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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mattcolville" data-source="post: 510338" data-attributes="member: 1300">It bugged Tolkien that people thought of the Lord of the Rings as a novel. These days, 'novel' means 'a work of fiction of a given length.' But he, being a professor of literature (ok, a specific era of literature) and language, he remembered when 'novel' meant a kind of story.There have always been fictional tales. Novels were different and new back in 11th century Japan, because they followed the events surrounding normal people. Fictional normal people, but normal people. Not Heroes.Tolkien was writing an Epic Romance. Not romance as in 'love story' but as in 'heightened drama.' Nowadays, we only have drama and melodrama, but twas not always thus.I know a lot of people who read pretty regularly and can't stand the Lord of the Rings. Usually, I find this is because they don't realize they're not reading a novel. There's very little 'realistic' dialog, things-landscapes, events-are not described as they relate to the individual, but in Epic terms. Most people these days want realistic fiction, characters who speak and act in a modern way, a way they can relate to.But, similarly, there's something about the Epic Romance that resonates with the human condition, myth, stuff like that, and lots of people who've never been exposed to anything like that love the Lord of the Rings. Anyway, best fantasy authors.1) Tolkien. This was a guy who hated (maybe too strong a term) everything that happened in England after 1066 and lamented the loss of the anglo-saxon culture. He thought that, once upon a time, there was a common myth of Britian. Before it got infected with Arthur and Persival and Tristan and all that crap. He thought he could reconstruct what that common myth might have been, and the Lord of the Rings is it. It's an astonishing accomplishment, though most people judge it on modern novel-writing merits, which is like juding Pink Floyd's The Wall based on how good a book it makes.2) Donaldson. The Covenant books are a deliberate attack on the presumptions, mostly the ethical presumptions, of the typical secondary world. It's profoundly challenging, morally, and to my mind as significant an accomplishment for what it does using fantasy and morality as Tolkien is for myth.3) Cook. The Black Company books are more obscure than they should be. These are military fantasy, something there isn't a lot of, and probably will never be any as good as these. A lot of people criticize the sparse writing, while failing to note the contrivance that these books are writen as the annals of a military company, first person, from the annalist's perspective. Anything more substantive would be a betrayal of that basic premise. Furthermore, the manner in which main characters are treated is a truly bold follow-through with the premise. Soldiers don't die a death based on how interesting they were in life. They just die random senseless deaths, every one. 4) Eddings. Again, we've got an author who studied Chaucer and other medeival romantic literature, and deliberately set out to see if he could follow a 500 year old formula that was tremendously popular once, hasn't been done in 400 years, and see if it resonated with people. And it does, absolutely. Though, again, people who judge it by modern novel-writing standards find it lacking. Which, of course, it is in that regard. 5) Pratchett. That's some funny shahit, man.</blockquote>

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