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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 3867236" data-attributes="member: 18280">Some notes:(1)  I tend to think of fantasy literature as part of an ongoing dialogue (I think the same of science, literature as a whole, philosophy, and so on).  All part of the ongoing dialogue of the human race.  No one can know all of it, but you are at a severe disadvantage if you don't know the biggest influences.  You are also at a disadvantage if you don't read the best of the new stuff.  The difficulty is, of course, that it is easier to discover the older good stuff (because it has survived, and passed on its influence) than it is to discover what the current good stuff is.  Overall, though, I agree that ignoring the current portion of the dialogue is as bad as ignoring the old.(2)  That said, I actually think that there is a paucity of great fantasy coming out today.  There is some great fantasy coming out today, but the signal-to-noise ratio is heavily in favour of the noise.  Of course, everyone's tastes are different.(3)  Modern fantasy retreads the waters of the past, just as Tolkein retreads the waters of the Eddas and the Medieval romances.  (4)  I view the idea of simply looking at the new without exploring the past as well as being akin to a composition student claiming that she shouldn't have to learn grammar because many great writers could violate it successfully.  They could violate grammar because they understood language to begin with.RC</blockquote>

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