This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings
6 comments
She makes a lot of assertive statements with no real evidence to back it up. Not sure what to make of it.
"Tolkien wasn't anything special."
"Why hasn't there been another Tolkien??!?!?"
Kind of implies the first statement is false.
I would argue we DID have another Tolkien after Tolkien, he just wasn't writing books. If you want to talk about a fantasy with a massive cultural impact, you don't have to go farther than Star Wars.
“Tolkien wasn’t anything special.”
Yeah, I kind of wasn't sure what to make of that statement either. I agreed with almost all of what she had to say, and I thought it was a really cutting diagnosis of why the speculative fiction genre went from being so wild and inventive up until sometime in the 70s, with literary merit and wonderful to read, into being a pretty boring cash cow with formulaic stories that killed the genre. But yeah Tolkien was special.
I also didn't like how she set up GRRM as some kind of antagonist to Tolkien. "Game of Thrones" was a little bit of an outlier into the "standard fantasy formula" territory compared to a lot of GRRM's fiction. I would actually hold him up as an example of one of the old-school speculative fiction authors that's just telling his own stories without really being hemmed in by convention or boring-ly adhering to it.
But yeah those issues aside I thought it was a really informative and important piece. Oh well, looks like I am the only one maybe.
Martin is also a throwback in a lot of ways with the WildCards line where he opened up this shared universe to other writers and serves in an editorial role like the old pulp magazines back in the heyday of sci fi and fantasy pre-Tolkien.
On top of that, a large chunk of fantasy moved towards games and a lot of other media. Without fotgetting thesr books too. The witcher is immensely influential and it featurea books and games. Fantasy is very much alive, but if you want another Talkien it takes time. Talkien didn't become the foundation of modern fantasy in a day...
She makes a lot of assertive statements with no real evidence to back it up. Not sure what to make of it.
"Tolkien wasn't anything special."
"Why hasn't there been another Tolkien??!?!?"
Kind of implies the first statement is false.
I would argue we DID have another Tolkien after Tolkien, he just wasn't writing books. If you want to talk about a fantasy with a massive cultural impact, you don't have to go farther than Star Wars.
Yeah, I kind of wasn't sure what to make of that statement either. I agreed with almost all of what she had to say, and I thought it was a really cutting diagnosis of why the speculative fiction genre went from being so wild and inventive up until sometime in the 70s, with literary merit and wonderful to read, into being a pretty boring cash cow with formulaic stories that killed the genre. But yeah Tolkien was special.
I also didn't like how she set up GRRM as some kind of antagonist to Tolkien. "Game of Thrones" was a little bit of an outlier into the "standard fantasy formula" territory compared to a lot of GRRM's fiction. I would actually hold him up as an example of one of the old-school speculative fiction authors that's just telling his own stories without really being hemmed in by convention or boring-ly adhering to it.
But yeah those issues aside I thought it was a really informative and important piece. Oh well, looks like I am the only one maybe.
Martin is also a throwback in a lot of ways with the WildCards line where he opened up this shared universe to other writers and serves in an editorial role like the old pulp magazines back in the heyday of sci fi and fantasy pre-Tolkien.
On top of that, a large chunk of fantasy moved towards games and a lot of other media. Without fotgetting thesr books too. The witcher is immensely influential and it featurea books and games. Fantasy is very much alive, but if you want another Talkien it takes time. Talkien didn't become the foundation of modern fantasy in a day...