A Question for the 25 and under crowd - What have you read?

[mmadsen]

You were disagreeing with Cadfan's characterisation of REHoward's Conan as "mighty thewed barbarians hewing things in twain". I think that characterisation is entirely correct. There is a mighty-thewed barbarian and he does hew things in twain. His thews are described many times. He hews things in twain many times. .

You seem to be intentionally ignoring the point. The argument is not the Howard never says thews, or that Howard's Conan is non-violent. The argument is that the pastiches stripped Howard's works down to little more than a caricature -- as you're doing now.

If you have not read Howard's original stories, you should not judge them based on the shallow pastiches.

If you have read a Howard story or two, and you did not like them, that's fine. But's that very, very different from saying, "I don't want to read a story about might thews."

 

[Shampoohorn]

Roger and Me

Great thread! l I've enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts on the new and old authors on the list. Despite being pretty well read in the fantasy genre, I've never read any Howard. I'm going to change that shortly.

I'm surprised Zelazny's names hasn't appeared anywhere in this thread. The (1st) Chronicles of Amber, Jack of Shadows, The Changing Land, and a host of other books and stories by him are as much the source material of DnD as anything that Vance and other's wrote. He was the best of what I read in high school. He's also an acknowledged major influence of Gaiman's and no doubt others.

I'd put a shout out for some of Anne McCaffery's early dragon books as great adventure stories with a distinct DnD vibe, what with all the smiths and bards and leatherclad dragon riders.

Sad to see Jordan so high on the list, but he is an obvious entry level author. Somebody mentioned not seeing the need to read some of the older authors, but doing so helps to see later writers like Jordan as aimless imitators rather than creators.

 

[Hussar]

To be honest, I think the only Jordan I've read are his Conan ones.

John Carter's red martian might be the good guys, and the green ones are the bad ones, but, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

But, you are perfectly right in that a lot of those old stories are pretty brutal on the social morals scale. And that is kinda my point. D&D despite it's age and popularity, is still predominantly a suburban male thing. Do we want to tie the game to stuff that is so obviously bigotted?

Again, we read Shakespeare, true, but, where? We read Shakespeare because he's arguably the greatest writer in the English language. (Whether that's true or not, it's generally held) And, at least where I grew up, they removed Merchant of Venice from the school curriculums.

We don't play D&D to get educated by and large.

 

[Gentlegamer]

To be honest,
Again, we read Shakespeare, true, but, where? We read Shakespeare because he's arguably the greatest writer in the English language.

Tolkien hated Shakespeare (and all literature after 1066). After reading Macbeth, he dreamed of a day when the trees really would march off to war . . .

 

[hemera]

I'm 28, so a little over the cutoff age, but I'll toss in my 2 cents and admit I have read none of the authors listed.

 

[Hussar]

Tolkien hated Shakespeare (and all literature after 1066). After reading Macbeth, he dreamed of a day when the trees really would march off to war . . .

Hang on, "all literature after 1066"? What English literature is there BEFORE 1066? Or do you just mean that Tolkien loved his Greeks and whatnot and nothing in his native language was worth reading?

I'm not much of a Tolkien buff, so, I'm just curious.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Hang on, "all literature after 1066"? What English literature is there BEFORE 1066? Or do you just mean that Tolkien loved his Greeks and whatnot and nothing in his native language was worth reading?

I'm not much of a Tolkien buff, so, I'm just curious.

Tolkien considered England's native language to be the Old English from before the Norman/French invasion (both physically and culturally). Tolkien was upset about the Norman invasion as if it had happened during his lifetime.

His creation of Elvish languages and subsequent stories was an attempt to create a "real" language and mythology for England instead of the borrowed Norse, Celtic, and French-Arthurian legends.

 

[Storm Raven]

To be honest, I think the only Jordan I've read are his Conan ones.

John Carter's red martian might be the good guys, and the green ones are the bad ones, but, it's pretty obvious what's going on.

Well, sort of. In the first book it is not made clear, but later it turns out that red martians are the result of the interbreeding of all the other "colors" of martians: white martians, black martians, yellow martians, and so on. How that results in red-skinned descendants, I don't know, but they apparently do. This sort of interbereeding seems to be a fairly anti-racist stance to take.

And the white martians are vile bad guys, and apparently irredeemable. The black martians are bad guys, but honorable and end up changing sides. The yellow martians are led by an insane king at the beginning, but once that problem is removed turn out to be okay. The green martians are savage, but highly honorable (and turn out to be stalwart allies of Carter's).

 

[Doug McCrae]

Tolkien hated Shakespeare (and all literature after 1066).

That's overstating it, I think. You're right about Tolkien wanting to create an Anglo-Saxon mythology that could have been if the Norman invasion never happened. But he read, admired and was influenced by a number of post 1066 texts such as medieval French romances, EA Wyke Smith's Land of the Snergs (probably the source for hobbits) and the writings of William Morris, George Macdonald and others.

Tolkien's Sources

 

[WayneLigon]

The real question is whether these authors have survived the test of time- whether now, with many more competitors than they once faced, they're still considered worth reading. I'm pretty sure that Leiber and Howard have not passed this test. Howard has at least created an archetype that everyone knows and loves, but they tend to know it and love it through the effects its had on other writing or on secondary materials based on his, rather than through his actual words on paper.

That both are still in print many decades later will be proof enough for you.