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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 3459444" data-attributes="member: 3887">It sounds to me like Tolkien dismissing the 'literary establishment' in the same way the literary establishment dismissed him, just pettiness all around. I can't take establishment critics to task for ignoring Tolkien's contribution to English literature and then turn a blind eye to his pig-headed remarks. I mean, weren't good books not about hobbits being written at that time in England?Because, unlike Tolkien, Mieville hasn't ascended bodily to Heaven <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> It's funny. China's gone on record badmouthing Tolkien and yet I like them for pretty much the same reason; the settings, in all their gloriously cluttered detail. Some small part of my brain was aware when their novels stop doing 'novel stuff' and start spiraling discursively into more than you ever needed to know about scarab-headed women and hobbit toast-buttering songs. But you know what? I ate it up.It's like some kind of receptor-site damage on a neuron. Pointless exotic details bond there and deliver me great pleasure like a drug. I bet a lot of SF/F fans are similarly afflicted. Put another way, I like Bas-Lag and New Crobuzon better than anything Mieville's actually done with or in them, and I can just about say the same thing about Middle Earth.</blockquote>

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