Malazan Empire: Stephen R. Donaldson essay on the necessity of Epic Fantasy - Malazan Empire

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Stephen R. Donaldson essay on the necessity of Epic Fantasy includes some discussion on MBotF

#1 Salt-Man Z

My pen halts, though I do not

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Posted 20 March 2015 - 04:00 PM

http://www.nyrsf.com...-truth-s-p.html

"Here is light. You will say that it is not a living entity, but you miss the point that it is more, not less. Without occupying space, it fills the universe. It nourishes everything, yet itself feeds upon destruction. We claim to control it, but does it not perhaps cultivate us as a source of food? May it not be that all wood grows so that it can be set ablaze, and that men and women are born to kindle fires?"
―Gene Wolfe, The Citadel of the Autarch

#2 Whisperzzzzzzz

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Posted 20 March 2015 - 11:23 PM

This was really fucking good! I'm going to send this to some people right now.

#3 Andorion

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Posted 21 March 2015 - 02:08 AM

This made no sense to me last night. In the morning, it was beautiful Posted Image

#4 amphibian

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Posted 21 March 2015 - 03:21 AM

What an affirmation of some of my life's choices and meditation-by-proxy upon what it means to be alive this is.

Amazing. Erikson probably shed a tear after reading this and resolved to let Karsa and Torvald finally meet up again.

I survived the Permian and all I got was this t-shirt.

#5 Studlock

First Sword

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Posted 24 March 2015 - 03:55 AM

I really like this essay, though I do find some of it's assumptions a bit problematic (we can't really know the intent of the authors of earlier epics like Beowulf for instance--they might have been reciting a legend they thought was true after all), I think it makes a really good argument for the importance of fantasy as a mode of expression. It makes the internal external and in doing so makes the examination of the internal easier.

Bravo!

#6 Khazduk

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Posted 25 March 2015 - 03:15 PM

But isn't that exactly SRD's point, or maybe more like an axiom in this instance? That on a fundamental level, we all think that our thoughts are true; nothing could ever make sense if it wasn't so. (Without getting too far into Kantian epistemology etc. and so forth.)