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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2528708" data-attributes="member: 26473">Beater, Biter, the Ring - three powerful items in a pretty short story. Worgs, ents, giant intelligent spiders, dragons, ringwraiths, the Balrog, Shelob, the dinosaur-like mounts of the Nazgul, trolls, lycanthropes (such as Beorn), giant eagles, animal spies - again, I don't see the lack of monsters, particularly when compared to the Conan stories. (And that's without getting into the Silmarillion.)Hussar, I do take your point - what is in core D&D is quite different from what's in Tolkein, or Howard, or LeGuin. Howard's purple prose is appropriate to the story he wants to tell - he wasn't writing Ulysses. As far as Lackey et al., I'm only personally familar with CJ Cherryh, and I find the language to be pretty pedestrian - nothing that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck like Howard. This is a matter of taste of course, and so it's not something that can be compared with any rigor.Again, this is a question of taste, but I can say after looking over title after title, the amount of derivative, repetitive plots and characters, coupled with inoffensive prose good for all time zones didn't wow me.That's what makes the classics, classics - they stand the test of time.No, that's not even in the same area code as what I said, and I'll thank you to not put words in my mouth...er, post.What I said was your premise that the growth of the fantasy genre is a phenomenon related directly to the influence of D&D needs some more convincing evidence.  Correlation (two things happening simultaneously) is not causation (the change in one is not dependent on the other.) Do I think it's a potentially significant influence? Yes. Do I think you can look at the two in isolation from all the other factors that affect the popularity of fiction genres? No, I don't.</blockquote>

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