[Brys]

Master of the Deck said:

No-God, I think that style is a matter of personal taste. I personally enjoy Tolkien's style, I adore it. I also dare to disagree on the question of characters. I do not think that the characters in his books are alike. I'd much rather say this about Steven. His books are filled with so many heroes and some of them are bound to be similar. No offence, I love his series, but sometimes there's just too many heroes. And what's more important - some of them have very similar characteristics.
Agraba, I dare to disagree. I consider The Silmarillion the better of Tolkien's two major works, the other being The Lord of the Rings. I think that most of you do not understand that in mythology things are simple. There's good and evil. There are almost no shades of grey. Tolkien wanted to create a mythology for his country, England, because he did not think that the Arthurian cycle, which was not even genuinely English, and the other old Irish/Scottish/English/Celtic stories, could be called English mythology. His works were not only a mythology, they were epic stories. In mythology and in most epic stories good guys are just like Tolkien's good characters and bad guys are just like Morgoth, Sauron, etc. So, you see, Tolkien's works were not simple. He was an innovator, he could perhaps be dubbed the founder of fantasy, but what's most important is that his world is filled with wondrous characters, there are many details to it, he even invented languages for some of the peoples. Can you even imagine how hard that was? I don't think that any other author, modern or classic, has ever invented a language. True, some of you might not be as interested in philology as I am, but I think that we should certainly give credit to Tolkien for what he did.

I'd agree we should certainly give credit to Tolkien for his worldbuilding, but that doesn't make him, on its own, a good writer. To quote Mieville:

Quote

His genius lay in his neurotic, self-contained, paranoid creation of a secondary world. That act of profoundly radical geekery reversed the hitherto-existing fantasy subcreation

Which is certainly a significant step for the fantasy genre, and it means that I will always have some respect for Tolkien - he will always surpass his hacks. But Tolkien doesn't write great novels IMO - everything is secondary to the world. He sacrifices good writing and plotting so that his world can be shown off. It is a plot-driven series (LotR), and that plot revolves around demonstrating his world, when the best literature is character driven. I'm not saying that Erikson has amazing characters either, but they at least go a little beyond the standard archetypes, though it is of course impractical to assume a huge level of characterisation for a cast of 100s, while Tolkien keeps his black and white. That may have been his intention, and yes, he was trying to create a mythology. But as a writer, therefore, he is limited. Another author, Poul Anderson, drew upon the same sources as Tolkien, wrote very much a mythological style nove, the Broken Sword, at the same time as Tolkien, and IMO it is better. Mythology may have archetypes - that is not necessarily the same as good and evil. In much mythology, divine beings were rarely portrayed as perfect and instead they were shown as almost human and flawed. I agree with you that the Silmarillion is Tolkien's best work - it shows off his main skill, that of worldbuilding, in a much more logical and interesting manner than that of LotR, which was an attempt to write a straightforward novel in which he could demonstrate his world, and which did not largely challenge the assumptions of the day.

To my mind, Tolkien was not a fraction of the writer that Peake was, and while I acknowledge his importance and his worldbuilding skill, I don't think he was a great author; certainly not one deserving of his excessively high reputation (which quite frankly I don't think any author could live up to).

[Mane of Chaos]

As I said, it's a matter of taste. I love his works because I love the way he has portrayed the world of Middle-earth. I love to read his beautiful descriptions of forests, plains, scenery in general. Frankly, I adore his style. To me writing isn't all about character building. But this is just a matter of opinion. You may not like him, but I love his books, the world he describes in them is almost alive to me. I just manage to get into it. And I very rarely manage to become genuinely interested in a book. I've no idea who Peake was, he might be a great author too. Honestly, I really think it's just a matter of one's personal taste. I do believe that we should all forget about questions such as "Who is the best fantasy writer ever?", "Is Erikson better than Tolkien?", "Which is the most complex of the following series?". I have my opinion, you have yours. I'm certain that you can't change mine and I seriously doubt that I can change yours. Of course, we all have the right of free speech. I just think we are using it too much nowadays. Tolkien may not be the best author ever, but I think he deserves a high reputation, maybe not as high as the one he has now. But anyway, I've never read a perfect book, have you?

His genius lay in his neurotic, self-contained, paranoid creation of a secondary world. That act of profoundly radical geekery reversed the hitherto-existing fantasy subcreation. - This is clearly an insult and I think that no one deserves to be offended in this way, least of all Tolkien. I don't care who Mieville was, he has no right to offend Tolkien in this way. J. R. R. most certainly wasn't a neurotic man, he was not a radical geek, he was not paranoid! He was just a man who had a wonderful imagination and the purpose of his works was to tell a tale, which I think he did wonderfully. He does not deserve such abuse!

[mystar]

Oh gezzzz.... common here... Erickson sucks donkey dick!

Much like Jordan, he can't even follow his own plot lines with out gaping holes. Not to mention even Erickson himself has said he forgets where he is in the story like and jumps around leaving out huge chunks of the story like.

C.S. Lewis
Tolkien
Grrm, back in the day....

But good God people, get a grip (I see a lot of ass kissing here ~hands a wet wipe to wert to get the **** off his nose and tongue...), Erickson can't even make the list as a top selling writer... that's got to give you a clue.... He offers nothing of any
philosophical worth or substantive value for his efforts, nothing that challenges the mind or engages your intellect.

But to each his own. There are even people out there who like ...JK Rollings or Christopher Paolini and even...::::::Shudders::::::Anne McCaffrey. No accounting for people’s tastes.

~shrugs~

[Agraba]

Quote

Agraba, I dare to disagree. I consider The Silmarillion the better of Tolkien's two major works, the other being The Lord of the Rings.

But I'm saying that it isn't his work. J.R.R. Tolkien died before The Silmarillion was written, but Christopher, his son, took a lot of JRR's scrap notes, along with what he himself knew of the world, and crafted it (with his own writing style) into the Silmarillion book, and it has J.R.R. Tolkien's name on the front because it was his stories.

I don't think the Silmarillion is that great for mythology standards. There's too much goodness in the heavens, as if Tolkien wanted a sense of security for his world. There's not enough intercine warfare among the pantheon, like in Greek mythology. Tolkien's is just all the gods against one (and a single angel that sided with him).

I'm thinking of going to science fiction. Name your favourite sci-fi writer please.

And I think if I look at fantasy, I'll just look for stand-alone novels rather than series'. I decided that if a character looks really good in one book, the author may have extracted what he could from the character in that book. Also, series writers tend to get too attached to their characters for my taste. They're supposed to look at the characters that we love with cold indifference, so they could logically judge what would be most emotionally gripping for us. One example is when Steven Erikson just couldn't let Tehol die after the beating. I thought it would have been very emotionally gripping if it did happen, but he just couldn't let it. I was very disappointed in him then. Another example is the entire Wheel of Time series; the fact that a main main character cannot fall into a mud puddle without being whisked out of there a second after, and have everything dry-cleaned for them, because "The Pattern" wants them alive. *Cough*

[Werthead]

Vetinari said:

Terry Goodkind.
TARRY TARRY TARRY!

The only author Terry Goodkind is more talented than is L. Ron Hubbard. And only then because of the evil chicken and the noble goat. Hell, if he wrote a book in which Evil Chicken fights Noble Goat, I'd buy it.

[caladanbrood]

mystar said:

Oh gezzzz.... common here... Erickson sucks donkey dick!

Much like Jordan, he can't even follow his own plot lines with out gaping holes. Not to mention even Erickson himself has said he forgets where he is in the story like and jumps around leaving out huge chunks of the story like.

C.S. Lewis
Tolkien
Grrm, back in the day....

But good God people, get a grip (I see a lot of ass kissing here ~hands a wet wipe to wert to get the **** off his nose and tongue...), Erickson can't even make the list as a top selling writer... that's got to give you a clue.... He offers nothing of any
philosophical worth or substantive value for his efforts, nothing that challenges the mind or engages your intellect.

But to each his own. There are even people out there who like ...JK Rollings or Christopher Paolini and even...::::::Shudders::::::Anne McCaffrey. No accounting for people’s tastes.

~shrugs~

Erickson? You mean Steve Erickson, right, author of such noted bovine residue as Tours of the Black Clock, Rubican Beach, and *shudders* The Sea Came in at Midnight. Yup, I agree, he's a terrible author.

If you're gonna come onto a forum dedicated to an author and then say he's ****, at least make the effort to spell his name right...

[Brys]

Master of the Deck said:

His genius lay in his neurotic, self-contained, paranoid creation of a secondary world. That act of profoundly radical geekery reversed the hitherto-existing fantasy subcreation. - This is clearly an insult and I think that no one deserves to be offended in this way, least of all Tolkien. I don't care who Mieville was, he has no right to offend Tolkien in this way. J. R. R. most certainly wasn't a neurotic man, he was not a radical geek, he was not paranoid! He was just a man who had a wonderful imagination and the purpose of his works was to tell a tale, which I think he did wonderfully. He does not deserve such abuse!

Mieville doesn't hide the fact that he's not a fan of Tolkien, but that isn't an insult to him. That's instead simply explaining what Tolkien's importance and skill was - that was in worldbuilding. As Mieville says, "he reversed the hitherto-existing fantasy subcreation". You may also note that Mieville doesn't say that Tolkien was "neurotic, self-contained or paranoid" but rather that his creation of Middle-Earth was. Given that he invented an entire language, I don't think it's far fetched to say that this creation was all of those things. Also note the word "genius". What's controversial about saying Tolkien was a "radical geek"? That isn't an insult - especially not when coming from Mieville, who consistently describes himself as one - it shows that Tolkien is actually committed to creating a world of his own design and he cares about the art more than the money. This description is a qualified compliment.

[caladanbrood]

Jay Tomio said:

HAve to disagree While I think Erikson is writing a great epic fantasy series, I think Erickson is one of the great writers of fiction today. The two are not comparable in any way IMHO. Comparing Erikson to Erickson is like comparing Terry Brooks to Italo Calvino IMHO.

No, not comparable, I agree... on the other hand, I can't stand Erickson's stuff. Just not my style, I guess.

[Werthead]

Agraba said:

But I'm saying that it isn't his work. J.R.R. Tolkien died before The Silmarillion was written, but Christopher, his son, took a lot of JRR's scrap notes, along with what he himself knew of the world, and crafted it (with his own writing style) into the Silmarillion book, and it has J.R.R. Tolkien's name on the front because it was his stories.

This is something I hear a lot and it is not true. JRR Tolkien actually wrote a lot of The Silmarillion as it was published, as conclusively shown in THoME. When he got into his 80s and (finally) accepted that he wouldn't live to see its publication, he sat down with Christopher and they went through the different versions of the stories very thoroughly. JRRT (reluctantly) accepted that he wouldn't be able to write the story in the detail he wanted (the level of detail as shown in Narn Hin Hurin and Of Tuor and His Coming to Beleriand in UT) and that the result would be closer to a summary than a full text. Hence the appearance of things like The Valaquenta, The Akallabeth and Of the Rings of Power. JRRT wrote these as they appeared in the book.

Where CT's and GGK's editorials were needed was towards the end of the book, particularly disregarding JRRT's incomplete rewritings to bring Galadriel more to the fore and some substitution of different material to bring the ending (which in some cases hand't been touched for 20 years) more in line with the beginning and to make the ending more compatible with the Second Age history as laid down in LotR. According to CRRT, actual invention of new dialogue and writing new material was kept to a minimum.

The simple fact is that well over 95% of The Silmarillion as it stands was written by JRR Tolkien. It may not have been in the format he envisaged, but there is absolutely no way that The Silmarillion can be said not have been written by Tolkien. Whether you accept it as canon or not is up to the reader, but since we are never going to get anything else other than The Silmarillion, I don't see how there is any other choice than accepting it as canon.

[Sir Thursday]

Agraba said:

I'm thinking of going to science fiction. Name your favourite sci-fi writer please.

Ok...I'll second a few others and name Peter F. Hamilton. He creates amazingly deep future worlds, with some very interesting ideas about the future of society. He does have some trouble satisfactorily concluding his series sometimes...but the Night's Dawn Trilogy (The Reality Dysfunction, The Neutronium Alchemist and The Naked God) and the Commonwealth Saga (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained) are must reads. I didn't like his Greg Mandel Series (Mindstar Rising, A Quantum Murder and The Nanoflower) as much, but I would still recommend them. He's also written some decent short stories - try A Second Chance at Eden, which is set in the same universe as the Night's Dawn Trilogy.

Vox

[Agraba]

Okay, thus far, I think the most mentioned authors were Neil Gaiman, R. Scott Bakker and Peter F. Hamilton. Now to decide which one of them I go for. I'm leaning towards Hamilton, since I want a break from fantasy.

Alright, I was wrong about Tolkien writing The Silmarillion. But it's what it is: a bunch of background stories that the author never got to polish into actual novels. Thus, I didn't think it was that great of a read. Thinking of a story isn't much, but turning it into a well-written piece of work is over 90% of the battle.

[Astra]

J.R.R. Tolkien.

[Agraba]

Okay, I have decided. On my next envoy to university, I shall stop at Chapters on the way, and pick up the first book of Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, Reality Dysfunction. I looked at amazon responses of both that trilogy, and his other two-part book, and I the two-part book disappointed a few people, but not his trilogy. Although I heard there's a touch of spirituality at the beginning, and that was a slight turnoff when I read Erikson, but I can live with it. Thank you very much everybody. (That's not a conclusion, you can still post authors, and please do.)

[Dolorous Menhir]

The Nights Dawn Trilogy is amazing. I read it when it first came out, I was only 14 or 15, and it blew me away. If I had the time - they are big books - I would read it again right now.

[Murrin]

About the Reality Dysfunction - great book. The best part of the trilogy is the second half of that book. The first part, however, can be very slow. Very long chapters from one PoV, then long chapters from other PoVs, and by the time you return to a previous character you can't remember who they are. This became less of a problem for me about seven chapters in - the rest of the book is great. He kind of loses direction a little in the following books of the trilogy, but it's still pretty good.

[Dolorous Menhir]

On the contrary, I think it is that epic scale which most counts in the books favour. I don't so much remember the characters in the books, as I do the incidents that surrounded them.

In particular the final moments of the Reality Dysfunction:

Spoiler

the female marine commiting suicide as the possessed overcome her, the carnage of the space-battle over Lalonde, the mercenaries with on the surface making their last stand to save the children, the lone mercenary floating towards Durringham with his nuke, the Lady Macbeth diving into Lalonde's atmosphere to escape the combat wasps, I need to stop there.

It's a good thing I don't have the books with me right now, or I'd be sorely tempted to start reading them again. And I've got exams to revise for...

If anyone out there is considering reading the Nights Dawn Trilogy, here's a major point in its favour -

Spoiler

where else are you going to read 26th Century space opera with Al Capone as a major character?

Seriously, Al Capone. In the 26th Century.