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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4363592" data-attributes="member: 4937">Oh good grief, that doesn't even make any sense!  How am I redefining anything?  Are you claiming that good and evil are terms with such fixed meanings that any two books or cultures will agree on exactly what they mean?  Of course Burroughs is going to offer a different standard of heroism and define a different sort of good than say Tolkien - they are two very different sorts with very different belief systems.And as for following the evidence, I invented the definitions in question.  I've read over 400 works of science fiction and fantasy, and I'd read over 200 before I even came up with unifying characteristics that I thought fit the available evidence.  The definition was formed by the evidence after a great deal of thought and after discarding a great deal of other ideas.   Because we all know that everyone from a Judeo-Christian culture fully accepts the tenants of that theology, and also that no one is ever classically educated much less reads and admires Homer or Virgil?Who is being absurd here again?  Do you read Burroughs at all?  Read 'Gods of Mars' or 'Mastermind of Mars' and then tell me again how Burroughs feels that organized religion of any sort is a suitable basis for ethical behavior.  Yet at the same time, try to argue that either book isn't being didactic and preachy.  I've got both on the shelf.  I'm quite happy to dig up quotes if you are willing to make an issue of it.  Howard's 'Conan' is believed by many critics to be an idealized version of himself - the person that he aspires to be.  How am I reaching?  I mean if you are going to offer the criticism that my definition of fantasy excludes all of pulp fantasy, then at least offer as examples some pulp fantasy that isn't so obviously moralizing just so your argument will be interesting.  I mean sheesh, these are largely boy's stories in both execution and conscious conception.  This is 'How to be a real man' fiction.  You might as well tell me that child-martyrdom stories from Puritan primers don't meet my definition because they aren't trying to define good and evil modes of behavior.  Just because the ethical precepts the authors are trying to demonstrate and teach aren't wholly modern doesn't mean that they aren't there.Oh well, we've been here before several times.  I wasn't convincing the first time.  I doubt I've grown in rhetorical power since then.</blockquote>

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