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I think it depends somewhat on how you define the word bestseller. In the US, Ballantine's alone has sold about 50 million copies of the LotR books. But this was over a period of about 50 years ;).

Sure, I agree. Nevertheless, the attitude of people in different countries or even regions is quite different depending on where you go. Some are much more opposed to using English or a different foreign language than others, even if they know the language relatively well.

You can combine those two points. In Germany, this combination is very obvious. There, fantasy (and science fiction) was some kind of literature that nobody concerned for his reputation would want to be seen with by others. Comes LotR. For what reason ever, it was published by one of the two...

Well, what is the barley or corn for, if not for the sugar?

Eh. Even Tolkien had very different views of fantasy races in his different publications. Just look at the elves from "The Hobbit" and compare them to the elves from LotR. Those elves from "The Hobbit" are much nearer to folklore than his later concepts. They live under a hill, dance in the...

At least in France, it was more of the problem that the people would not speak English, even if they could. I still remember a conversation in a bank in Calais, where I spoke English and all answers came in French. The guy understood me perfectly, but he would have never used a single English...

Just a nitpick: I don't think that the lingua franca (I mean that one spoken by mediterranean sailors) was spoken by everyone in the region where it was in use, either ;). In the general meaning of "lingua franca", English definitely qualifies.

That's true with the BBC. Fortunately :). Btw, the mother of that friend who took lessons was kind of a rebel. Although she had friends at Parliament, she always refused to speak Oxford or Queen's English. I suppose that it was this strong nonconformist attitude that her friends liked about her...

You have never been to the UK, eh? I had a friend in Northern Ireland who went to a special language school in order to learn standard English (I don't remember whether it was Oxford or Queen's English at that time), because this was necessary to get a better job.

Well, television is not an American invention, but I suppose you mean the overall influence of Hollywood in the world. And the international postal language is French (or did they change that recently?). If you don't know the name of your destination country in the language of the country you...

At least in the People's Republic of China, Standard Mandarin with a fixed pronunciation is used as the language at school, on TV, etc. This means that, nowadays, most younger Chinese can speak and understand Standard Mandarin. That's also what my colleagues told me; they can converse in...

As for the number of speakers, it ranks #11 (100 million native speakers, 22 million as a second language). I'm not sure where you got those numbers from. As for English, it ranks as #4 regarding the number of native speakers and #2 overall. Nevertheless, I can see English as the only language...

I have two Indian colleagues at the moment, one from Delhi and the other one from somewhere in Andhra Pradesh. Neither can the one from Delhi speak Telugu nor the other one speak Hindi. They have to communicate in English. That's different from my Chinese colleagues, who can all speak Mandarin...

Much more important for the advancement of medieval power were the main inventions of the time between the 5th and 9th century, like the heavy plough or the horse collar, which allowed the population of central and northern Europe to rise. Though quite a lot of Roman technology got lost in the...

Whether math is science or not is completely irrelevant to the discussion, because of several reasons. First, all examples given for "science" in the discussion so far deal actually with the use of technical inventions in fantasy, not with the scientific process per se. A flying car is not...

Well, I heard it's very similar to BRP. As it's not called BRP, rules cannot be copyrighted, and Runequest came first, it should not be a legal problem. There were a few posts on rpg.net claiming the latter. I'll have to wait till I get it in order to make up my mind.

Sure. My point was that there is no indication that both, science and religion, are exclusive. And whereas religion nowadays manages to survive without any flashy show of magic power, magic in a fantasy setting overcomes even this hurdle easily. It's visibly there. At least it's true for D&D...

But a bit like Tasselhoff. It's probably a simple mix-up.

Your question is based on the assumption that there is some kind of automatism in the relation of scientific elements and magic. There is no such thing. Shadowrun or the whole genre of modern fantasy (Buffy, WoD) live with the coexistence of science and magic. If your assumption were true...

I love Lords of Madness :). I also love the spaceship (okay, spelljammer ship ;)) that comes with its web enhancement :).