Classics of Fantasy

[CCamfield]

I get the feeling that every EN Worlder is going to do that. (Well, all the ones who successfully breed... )

I wouldn't be at all surprised.

My dad didn't read The Lord of the Rings to me but he did read it to my brother (it must have worn him out; like Joshua's dad, it took him a year or more).

As for those of us who didn't know about the reviews - well, I for one don't visit the WotC often at all. I get my fantasy review/discussion fix mainly by reading the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written which is a great community even if they often go off on tangents.

Oh, and as to Silverlock, I can understand why some people like it. You can play "spot the reference" as tons of characters from other books and traditions show up. But the main character just drove me up the wall.

 

[mmadsen]

I found The Night Land available at this link and started reading it yesterday. The language is artificially archaic, but it's not much more difficult to attune to than Shakespeare, and considerably easier than Chaucer.

Indeed, from the excerpts you cited, it hardly seems archaic at all -- more Byronic than Shakespearean. (Not that my friends and colleagues speak like Byron...)

 

[Tars Tarkus]

Bridge of Birds
Great, great book, a joy to read!! I loved the interplay between Master Li and Number Ten Ox immensely. I will have to hunt down the books and reread them again.

 

[Templetroll]

The Hobbit I read this to my daughter also; she loved it and it added to her enjoyment of the trilogy movies, especially things like the trolls that were turned to stone shown in Fellowship.

Watership Down Very cool story. Has anyone updated Bunnies and Burrows yet?

A Wizard of Earthsea This is great and is supposed to be a TV miniseries soon, from what I've read.

The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath It was cool, but I love the Mythos best.

The Worm Ouroboros An excellent read!

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser So much fun, High Fantasy is great but there is something to be said for the down and dirty.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld Yup, a good one.

 

[mmadsen]

There's quite a bit about Hodgson himself on the web; one good site I found here.

From that site:

William Hope Hodgson
(1877-1918)​

English author, photographer, sailor, and body-builder, Hodgson produced all of his writing in the space of eleven years before he was killed in World War I.

Hodgson sounds like a very interesting guy.

 

[nikolai]

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: So much fun, High Fantasy is great but there is something to be said for the down and dirty.

I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying reading these. There's some bad stuff. But the good stuff is just about as good as it gets.

 

[mmadsen]

I've cited this in other threads, but the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser article starts with a history of swords & sorcery literature:

Sword and sorcery may not be the most critically acclaimed mode within the fantasy genre, but it's one of the most enduring and has proven perennially popular. The first sword and sorcery story was probably Dunsany's novella "The Fortress Unvanquishable, Save for Sacnoth" (1907), which brought together all the basic elements: an evil wizard, a brave young hero, a magic sword, and a host of obstacles preventing the hero from getting at the wizard with the sword. Sword and sorcery was a mainstay of the fantasy pulp magazines, best exemplified in the work of Robert E. Howard, whose Conan series (1932-36) pretty much set the standard for decades to follow. Howard may have been a hack, but he was an honest hack, able to vividly convey his own wild-eyed enthusiasm for violence as a solution to virtually any problem. Conan himself is a paean to the virtues of the Noble Savage who grows in character throughout the series, culminating in the novel Hour of the Dragon (also known as Conan the Conqueror) where a middle-aged Conan has acquired a sense of responsibility and fights to defend the subjects of his usurped kingdom.

Howard had many imitators, most of whom aped his style and lacked both his imagination and his sincerity, like modern-day musicians engineering pops and crackles into their songs to make them sound more like bygone artists they admire. One follower who avoided this trap was Michael Moorcock, who in the early 1960s attempted to re-invent the genre by inverting its conventions with Stormbringer (1963), the first (and best) of the Elric of Melniboné series. Instead of an uncivilized barbarian, Moorcock gives us an overcivilized decadent; instead of rising from adventurer to king, Elric declines from emperor to peopleless wanderer; instead of the straightforward Conan's loyalty and occasional gallantry, the subtle Elric betrays and brings about the death of every friend, subject, relative, or subordinate who puts their trust in him. In fact, Elric is just the sort of treacherous wizard whom Conan specializes in lopping the heads off of. Unfortunately, instead of stopping after the impressive feat of writing the epic tale of Elric's death, Moorcock proceeded to churn out a flood of prequels, all essentially retellings of the same story, diluting the impact of the original with every regurgitation.

 

[mmadsen]

I enjoyed this quote from the intro to Rateliff's Silverlock article:

"When a man reads my books I do not take it that he is hiding out from anything
but that he is simply doing something he considers worthwhile."

-- John Myers Myers, "Escapism and the Puritans" (1947)​

 

[Desdichado]

Here's my experiences with those books. I've also read all the articles, a few weeks ago, as a matter of fact:

• Hobberdy Dick: Nope, and it doesn't sound like my style.
• The Hobbit: Absolutely. Love it.
• The Books of Wonder: No, I haven't, although I have read some of Dunsany's stuff. I particularly liked The Queen of Elf-land's Daughter. I'm actually anxious to give this one a try.
• Tales of Averoigne: Once, long ago. I've been on the lookout for some CAS for some time; he's a darn good writer.
• The Book of Three Dragons: I'm not likely to read this one base on the description.
• Watership Down: Yes, although again, not for many years. It really is good.
• The Night Land: No, and the descriptions sound tedious. Probably a good story buried under difficult language.
• The Face in the Frost: That one was new to me. It sounds very intriguing.
• A Wizard of Earthsea: I tried to read this once in junior high and for some reason didn't get into it. That's unusual, because back then, I'd read almost anything in front of me. I've been curious to try this one again, actually.
• The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath: This was the first Lovecraft story I heard of, the first one I read, and still my favorite by a long-shot today. Like Rateliff, I find it odd that this is one of his more overlooked stories; I think it'd phenomenal.
• The Worm Ouroboros: Yes, once long ago. I'd probably struggle to get through it again; the writing is very tedious and I'm not sure the payoff is there a second time around.
• Bridge of Birds: I hadn't heard of this one before.
• A Voyage to Arcturus: This one neither.
• Silverlock: Nor this one.
• Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: Absolutely; I'm about to order these again because it's been too long since I've read some of these classics. I'm not sure I agree with him that these are qualitatively better than the original Conan stories, though. I think Robert E. Howard is an immensely talented writer who wrote with a real primal feel that Leiber simply doesn't have.
• Collected Ghost Stories: Never heard of these, but they sound really interesting.
• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld: I actually have read this one years ago, but I don't remember much about it. As he described it, though, some of it came back to me. I didn't find it particularly memorable.
• The Well at the World's End: Also read this one long, long ago. I oughtta see if I still have my old paperback copy of this sitting around somewhere...

 

[nikolai]

Wow. You're really well read!

• Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser: Absolutely; I'm about to order these again because it's been too long since I've read some of these classics. I'm not sure I agree with him that these are qualitatively better than the original Conan stories, though. I think Robert E. Howard is an immensely talented writer who wrote with a real primal feel that Leiber simply doesn't have.

I read all the REH Conan stories a while back, and I'm working my way through Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser now. The Leiber stories are very, very, variable. The bad ones are very bad. The quality of Howard's stuff is very consistent, if you pick up a random Conan story you know what you are going to get.

Here's where I try to pick a fight! I agree with Rateliff that the Leiber stuff is better. Here's why:

• I think the best of Leiber's stories have a real completeness to them and are beautfully constructed. The Bleak Shore, The Sunken Land, and The Howling Tower all have a elegance to how the story works out. Howard approaches this in some stories, such as the The Tower of the Elephant, but doesn't equal Leiber.
• The quality of Leiber's prose is fantastic. The rhythm of his writing and the quality of his description are amazing.
• There's a great variety in the Lankhmar stories you don't get with Conan. A lot of the same themes crop up in Howard again and again, he sadly never wrote enough for this to get tiring, but watching Conan steal the umpteenth gem, or blunder across the umpteenth monster or slay the umpteenth wizard can feel a little repetative.
• Leiber's stuff is just very, very witty. Leiber doesn't have the primal feel, but Howard doesn't have the humour.