EUOLogy #17

[Mistress of Darkness]

Skar just made this point in his previous post while I was writing mine.

Oddly enough, a lot of what I said, Kije posted as I was writing my post. Still, I spent a lot of time drafting it, and so I'll leave it as it stands.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I think, EUOL, that if Tolkien had not written and made fantasy a much more economically viable option, that the copycats would have either
a) found something else to copy. Perhaps we'd have a billion more Conan clones out there instead.
b) written another genre. Perhaps copying Louis Lamour?
c) not written at all. Brooks, did after all, have a successful career in law. We should thank his Tolkien copying for giving him the opportunity to be able to write other stuff later.

I still disagree with your interpretation of TOlkien being the most important by far force in this development. i think there are far to many other significant contributors to draw these conclusions.

[Fellfrosch]

I think it's interesting that you mention westerns, SE, because I see those as a very similar situation in many ways. Just about every western movie or novel is based in the same period of history, sometimes called the cattle-drive period, which lasted for maybe 6 years. If you include the elegiac, "cowboy adapting to a civilized world" period, you add maybe four. That's ten years of American history that were so evocative and so compelling and so rich with possibility and atmosphere that they have defined a completely disproportionate chunk of our art and culture. And yet nobody ever complains about how all Westerns are the same, because that is all we really want our westerns to be.

Fantasy is suffering from the same problem--a single event abnormally shaping everything to come after--and yet fantasy is, by nature, about the discovery of the unknown so the limitations feel wrong.

I actually wonder if D&D might be more to blame than Tolkien, because it's responsible in large part for the institutionalization of Tolkien's creations: he made it, but D&D ingrained it in our minds.

[Oldie Black Witch]

The publication of The Lord of the Rings was, perhaps, the worst thing that has ever happened to fantasy literature. . . I’d say he was about fifty years ahead of his time.

Let's see . . . Fellowship of the Ring was originally published in the US on 21 October 1954, making it just over fifty years since then. So, what you're really saying is "Darn you! I wanted to be first!"

[42]

I think that's exactly what he's getting at, Old One.

All artistic movements get their frontmen/women. There are various reason why these individuals get seperated out. Then there are always a lot of copycats, but that is how the movement evolves.

Copycats are kind of a checks and balance for an artistic movement. They help define what makes a movement great and what doesn't.

And there are stigma's that get formed, and it takes another major frontman/woman to break those stigmas. But the fantasy genre is actually relatively new. In theory, a new ground-breaking movement in the genre could actually kill the movement more than adhering to a established precedent.

In many ways, all those who copy tolkien, keep the fantasy genre from being something more than just a fad.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

*whistling innocently*

(Why does brandonsanderson.com's front page now have no text?)

*whistling innocently*

[stacer]

I was wondering that myself.

[EUOL]

Let's see . . . Fellowship of the Ring was originally published in the US on 21 October 1954, making it just over fifty years since then. So, what you're really saying is "Darn you! I wanted to be first!"

I most certainly wouldn't have been first, Old One.  However, the thing is, nobody would have been 'first.'

Kije and I talked about it last night, and the second person we could come up with who had true high fantasy was probably Morcock.  Can you see his books creating the following that Tolkien did?  I sure can't.  Eleric is too edgy, too underground, too...discomforting to have produced this kind of effect.  

Nobody would have been 'first.'  The community was slowly progressing, learning, and working toward true high fantasy.  Then Tolkien came along and skipped six or seven steps in the progression.  Suddenly, everybody was forced to try and emulate him--but they didn't have the groundwork (those six or seven steps) to do it effectively.  So, everything turned out to be Tolkien clones rather than original high fantasy.  


As for bs.com...we're updating things at the moment, and should get to some new formatting in a bit.  

[MsFish]

I think you give people too much credit.  If Tolkein hadn't been there to copy, then those writers would have copied someone else, not come up with original ideas.  If they'd been up to creating original ideas, they would have done it, Tolkein or no Tolkein.  

Fact is, most people don't come up with original ideas. Someone always has to be first, because the general populace spend their lives copying what they see.  

[42]

I guess in some ways I don't really get what you are trying to prove.

Yes the fantasy genre would be different without Tolkein. However, you can't prove that it would be better than it is now.

It is entirely possible that there would be no fantasy genre without Tolkein. I can easily see the Science Fiction and Space Opera genre's taking over the market.

Part of me thinks that you are trying to redefine how the fantasy genre has been defined. That's okay, but after so much redefinition, you eventually find that you've created something entirely different.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I fail to see why it is a " Very Bad Thing." as written in the introduction of the article.

Tolkien was a genius, but no more so then geniuses in any other Genre. Was fiction ruined by Hemingway or Steinbeck? How many people try to copy them? Thousands I would think. If Tolkien hadnt been there the copiers would have mimiced Fritz Lieber, or Howard and C.S. Lewis. Incedentally I think you sell Lewis short in your column. Personally I would never consider Narnia to be Low fantasy.

What fantasy is waiting for is the next Tolkien, and while you say the bar is now impossibly high I dont think it is. What fantasy needs is a person as creative as Tolkien. The problem is we may not know if someone has accomplished the goal of topping Tolkien for 10 years or more.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

Note, however, that the blurb on the front page, which is where it says "Very Bad Thing" is written by me, and is my interpretation, often my exaggeration, of the author's viewpoint.  I like to be sensational to grab people's interest, but my words should not be interpretted as a completely acurrate account of EUOL's ideas.

Though he does say it may be "the worst thing" in his own article. So my disclaimer here has little direct bearing on Jeffe's actual point.

[Fellfrosch]

What I would really like to see now is a study of other genres and how they developed, to get an idea of the six or seven steps that fantasy skipped. I don't expect that to surface here, of course--that's doctoral thesis material--but it's a fascinating concept.

Back to the topic at hand: I agree with the basic premise that LotR does not represent an accelerated evolution of the fantasy genre, only that we have come to think of it that way because we like it so much. I submit that the main effect of LotR, in terms of warping the genre, was to so definitively separate the realms of magic and technology--just because of the way the market works, you're not really allowed to have both. I think that if not for LotR, fantasy/sci-fi would be much more closely related, along the lines of Dune.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I think that if not for LotR, fantasy/sci-fi would be much more closely related, along the lines of Dune.

Or much Space Opera. We often refer to Star Wars as something like a Fantasy dressed up like a Science Fiction flick. One of the biggest complaints about the prequels is that the try to reduce The Force to a scientific principle. Here again we see magic/sf fused. A lot of video games also do the fusion these days, like Final Fantasy. Perhaps we'll begin seeing more of that as the genre expands and develops.

I want to also note that this fustion is something we also see frequently in superheroes. THere's usually a pseudo-scientific reason for the origin (he's from a distant planet and his powers come from a reaction to our sun, or gamma radiation, or what have you) but there is always the possibility for magic. Wonder Woman is made by a goddess out of clay, Superman is vulnerable to magic, Captain Marvel says a magic word, and so on. Perhaps superheroes would have been easier for us to still swallow if it weren't for Tolkien, who knows?

[stacer]

I never knew that about WonderWoman.