scandinavia is hard to tell; I don’t know of any appearance by Aval(l)on(’) in the Norse sagas.

Of course, if we deny the origin of fantasy to Tolkien due to these the honor goes at best to Mallory (who seems to have been more of an editor than a writer,) and at worst to the creator of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was long before it was written down (was the Odyssey plagarized? The Aeneid? The Divine Comdey? Come on, one of 'em's gotta be: they're all the same story). The problem is these aren’t ’fantasy’ they’re ’myth.’ For one thing, they weren’t the creation of a single individual, but of an entire culture.

Like most people, LotR was the first fantasy I read, and unlike Vee I went ’Wow! This stuff is great I’m gonna read it all.’ Not everyone is the Oxford Professor of English though, and I found out the hard way most fantasy authors are derivative Tolkien hacks. Thus, I read very little fantasy; it needs exceptional word of mouth, and to read much of a series it had better impress me in the first one or two books. Stuff like that is hard to find, but a few things qualify. I DID find Shannara derivative (if Alannons name had a few less different letters it WOULD be a plagiarism case) and it didn’t take long before I said ’NEXT!’ The Belgariad stood on its own for me, despite the resemblance of Belgarion to a certain other ancient wizard who steered the fate of the realm.

There’s a certain problem of incestuous relationships; Tolkien is the reason D&D exists, and too many have decided ’Well, I worked my character up to Archmage [’cos your DM hands out magic items like candy so Tarasques have to come in herds to be a challenge] so I can write a great fantasy novel’ or ’I’ve created adventures/modules; that’s the same thing, right?’

BTW, based on their assessment of my AP English test, the College Board thinks LotR is ’a work of recognized literary merit.’ Fantastic is an adjective already; you don’t have to make it one.

I’m pulling this in by way of backtrack. ’With the passing of ages humans began to forget the real story, though parts remained.’ Compare with
That one's from Fires of Heaven, my fave, with huge sentimental value, but they all start the same way but you replace "a wind rose in the great forest called Braem Wood" with a different butterfly effect like event in a different place.

In addition, there’s the One Power, in a male and female half (traditionally represented by a symbol suspiciously like that of a Far Eastern religion; of course no one uses this now because of the taint on saidin, the male half, and usually we see only the ’flame’ (white part tapering up, like a flame) of saidar, the female half.) It’s split into five threads, corresponding to the five ’elements’ of traditional mysticism/magic. Men TEND to be stronger in Earth and Fire; women tend to be stronger in Water and Air. Either can be equally strong in Spirit, and the most powerful are strong in most, if not all threads.

Thought this was an interesting wee thread, I tried to read it all but it got a little long winded, any who, I'm not sure if anyone has made the point I'm about to make and if they have I sincerely apologize.

What I think we're all forgetting is that Tolkien spent practically his entire life creating his world, In fact his main life's work he started in the trenches was so detailed, so long he never completed it, I'm not sure of the actual time frame but I'm guessing be spent around 60 years building his world. It wasn't at all unheard of for him to scrap hundreds of pages and start again if he wasn't happy with what he'd written, he was a perfectionist.
The point I'm trying to make is no wonder his world is so rich and detailed, it takes a massive amount of dedication and a special kind of person to be able to do that, and I personally don't feel any other Fantasy writer has even come close to such a detailed and rich story as Tolkien.

But, I have to say that personally I just cannot read his works, I get bored and I feel I have to force myself to read it, and you should never have to do that when reading a good story. But I guess that says a lot more about me that the Professor yeah??

It's embarassing to see some of the garbage I wrote six years ago.

It's not garbage Vir. A lot of the materials here are interesting to read. But to be fair some of the new members are not familiar with your sarcasm

But we have come to love that down the years and your posts are always interesting and/or funny

Added to that the fact that many children and teens don't know a large vocabulary other than cursing, no fault of their own, and you have someone who might look at the works of Tolkien as a chore, something daunting instead of a fabulous journey into an awesome world.

 I give children more credit than you I think, leelee, though it is true not all children are into literature, never have been. Even with those who cuss a lot there is often much intelligence. Cussing doesn't faze me much, I try to look deeper.

As to reading Tolkien as a chore, I had The Hobbit in Year Seven on my school study list. Had no interest in reading it, being too much involved in getting around school rules and thumbing my nose at teachers I did not respect much - not all of them, I hasten to say, just the do as I say not as I do types. I was no stranger to corporal punishment.

Anyway, in the Christmas Holidays at the end of that year, being extremely bored one day (and attracted by Tolkiens drawing of Smaug over Lake Town on its cover), I gave it a try - and loved it. The love affair has not ended yet.

Whether Tolkien is on book lists or not, indeed, whether it's "literature" or not is unimportant to me. His works will always have readers (I hope), both high brow and low brow, both intellectuals and casual adventure fans. There in lies his greatness, I think.