[Abyss]

Goodkind does have his supporters on this forum. I suspect they stay carefully silent on this topic, given the mass of dislike otherwise present, but let us face facts, he DOES sell books. LOTS of them. More than SE, as mysterious as that may be.

He also makes my eyes bleed. But that's just me.

- Abyss, dammit, my contact lens!

[polishgenius]

I'm quite surprised no-ones mentioned China Mieville yet as an example of an author showing his beliefs without ruining his work (in my opinion).
He's strongly socialist (stood as a candidate for the British Socialist Part at the last elections, I believe), and you can tell so from his books, but he doesn't force it down the readers throat, and he certainly doesn't preach.

He's also like a lnon-reprehensible Goodkind in his attitude to fantasy. He sees a problem with a lot of the writing and is clearly, especially with PSS, writing as a reaction to Tolkien and his rip-offs, but he doesn't ever claim he's the saviour of fantasy and is quite willing to get into debates about his own work.

Interesting debate on http://crookedtimber...ng-iron-council with him involved.

[polishgenius]

bluesman said:

Maybe someone doesn't read replies? He's mentioned at least 3 times in this thread .

Meiville is an example of the "using real world politics inside a fantasy world" rather than "using a fantasy world to promote some political idea" case.

bm

>_> How embarassing.

I read them too.

[Abyss]

Frankly, I was more bothered by the six or so chapters of BDSM in Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule than by anything in Iron Council.

- Abyss, seriously, ok, he's being tortured, we get it... oh god, another chapter... there goes those bleeding eyes again...

[stone monkey]

Writing a book could itself be considered a political act - in the Lacanian sense where everything is political. It's also impossible to write any novel at the kind of scale that epic fantasy writers usually employ without the political creeping in. For example; Tolkien's personal politics are all over LotR like a rash.

[McLovin]

stone monkey said:

For example; Tolkien's personal politics are all over LotR like a rash.

That's exactly what I was going to say! Any author's political views are going to come out, in some extent, in their writing. See the language and thought thread on the DB. The difference is JRRT let the book speak for itself, whereas TG feels the need to expound on his libertarian philosophy every chance he gets. Worse, he gets very condescending and defensive about it too. He treats any question as an implicit attack. From what I read of his life, TG grew up with a learning disability and I think his schoolmates and teachers were somewhat less than understanding about it. So now that he is a successful author (and you gotta give him that - he has succeeded), he has developed this arrogance to show the world that they were wrong about him. That's my armchair psychoanalysis, anyway.

[McLovin]

Perhaps they were unintentional, but that's the point. They come out whether you (as an author) intend them to or not. Tolkien was a known technophobe in real life (eg, before recording readings of his works, he would chant the Lord's prayer in Gothic to bless the recorder), and his anti-technological position comes out in LOTR through the Ents' attack on Orthanc.

[Werthead]

Tolkien wasn't fond of technology but also admitted that progress could not be turned back and admitted these things had practical value. He hated the internal combustion engine above all other things, yet owned a car at two different points in his life (including his final years). He only did the Lord's Prayer in Gothic into a tape recorder once and later on bought his own recorder to make short plays with. So Tolkien had a more pragmatic attitude to his philosophy/ideology than many others seem to.

The Warrens and Ways are fairly different. You could argue that the Warrens are more lifted from the Outer and Inner Planes in D&D with magic attached to them, but even then there are key differences.

[Brys]

polishgenius said:

I'm quite surprised no-ones mentioned China Mieville yet as an example of an author showing his beliefs without ruining his work (in my opinion).
He's strongly socialist (stood as a candidate for the British Socialist Part at the last elections, I believe), and you can tell so from his books, but he doesn't force it down the readers throat, and he certainly doesn't preach.

He's also like a lnon-reprehensible Goodkind in his attitude to fantasy. He sees a problem with a lot of the writing and is clearly, especially with PSS, writing as a reaction to Tolkien and his rip-offs, but he doesn't ever claim he's the saviour of fantasy and is quite willing to get into debates about his own work.

Interesting debate on http://crookedtimber...ng-iron-council with him involved.

Mieville has been mentioned - at least twice. But he is quite a good example in this, and that's basically what I said (it enhances his books, it's clearly there, but unlike Goodkind, it isn't a manifesto in disguise). That was a pretty good debate (if quite a lot to read).

[Morgoth]

pwilletts said:

Well while reading Steven Erikson's first book of the Malazon Empire he copies the idea about the ways from the Wheel of Time. Don't try and say that Jordan got the idea from Erikson because teh Wheel of Time was published in 1990 and Erikson's in 1999. Does criticize Goodkind for possibly copying Jordan when Erikson does it to.

Actually, for one we know that though it was not published until 1999, the book was written what, eight years before? And before that, it was a screenplay, so the whole thing is fairly muddy..

However, Erikson accepts that he has been influenced by other authors. Goodkind's shameless copying of WoT is made a lot worse by the fact that he refuse to admitt he has even read the books. The difference here is huge.