Extollager
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2010
- Messages
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I voted "no," also. It seems to be a tie right now between YES and NO.
The question admits of much latitude in interpretation.
I will throw this out for comment: The Lord of the Rings is the greatest fantasy accomplishment, but not on account of the languages, as wonderful as they are. Rather, it is the greatest for at least one intrinsic reason and at least one extrinsic reason.
Intrinsic: More than any other fantasy, it gives to us our world, revealed as what it really is in its beauty and terror.
Extrinsic: More than any other fantasy, LOTR, by creating a demand for fantasy, was responsible for the reprinting of virtually all the fantasy classics that had already been published and also the publication of much of the good fantasy published since.
As recently as 6 January 1975, Poul Anderson could send me a card in which he wrote, "It is naturally gratifying to know you enjoy my fantasies -- and, yes, I do hope to write more, though unfortunately the market is very limited."
I'm surprised, all these years later, that Anderson could write thus, as late as 1975. But let me urge that, thanks largely to Tolkien, the market was less limited by 1975 than it had been ten years before, and that it has become, obviously, less limited since 1975.
You could go to Amazon and abebooks.com right now and order a very fine library of in-print or only recently out-of-print fantasy in English. Very little of that would have been available, esp. in paperback, before the Tolkien craze of the mid-Sixties.
Incidentally, I am currently considering an article that would discuss all of the paperback fantasy published in America before 1970 that invoked Tolkien on the front or back cover. You may go here
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/532929-tolkien-in-pre-1970-blurbs.html
to track down what I have identified so far. Do you like sword-and-sorcery? Thank Tolkien. The first Conan paperback was helped along not only by the famous Frazetta portrait of the Beatle-banged barbarain on a pile of bodies, but by a back cover blurb comparing these adventures to The Lord of the Rings. Similarly, Moorcock's Hawkmoon quartet from Lancer was launched with a Tolkienian claim. And de Camp's Tritonian Ring -- surely not a Tolkienian story -- was likened to LOTR. Do you like the classic imaginary world fantasy genre (Morris, Dunsany, Eddison)? The first popular reprints ever of the fantasy of these authors were associated with Tolkien. And so on. The most bizarre author linkage of them all is that which links Tolkien's fantasy to that of the "bare-faced messiah" -- L. Ron Hubbard!!??
The question admits of much latitude in interpretation.
I will throw this out for comment: The Lord of the Rings is the greatest fantasy accomplishment, but not on account of the languages, as wonderful as they are. Rather, it is the greatest for at least one intrinsic reason and at least one extrinsic reason.
Intrinsic: More than any other fantasy, it gives to us our world, revealed as what it really is in its beauty and terror.
Extrinsic: More than any other fantasy, LOTR, by creating a demand for fantasy, was responsible for the reprinting of virtually all the fantasy classics that had already been published and also the publication of much of the good fantasy published since.
As recently as 6 January 1975, Poul Anderson could send me a card in which he wrote, "It is naturally gratifying to know you enjoy my fantasies -- and, yes, I do hope to write more, though unfortunately the market is very limited."
I'm surprised, all these years later, that Anderson could write thus, as late as 1975. But let me urge that, thanks largely to Tolkien, the market was less limited by 1975 than it had been ten years before, and that it has become, obviously, less limited since 1975.
You could go to Amazon and abebooks.com right now and order a very fine library of in-print or only recently out-of-print fantasy in English. Very little of that would have been available, esp. in paperback, before the Tolkien craze of the mid-Sixties.
Incidentally, I am currently considering an article that would discuss all of the paperback fantasy published in America before 1970 that invoked Tolkien on the front or back cover. You may go here
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/532929-tolkien-in-pre-1970-blurbs.html
to track down what I have identified so far. Do you like sword-and-sorcery? Thank Tolkien. The first Conan paperback was helped along not only by the famous Frazetta portrait of the Beatle-banged barbarain on a pile of bodies, but by a back cover blurb comparing these adventures to The Lord of the Rings. Similarly, Moorcock's Hawkmoon quartet from Lancer was launched with a Tolkienian claim. And de Camp's Tritonian Ring -- surely not a Tolkienian story -- was likened to LOTR. Do you like the classic imaginary world fantasy genre (Morris, Dunsany, Eddison)? The first popular reprints ever of the fantasy of these authors were associated with Tolkien. And so on. The most bizarre author linkage of them all is that which links Tolkien's fantasy to that of the "bare-faced messiah" -- L. Ron Hubbard!!??
