Has Lovecraft become required reading?

[Desdichado]

Hadn't Lord of the Rings been popular before then, on college campuses in the 60s and 70s? I can see how it would be a big hit with the hippies, with its pipe-smoking reactionary yearning for a rural idyll.

Yes.

But I think the success of fantasy in the 70s wasn't down to any one movie or novel, it was the zeitgeist. Things were terrible then, and people sought escape into imaginary worlds of magic and elves. Vietnam, Watergate, terrorist hijackings, the energy crisis.

Yes. Plus there started to be enough "critical mass" in the fantasy field to generate more interest for publishers, I think. I don't think any one book or series can take the credit for it, it was just that several of them came out over a few years, sold well, and made some waves. Hence, the publishers published more, and that feedback loop has continued ever since.

 

[rogueattorney]

Hadn't Lord of the Rings been popular before then, on college campuses in the 60s and 70s? I can see how it would be a big hit with the hippies, with its pipe-smoking reactionary yearning for a rural idyll.

Yes. But it wasn't until a whole host of Tolkien clones, with Shannara at the fore-front, sold a whole bunch of books that the Tolkien flavor of fantasy came to equate with fantasy as a whole. Before then, Tolkien was Tolkien. He sat at that odd middle ground between "kid's" fantasy (Narnia, Wizard of Oz, Alice) and Swords & Sorcery.

Before Brooks, to the extent that fantasy was recognized as a genre unto itself at all, it was a much more wild, woolly, and more broadly encompassing genre than the way it came to be viewed in the late-'70s and '80s. Again, with D&D being no small part of the phenomena, particularly in ingraining Tolkien's zoology (elves, dwarves, etc. or their relatively obvious stand-ins) as the universal fantasy world population.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Has it come to the point that to truly appreciate D&D and gaming in general, a person has to read Lovecraft?

And if so, do I also have to appreciate Lovecraft to appreciate gaming? Because that might be a problem for me; Lovecraft just hasn't lived up to the hype I hear about him.

 

[pemerton]

I think that the best things about the pulps/Weird Tales authors are (1) the enormous energy in some of their stories

I can't say I've read much beyond Howard and Lovecraft, but of those two I'd rank Howard way ahead of Lovecraft for "enormous energy". I also find him more readable, although still not wonderful as a writer. (Of course, one cause of less-than-perfection in these authors' writing is the rate at which they were churning it out! From that point of view, they're prodigious writers.)

 

[pemerton]

I can see how it would be a big hit with the hippies, with its pipe-smoking reactionary yearning for a rural idyll.

Harsh but probably fair!

 

[Desdichado]

Yes. But it wasn't until a whole host of Tolkien clones, with Shannara at the fore-front, sold a whole bunch of books that the Tolkien flavor of fantasy came to equate with fantasy as a whole. Before then, Tolkien was Tolkien. He sat at that odd middle ground between "kid's" fantasy (Narnia, Wizard of Oz, Alice) and Swords & Sorcery.

Before Brooks, to the extent that fantasy was recognized as a genre unto itself at all, it was a much more wild, woolly, and more broadly encompassing genre than the way it came to be viewed in the late-'70s and '80s. Again, with D&D being no small part of the phenomena, particularly in ingraining Tolkien's zoology (elves, dwarves, etc. or their relatively obvious stand-ins) as the universal fantasy world population.

How many books really have the "Tolkien zoology", though? I know that there's Ray Feist's Riftwar (and more) series, but it also came out originally in the mid to late 70s. And then of course there's brooks.

What else is part of this flood of Tolk-clones?

I can't say I've read much beyond Howard and Lovecraft, but of those two I'd rank Howard way ahead of Lovecraft for "enormous energy". I also find him more readable, although still not wonderful as a writer. (Of course, one cause of less-than-perfection in these authors' writing is the rate at which they were churning it out! From that point of view, they're prodigious writers.)

Clark Ashton Smith and Fritz Leiber were both pulp writers who were hella good writers, and it's a shame that they were consigned to the pulps.

And some like Vance and Moorcock a lot, of course. I don't, personally.

I'm more interested in importing conventions and ideas from other genres altogether. My games have plots like Robert Ludlum spy thrillers, and the settings are as much pirates or cowboys and indians, or even Charles Dickens or Barsoom (or maybe all four of those merged together) as they are Tolkien or Howard.

 

[evileeyore]

How many books really have the "Tolkien zoology", though? I know that there's Ray Feist's Riftwar (and more) series, but it also came out originally in the mid to late 70s. And then of course there's brooks.

What else is part of this flood of Tolk-clones?

As you said, Fiest and Brooks.

I can add the Mithgar series by Dennis McKiernan and the Chronicles of the Shadow War by Chris Claremont (the Willow series). I've heard Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series is Tolkienesque.

I'm more interested in importing conventions and ideas from other genres altogether. My games have plots like Robert Ludlum spy thrillers, and the settings are as much pirates or cowboys and indians, or even Charles Dickens or Barsoom (or maybe all four of those merged together) as they are Tolkien or Howard.

I like rifing off of Howard, Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, and Dashiell Hammett for the style of play.

I also draw heavily on Ursala le Guin, Glen Cook, Greg Costikyan, L. Frank Baum, Terry Pratchett, and the Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.

 

[pemerton]

I'm more interested in importing conventions and ideas from other genres altogether. My games have plots like Robert Ludlum spy thrillers, and the settings are as much pirates or cowboys and indians, or even Charles Dickens or Barsoom (or maybe all four of those merged together) as they are Tolkien or Howard.

My campaigns tend to be Tolkienesque to the extent that, as the campaign unfolds, the PCs become more-and-more involved in political or religious machinations that have their roots deep in the history of the gameworld. But I think my actual adventure structure is most influenced by Chris Claremont's X-Men: convoluted and intersecting networks of NPCs whose plots and interrelationships drive the antagonism against the PCs, and are gradually uncovered by them.

As to theme - when playing with a standard D&D zoology (dwarves, elves, orcs etc) the focus tends to be on the conflicts between and possible reconcilations of various cultures, polities etc. Prior to starting my current 4e campaign I GMed a 10 year Rolemaster campaign which was set in Kara Tur/Bushido-land, and thematically ended up being focused on questions of freedom vs karma/destiny/obligation. For this thematic stuff I tend to draw on non-fiction more than fiction, and in particular on my own interests in history (amateur) and social and political philosophy (professional).

The Japanese campaign had a lot of Lovecraftian voidal entities figuring in its higher-level stages, but in developing them I drew not on Lovecraft (whom I hadn't read at that stage) but (i) on my experience in teaching philosophy of Buddhism, and in particular on the debates over the nature of enlightenment and its connection to the metaphysical character of the world, and (ii) on the Dr Druid miniseries by Warren Ellis from the mid-90s.

 

[Jhaelen]

For a Lovecraftian take on Rudyard Kipling, try The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

Funny, I just started reading it yesterday

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

well I read L Sprague DeCamp in the 80s in Scotland!
mostly his Conan tales but some others too like the Unwilling King trilogy which were a hoot!
hey, L Sprague DeCamp was vital in popularizing Conan.