Okay, I'm starting a thread under the 'Books' topic...A first for me. Be gentle.

Terry Brooks in a Tribute to Tolkein.

You guys can say what you like about Brooks -- I think he's a great author. Love his books. At any rate, though, you'll all like this, I think, being the intellectuals that you are.

It's funny, I first read Sword of Shannara when I was 12 or 13 I guess and thought it was a bad ripoff of Tolkien. Brooks' subsequent books were for the most part better, at least in my eyes. I hated the first one but at that time there was not a whole lot of options so I stuck with it. These days it seems everyone gets their version of the epic Quest/Journey published. Maybe I'm just cynical now that I'm in my 30s but why does everything in the genre have to be a multi-book series? I enjoyed Edding's Belgariad, plus most of the Wheel of Time stuff but they are way too full of padding, with the WoT series being relegated to a running joke. Goodkind's books just demonstrate that he hates his main characters and loves to torment them to no end. Ah well, better stop before I go overboard...

I did enjoy the link, thanks for posting it!

Chris

>read Sword of Shannara when I was 12 or 13 I guess and thought it was a bad ripoff of Tolkien.

It was.

It sure was. And blatantly so. But still, it packs a lot more originality than today's churn 'em out R.A. Salvatore-style and the hacks in his wake.

I hate that going to the Fantasy/SciFi section of today's bookstores these days. Basically it means wading through reams of paint-by-numbers licensed fiction. Trek, Star Wars, Alien, Buffy, D&D, blah-blah-blah... Seems like there's precious little that's original anymore.

Heh,
I better add a "dagnabbit" at this point, just to solidify the grumpy old man tone I just took.

If it's any consolation, Bub, I'm 25 and think the same thing. Stupid fucking "Starfleet Academy" licensed proto-fiction.

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Quote:

I hate that going to the Fantasy/SciFi section of today's bookstores these days. Basically it means wading through reams of paint-by-numbers licensed fiction. Trek, Star Wars, Alien, Buffy, D&D, blah-blah-blah... Seems like there's precious little that's original anymore.

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I don't think it's "destroying the genre," it's just a sign of the same market forces in every other submarket of the publishing industry taking hold. Take the numbered series of romance novels, or the boilerplate thiller-of-the-week phenomenon.

The only reason scifi used to be so good was that the readers were, well, a better class of readers. That's not true anymore.

"I hate that going to the Fantasy/SciFi section of today's bookstores these days. Basically it means wading through reams of paint-by-numbers licensed fiction. Trek, Star Wars, Alien, Buffy, D&D, blah-blah-blah... Seems like there's precious little that's original anymore. "

Last year around this time someone pointed out that fantasy novels sell, but fantasy movies fail. Sci movies sell, but scifi novels fail, in recent times. In fact, we had a whole thread about it, IIRC. There were a number of good theories about it.

Wanna hear something odd?

When I first read the Sword of Shanarra, the elements that were "ripped-off" (which may be a bit of a strong term) from Tolkein totally whizzed by me, and I never gave it so much as a thought. (Note: I hadn't read Tolkein in about a decade, and wasn't analyzing the book as I went -- merely enjoying it.)

In retrospect, I see the points you guys have made, and can face up to the borrowed elements, but I've read his other books, which are pretty original. My theory: Brooks wanted to make it big, so he used a tried-and-true formula for his first book. If you're gonna emulate someone, why not emulate the best, right? When his first book was phenomenally successful because it was exactly what everyone was looking for -- Lord of the Rings, without being Lord of the Rings -- and he had earned his place as an author (by this statement, I am NOT in any way comparing Brooks to Tolkein, so hold the cries of "Blasphemer!"), he felt like he could be more creative and original with his works.

Also, he said himself (I think in the article I linked to) that everyone who has written fantasy has borrowed from Tolkein. I think that's true. Perhaps he "borrowed" more than he should have. There certainly are a LOT of parallels between his first book and Tolkein's story. But books 2-10 are far less contrived. And he's a wonderful author in his own right. And he credits Tolkein for being his strongest influence. (Imitation is the greatest form of flattery...)

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be so much a tribute to Brooks (though I think he's discredited unfairly by a lot of you), but rather to point you to what I thought was a cool article.

And maybe raise your respect for Brooks just a hair.

(And, about the "epic" statement, Brooks' first 3 books are stand-alone novels.)

While it's true the first book did rip off several elements of tolkien, the ending made it stand alone. On the topic of brooks, anyone read his Running with Demon , Knight of his word triliogy? That was really good.

George RR Martin. Feast of Crows or whatever it's called, the fourth book in his Song of Fire and Ice series, is coming out next fall. That gives you plenty of time to read the first three. I wish I hadn't yet, so I could go through them fresh again.

>And maybe raise your respect for Brooks just a hair.

Yeah, his adaptation of Phantom Menace was a classic, heh.

Stefan

"On the topic of brooks, anyone read his Running with Demon , Knight of his word triliogy? That was really good."

I've read that series. I don't know if I'd put the 'really' in there, but they were good. I don't think he did enough with the reality/prophetic dream double life of the knights of the word. That was pretty original and I think should have played a larger role in the story. For those who didn't read the stories the main character was a guy who ran around trying to stop the 'demons' from taking over the world. At night when he slept, he lived in a prophetic dream world where he had to experience the world as it would be if he failed and the demons won.

I just finished reading a stand-alone fantasy novel from Harry Turtledove, Between the Rivers. It was great. I recomend it highly.

"I hate that going to the Fantasy/SciFi section of today's bookstores these days. Basically it means wading through reams of paint-by-numbers licensed fiction. Trek, Star Wars, Alien, Buffy, D&D, blah-blah-blah... Seems like there's precious little that's original anymore."

I've never been a huge genre guy, but it's actually pretty funny to look at some of the garbage that's available now. There's one series where the Star Trek: TNG guys meet up with the X-Men. I almost bought one of those just to get a look at the marketing idiocy that went into planning it. What the fuck happened with our society in the past 25 years that made the concept *always* more important than the execution?

George R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire series isn't genre fantasy. Each book is remarkable. Epic scope combined with lifelike characters of a sort that Tolkien could only dream of crafting. The three novels in the series (so far) are some of the best that I've ever read. I can't recommend them enough, for anyone who enjoys good fiction. It's a real shame that Martin's stuck in the fantasy ghetto, because his work should get out to more people than the typical readers of this crap.

Come on Brett, Tolkien wasn't interested in crafting realistic characters. He was trying to recreate ancient Scandinavian myth cycles. The fact that LOTR has more characterization than Beowulf was probably completely unintentional. ;>

I bought that X-Men/Trek thing btw. For the same reasons you almost did. Godawful just godawfullybadawful.

Thanks, I'll check out this George Martin fellow. You know what I'm reading now? Vince Lombardi's Run to Daylight... my wife found it at a garage sale. It's out of print and this edition is worth $80-100. She got it for $4. I'm so proud of her.

-Andrew