Survivor Appendix N Authors- LEIBER WINS!

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CleverNickName said:

If it weren't for Tolkien, I never would have gotten involved in this hobby. I read The Hobbit in my early teens, just as TS&R was publishing their Red Box Rules (which I got for my 13th birthday...thanks mom!) Tolkien's epic tale of elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons inspired me to seek out other epic tales of elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons. Eventually it inspired me to write epic tales of my own for my friends and siblings. And here I am.

Clearly, some folks didn't have that experience and it makes me a little sad. Not out of pity or spite, come on...I'm old but I'm not petty.

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You assume too much! I read the hobbit in 4th grade (thank you Mrs. Christensen my 4th grade teacher) and have been hooked on RPGs, scifi and fantasy ever since. I devoured the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion shortly thereafter and was mesmerized. However, I reread the Lord of the Rings as an adult and found it a long slog to get through. The ideas and world building were still fantastic, but the writing was painfully long winded.

So, I had the same early experience with Tolkien as you, but I'm downvoting him regularly and often. Its not that I hate him, hate his books, or didn't enjoy reading them. They just ain't my cup of tea anymore. I have the same problem with Brandon Sanderson. Good ideas, too many words to get them across. I don't have the free-time to read a thousand pages anymore. Both Sanderson and Tolkien need an editor with a cruel heart to cut those tomes down to a reasonable size.

Tolkien was my first foray into fantasy. My dad didn't read a lot. He's brilliant, but he reads too slowly to get much enjoyment out of reading fiction. But when he and my mom were first married, they read The Lord of the Rings together, he reading it out loud to her. I remember him reading The Hobbit to me and my sister as kids, doing voices for all the different characters.

Then was the cartoon, which I barely remember, but which continued The Lord of the Rings to me. I read The Hobbit for the first time at the age of 12. I chose it as one of my book reports for school. It was fascinating. When the movies started to come out, I was 14, and so I read about half of Fellowship before the movie came out. I was bad and went ahead and saw the movie before finishing the book.

Needless to say, Fantasy became my genre at that point. Everything about it resonated with me. After the movie, I dove back into the book, having lost no enjoyment from having the first book spoiled. Over the course of the next year, I got through both Two Towers and Return of the King. This was my first real foray into adult fiction, so it took me a while to get through it all, but I loved it.

Yeah, it's a hard read at times. Tolkien was a master world builder, character builder, and storyteller, but his writing as more verbose than current audiences can handle, I think. We all want action action action save the details give me the action! But those books personified my coming of age years. By the time the final movie was released, I was writing my own fantasy books. I've completed three of them.

I've read other authors. I like many other authors. But Tolkien started it all for me. And I could watch those movies a thousand times and they never get old.

Bradley Hindman said:

Both Sanderson and Tolkien need an editor with a cruel heart to cut those tomes down to a reasonable size.

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Wait, what? Tolkien does in a single 1000 page volume what Sanderson can't manage in seven. Never mind Martin or Jordan or their BFF imitators. Say what you want about Tolkien but compared to today's authors he was downright terse.

Bradley Hindman said:

Both Sanderson and Tolkien need an editor with a cruel heart to cut those tomes down to a reasonable size.

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Disagree. A thousand pages across 3 books is a very reasonable size, even by today's standards. ("A Game of Thrones" alone was almost 800 pages.) The pacing of the story might be slow, but the page count isn't the problem.

Just sayin'.

Bellairs, John 7
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 17 +1 = 18
Carter, Lin 14
de Camp & Pratt 7
Dunsany, Lord 17
Leiber, Fritz 15
Merritt, A. 16
Offutt, Andrew J. 14
Pratt, Fletcher 12
St. Clair, Margaret 11
Tolkien, J.R.R. 10 -2 = 8
Wellman, Manley Wade 14
Williamson, Jack 16
Zelazny, Roger 15

I just realized... all the people downvoting Tolkien are indeed proving his inspiration, just not the way they think!

Many are downvoting him just out of spite or because of some Fellowship or whatever else. In other words, it's not that they have issue with him, but now - because so many on this thread have factionalized - they are doing it simply to "win"! And the D&D tradition of turning a non-competitive, collaborative game into a question of us vs. them or winners & losers is indeed classic D&D! So in a very real way, Tolkien has (albeit indirectly) inspired people on this D&D thread!

(Tongue in cheek guys... don't get upset. I recognize that this is all in fun and no one has to have a "good" reason to vote for anyone, either way. )

Bellairs, John 7
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 16 (downvoted)
Carter, Lin 14
de Camp & Pratt 7
Dunsany, Lord 17
Leiber, Fritz 15
Merritt, A. 16
Offutt, Andrew J. 14
Pratt, Fletcher 12
St. Clair, Margaret 11
Tolkien, J.R.R. 8
Wellman, Manley Wade 14
Williamson, Jack 16
Zelazny, Roger 16 (upvoted)

Reynard said:

Wait, what? Tolkien does in a single 1000 page volume what Sanderson can't manage in seven. Never mind Martin or Jordan or their BFF imitators. Say what you want about Tolkien but compared to today's authors he was downright terse.

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Yeah. I shouldn't have brought up Sanderson, as he must be paid by the word. (Although his more recent Alloy of Law series is more to the point.)

CleverNickName said:

Disagree. A thousand pages across 3 books is a very reasonable size, even by today's standards. ("A Game of Thrones" alone was almost 800 pages.) The pacing of the story might be slow, but the page count isn't the problem.

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. . . and you're right it isn't necessarily the page count. Its what you do with those pages. There is a lot in the Lord of the Rings that is . . . at the risk of painting a target on myself . . . filler. Lot's of stuff that if cut wouldn't remove from the central story: poems, long-winded historical accounts, superfluous scenes (e.g., Tom Bombadil) etc. In places it feels a lot like reading the Icelandic sagas word for word, with their pages of genealogy. Now, I realize that much of this extra material may help set the tone and many view it as value-added. At the time when I first read the Lord of the Rings, I didn't mind it at all. Now, I find it a distraction. I was hoping that the movies would be more tightly edited, as movies usually are. But, we all know how that went (really, did The Hobbit need to be a movie trilogy?)

CleverNickName said:

Disagree. A thousand pages across 3 books is a very reasonable size, even by today's standards. ("A Game of Thrones" alone was almost 800 pages.) The pacing of the story might be slow, but the page count isn't the problem.

Just sayin'.

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PS . . . and I only read the first two books in "A Game of Thrones" for the same reason. The first one was great, but after finishing the second and realizing that many of the characters who were introduced were never connected to any of the other characters (in fact a couple died before they could interact with the primary story), I gave up on the series.