General / Off-Topic Lord Of The Rings - 18 Years Later

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
jasonbarron said:
I'm really struggling to think of any other fantasy epic that even came close. Tolkien's writing and grasp of the English language was superlative, whilst most of his imitators were not only derivative but also somewhat lacking in actually writing ability and flair.
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Not epic in the same way, but I think Michael Moorcock took a lot of what Tolkein and previous fantasy authors did and turned it on its head.

It was no longer good vs evil, but law vs chaos, and both sides were capable of good and evil, but mainly they were amoral. The "Elves" were not some sort of wise beings living in harmony with nature, they were decadent, cruel, sadistic, chaos worshippers. The heroes were generally not buff barbarians but in the case of Elric, a weakling wizard prince who only can live through the use of certain herbs, sorcery, or by sucking the souls of people through his sword.

What Tolkien did for mainstream fantasy Moorcock did for what might be termed alternate fantasy.

I'm not saying Moorcock was a great author. The man himself admits to being a hack and was pumping out books in the early days just to pay the bills.

Also Moorcock didn't just have an impact on fantasy, his motifs and icons can be found in music, other genres of books, and art.

He even had his own band (it wasn't that good though)


One of the bands he influenced was Hawkwind, who some might remember for their song Silver Machine or others.

They dedicated an album to his themes


Another lesser known band took their name from one of his themes as well, the Tygers of Pan Tang


Maybe you have heard of a band called Blue Oyster Cult (of Saturday Night Live cowbell sketch fame)?


As well as a number of other lesser known bands.

rideintoglory.com

Chronicle of the Black Sword: Rock and Metal Inspired by Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse

Heroic fantasy has always been a popular lyrical subject for heavy metal bands, and it’s not hard to see why. Heavy metal simply isn’t normal. You just can’t write powerful, dynamic compositions an…
rideintoglory.com rideintoglory.com

And in terms of art, Rodney Matthews' distinctive style was used for some of MM's publications, especially Elric at the End of Time

The_Duke_s_Chariot_LIMITED_EDITION_PRINT_2048x.jpg
 

Morbad

Morbad
Moorcock also accused Sapkowski of stealing Geralt's nom de guerre, "The White Wolf", and general appearance, from Elric. Which I thought was fairly silly.

Elric did come first, but "White Wolf" has been a moniker forever and fantasy albinism a trope for almost as long. The odds of a coincidence were quite high.

I do like some of Moorcock's stuff though.
 

metatheurgist

metatheurgist
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead said:
I just took one look at the size of the first one, and went "nope".
I'm not a big reader, mainly because I'm actually quite a slow reader, so even a small book can take a really long time to read, so I'd rather watch the movie version and save some time. 😁
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I've tried to read them several times but that long proooooozzzzzzzzzzz........
 

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
Lord of the rings is one of the greatest books I have read. There are not many things that come close in my view.

Most fantasy has been a poorly written rip off.

But there have been some good stuff too, but you need to find it.
 

Slange Lands

Slange Lands
Tolkien was primarily a linguist and scholar, not an author bent on entertaining others. Most of Middle-Earth was conceived for his own pleasure.

Tolkien loved myth and legend. Middle Earth was conceived as a "legendarium" for England, an obviously fantastic story in which perhaps the English could ascribe their very beginnings, akin to Genesis of The Bible. The great majority of Tolkien's output is mostly not in readable form like LoTR or The Hobbit. In other words, Tolkien's work and mainstream Fantasy/Science Fiction are not comparable.

Tolkien took the world he experienced, Oxfordshire, and attempted to distill it down to common mythical archetypes found in Western history.

Mainstream Scifi/Fantasy authors attempt to build new worlds, usually by juggling and mixing up archetypes from all over the world, e.g the Knight Errant who practices Zen meditation.

I love Peter Jackson's movies because I enjoy seeing other interpretations of The LoTR and The Hobbit...primarily the subtleties. After all, fans of Tolkien have the stories memorized.

And yes, Tolkien's English is superlative. I have read a vast amount of SciFi/Fantasy. I am willing to bet all my engineered modules that very few mainstream Scifi/Fantasy novels will survive to 3305.

Tolkien will.
 
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varonica

varonica
Slange Lands said:
Tolkien was primarily a linguist and scholar, not an author bent on entertaining others. Most of Middle-Earth was conceived for his own pleasure.
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I do recall reading somewhere that they had to practically drag it away from him to be published because he wasn't satisfied with some aspects and wanted to do a rewrite, but I suspect that's not unusual for authors, once something is published it's really to late to change it and you can always see something you aren't satisfied with.
 

jasonbarron

jasonbarron
The funny thing is, I really enjoyed all three of the original P. Jackson films in the series and still think they look great, but the Hobit trilogy was so ghastly and looked so unutterably terrible that I literally couldn't even sit through the first one. I think I made it to the part where some little gnomish dude was zooming around on a sled behind a bunch of rabbits and I just noped right out.
 

varonica

varonica
jasonbarron said:
The funny thing is, I really enjoyed all three of the original P. Jackson films in the series and still think they look great, but the Hobit trilogy was so ghastly and looked so unutterably terrible that I literally couldn't even sit through the first one. I think I made it to the part where some little gnomish dude was zooming around on a sled behind a bunch of rabbits and I just noped right out.
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I refused to watch The Hobbit after seeing the previews, now they are doing a prequel TV series!
 

Stigbob

Stigbob
jasonbarron said:
The funny thing is, I really enjoyed all three of the original P. Jackson films in the series and still think they look great, but the Hobit trilogy was so ghastly and looked so unutterably terrible that I literally couldn't even sit through the first one. I think I made it to the part where some little gnomish dude was zooming around on a sled behind a bunch of rabbits and I just noped right out.
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To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins. It felt thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.
 
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