Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Sun Jan 02, 2011 11:55 pm**

Horrim Carabal wrote:My favorite fantasy authors besides SRD (who is #1) are:

Guy Gavriel Kay, and
Steven Erikson

I also enjoy G. R. R. Martin and Tad Williams at times. Stephen King is surprisingly good as well, Eyes of the Dragon being case in point (although the later books in the Dark Tower sucked).

Favorite series?

Erikson - Malazan Books
Kay - Fionavar, Sarantine Mosaic
Martin - Song of Ice and Fire
Williams - Otherland & MST

My least favorite fantasy author would have to be Eddings.

Don't like what I've read of Jordan, either....but that wasn't a big sample size.

And I'm not a huge Tolkien fan. Everyone in fantasy owes him a debt, but his dry, emotionless writing style leaves me cold.

Now you know what a dry, emotionless professor Tolkien was. But I noticed you didn't mention Elric.

Posted: **Thu Jan 06, 2011 12:02 pm**

I'm going to stick up for good ole JRR here - yes he was a major league academic, as is shown by his being able to create an entirely linguistically correct series of languages. A little dry, maybe, and possibly a little OCD, but emotionless? Hardly. I reckon the Eagle & Child pub in Oxford must have been a rocking joint in the 30s and 40s, what with JRR, CS Lewis and others as regulars.

As for my favourite authors, apart from SRD, here's a quick list.

Terry Pratchett - The DiscWorld series (the man can do no wrong - both clever and laugh out loud stuff).
Julian May - The Saga of the Exiles (engrossing).
Roger Zelazny - The Amber series (of its time but still eminently readable - think Easy Rider meets an LSD trip).
Michael Moorcock - The Elric and the Corum series (ditto of its time and ditto eminently readable with the archetypal fantasy anti-hero).
Ursula K Leguin - The Earthsea Quartet (atmospheric grandeur).
JRR Tolkien - LOTR and the Sell-a-Million (tribute where it's due).

Posted: **Thu Jan 06, 2011 12:51 pm**

The Earthsea quartet continued some years later. There's a short story called Dragonfly, followed by The Other Wind. Dragonfly is in a collection called Tales From Earthsea, which has many other (fantastic!) stories that are tangents to the main series.

One of the admins here, danlo, has a site called Ahira's Hangar. One of the forums there is The Immanent Grove. Another forum is The Archives of Roke, where we're dissecting the Earthsea books. Stop in!

Posted: **Thu Jan 06, 2011 1:50 pm**

Y'all will never guess.

Posted: **Thu Jan 06, 2011 4:03 pm**

Right now, so long as he doesn't screw it up, Erikson's Malazan series. I also enjoyed Peake's Titus novels.

Posted: **Sat Jan 08, 2011 4:09 pm**

Lord Zombiac wrote: non-fiction:
Terrence McKenna

I'm a big fan of Archaic Revival. The experiences he talks about in that book are all too familiar.

As for the thread subject ... Tolkien. I don't understand how he can't be second or first on anyone's list. Dry? Unemotional? I don't get that at all. His writing contains some of the richest, most moving words I've ever read.

Posted: **Sat Jan 08, 2011 4:31 pm**

Zarathustra wrote:
Lord Zombiac wrote: non-fiction:
Terrence McKenna
I'm a big fan of Archaic Revival. The experiences he talks about in that book are all too familiar.

As for the thread subject ... Tolkien. I don't understand how he can't be second or first on anyone's list. Dry? Unemotional? I don't get that at all. His writing contains some of the richest, most moving words I've ever read.

When I was 17 the series was enjoyable enough up to the beginning of Return. I told a friend the speeches were about the most boring thing I ever read, and he replied that his experience was just the opposite. YMMV.

Posted: **Sat Jan 08, 2011 5:20 pm**

Zarathustra wrote:
Lord Zombiac wrote: As for the thread subject ... Tolkien. I don't understand how he can't be second or first on anyone's list. Dry? Unemotional? I don't get that at all. His writing contains some of the richest, most moving words I've ever read.
Dry and unemotional when it comes to his characters.

Imagine if SRD had written LotR. Whatever difficiencies would exist compared to Tolkien's version, can you imagine the characters emotional inner landscape? What SRD could do with those people and hobbits?

This is what Tolkien lacks.

Posted: **Sat Jan 08, 2011 5:28 pm**

Horrim Carabal wrote:
Zarathustra wrote:
Lord Zombiac wrote: As for the thread subject ... Tolkien. I don't understand how he can't be second or first on anyone's list. Dry? Unemotional? I don't get that at all. His writing contains some of the richest, most moving words I've ever read.
Dry and unemotional when it comes to his characters.

Imagine if SRD had written LotR. Whatever difficiencies would exist compared to Tolkien's version, can you imagine the characters emotional inner landscape? What SRD could do with those people and hobbits?

This is what Tolkien lacks.

Yes, Tolkien is not lacking in two-dimensional characterization. I was going to ask him "rich in comparison to Donaldson?" But I did not consider that to be a fair question because the answer is so obvious.

Tolkien did weave a rich tapestry of history and geography. On the other hand, Tolkien was writing for a vastly different audience than Donaldson, a crowd that was interested in dry subjects such as history and geography, and let's not forget the long-winded pre-battle speeches. That's why I ended with YMMV.

Posted: **Sat Jan 08, 2011 6:06 pm**

Zarathustra wrote: As for the thread subject ... Tolkien. I don't understand how he can't be second or first on anyone's list. Dry? Unemotional? I don't get that at all. His writing contains some of the richest, most moving words I've ever read.

At some points, I agree [for instance, Gandalf's speech that ends "For I, too, am a steward. Did you not know?" is an obvious, and justly famous, one.]
But, much like Dickens, there's so much where I feel like I'm wading through pudding.
There's a lot to respect/appreciate in their works...but I don't enjoy, or become immersed in them.

But, it just popped into my head, when I was quite young I was really attached to...damn...the books with Camber, and Dernyi (sp?).....Kurtz? I haven't read one in years...I wonder if they were actually good, or just a phase I was in?

Posted: **Sat Jan 08, 2011 6:28 pm**

Vraith wrote:
Zarathustra wrote: As for the thread subject ... Tolkien. I don't understand how he can't be second or first on anyone's list. Dry? Unemotional? I don't get that at all. His writing contains some of the richest, most moving words I've ever read.
At some points, I agree [for instance, Gandalf's speech that ends "For I, too, am a steward. Did you not know?" is an obvious, and justly famous, one.]
But, much like Dickens, there's so much where I feel like I'm wading through pudding.
There's a lot to respect/appreciate in their works...but I don't enjoy, or become immersed in them.

But, it just popped into my head, when I was quite young I was really attached to...damn...the books with Camber, and Dernyi (sp?).....Kurtz? I haven't read one in years...I wonder if they were actually good, or just a phase I was in?

Phase.

That would make a good poll question.

Posted: **Sat Jan 08, 2011 6:34 pm**

The only LoTR character I care about is Samwise, who represents indomitable [inner] strength and loyalty. Tolkien outdid himself there. As for my favorite non-SRD fantasy? Hmm, it's been so long, but I would have to say Moorcock's Elric saga.

Posted: **Mon Jan 10, 2011 12:39 pm**

Zarathustra wrote:As for the thread subject ... Tolkien. I don't understand how he can't be second or first on anyone's list. Dry? Unemotional? I don't get that at all. His writing contains some of the richest, most moving words I've ever read.

I'm in complete agreement with Zara here - and I'd go further. Once you get down to the nuts and bolts, it's nigh on impossible to fairly compare JRRT with SRD... you might as well criticize Rembrandt for being not such a good landscape painter as Monet, or Leonardo da Vinci for being a rubbish sculptor, compared to Michelangelo. It's not what they were trying to be.

Tolkien's achievement is in creating a world that is realised down to its last multi-cultural detail (pre-history, multiple histories, multiple languages and so on) and giving us an epic that ranks literarily alongside the Older and Younger Eddas, the Iliad & Odyssey, Paradise Lost & Regained. That should not be dismissed so lightly. The fact that JRRT gets it all to hang together in such detail is an awe-inspiring achievement.

SRD on the other hand is far more about psychology and investigating the moral dilemmas of his protagonists against a fantasy background that may or may not be real - that bit doesn't matter. This doesn't de facto make him a better or worse writer (although it may make him a more modern one - I don't remember much psychological conflict within The Fall of Troy, for example) - it just makes him a different one, working with an entirely different palette set towards entirely different ends.

And you have to wonder, without JRRT breaking the ground 70 years ago, how many of the authors we variously respect would have been able to create as they have?

Mind you, I always disliked Sam Gamgee intensely...

PS Vraith - Katherine Kurtz. The Deryni Chronicles, The Legends of Camber of Culdi and many more. Books I also really enjoyed when I read them thirty years ago, but something I think should be left in my fond memories, because I've got a sneaking suspicion that, if I went back to them, I'd be largely disappointed.

Posted: **Mon Jan 10, 2011 2:45 pm**

Horrim Carabal wrote:Dry and unemotional when it comes to his characters.

I'll give you that. But only if we're talking about LOTR. Have you read the Silmarillion? Do you know Turin's story? Beren and Luthien? Feanor? These are not dry and unemotional people. The entire fate of Elves and men were changed because of their passions.

Horrim Carabal wrote:Imagine if SRD had written LotR. Whatever difficiencies would exist compared to Tolkien's version, can you imagine the characters emotional inner landscape? What SRD could do with those people and hobbits?

It would be painful, that's for sure. In good ways, and bad. Sam and Frodo's trek to Mount Doom would have been 3000 pages of Frodo obsessing over the ring and Sam's latent lust for Frodo.

Horrim Carabal wrote:This is what Tolkien lacks.

Thankfully.

Donaldson is my favorite author because of what he does with characters. So the point isn't lost on me. I do think he's much better than Tolkien. But as TheFallen said (much better than I did) they were attempting two entirely different goals. My dissatisfaction with the 100s of pages of introspective self-recrimination in AATE has shown me that you can certainly go too far to the Donaldson side of the characterization vs world-building scale ... which is something I never thought was possible before reading that book. It has caused me to recalibrate that scale, at least for my own personal tastes.

Posted: **Mon Jan 10, 2011 8:18 pm**

TheFallen wrote:
Mind you, I always disliked Sam Gamgee intensely...

Is there any real distinction between "intense dislike" and "hate"?

Samwise does have certain disquieting aspects, although they are entirely harmless ones, and without him Frodo never would have succeeded. But don't we deserve to be given a reason for your intense dislike or hatred? After all, I gave you my reason for caring about that particular character.

Posted: **Mon Jan 10, 2011 10:29 pm**

Ursula Le Guin's earthsea series is my favourite other fantasy series.

Posted: **Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:45 pm**

Mr. Worm, I should probably have rather said that I find Sam intensely irritating, ironically enough for the very same reasons that you like him. He shows nothing but dumb overweening loyalty and forelock-tugging subservience - it's his sole defining characteristic, the two dimensional cretinous buffoon.

Posted: **Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:57 pm**

TheFallen wrote:Mr. Worm, I should probably have rather said that I find Sam intensely irritating, ironically enough for the very same reasons that you like him. He shows nothing but dumb overweening loyalty and forelock-tugging subservience - it's his sole defining characteristic, the two dimensional cretinous buffoon.

I've never heard of forelock-tugging before.

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 1:42 am**

mcnpauls wrote:Ursula Le Guin's earthsea series is my favourite other fantasy series.

See my above post.

Posted: **Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:07 am**

TheFallen wrote:Mr. Worm, I should probably have rather said that I find Sam intensely irritating, ironically enough for the very same reasons that you like him. He shows nothing but dumb overweening loyalty and forelock-tugging subservience - it's his sole defining characteristic, the two dimensional cretinous buffoon.

Yeah, I have to agree to a large extent. Part of it is a consequence of the time that the story was written probably, and the then-current and recently past conventions, but he does annoy me a lot of the time.

--A

Kevin's Watch

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