Kana
Posts: 6676
Joined: 10/24/2006 Status: offline
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See, I beg to differ with you here. Re the Elric-you are right that Moorcock has been writing him most of his life...and it shows. Things like The Dreamtheives Daughter are elegant and rather olique, whereas the first few Elric novellas are pretty much Conan ripoffs, a fact that Moorcock has fessed up to more than once (Though he intentionally set up Elric as the polar opposite. Conan hates magic. Elric's a sorceror. Conan is an uncivilized barbarian (Based on Howards watching the rape of Texas done by the oilmen of his day) Elric is the last emperor of an sophisticated alien race, Conan is huge and strength is his forte. Elric is a weak albino who needs drugs/Stormbringer to survive...). So yeah, at it's heart, it's pulp. (That said, hell yes it's better than Norman (A joke of a writer, as well as cats like Feist and Eddings who write tripe) And remember, this is from a guy who basically had The Eternal Champion cycle memorized as a kid (PS-You ever read the second Hawkmoon series, when he brings the cycle to a close-that's some fine stuff there). I think the character himself is awesome, utterly unique, one of the great antiheroes of fiction, but man, those first two or three books have some painful moments and lots of em read like teenage angst come to life(Which Moorcock has also admitted) Now I'm not gonna argue Worm Ouroboros, that's good shit, but if you're gonna go there you may as well go Gormenghast while you're at it. I like Covenent (The second series far more than the first)more than a little, Stephen R can write, but man, that's some grim shit-really tough to do a TV series off of. Mordants need would do better, but that's essentially Donaldson's take on a fairy tale. Now, Fafhrd and Mouser, yeah, I'll back Leiber all the way(And almost through him out there in my prior post). He has the writing chops, the plotting, great originality (He's the cat who coined the term swords and sorcery) and Thieves House may be my favorite fantasy short story of all time. But the series gets weaker as time progresses and by the end he was writing pretty much just for the cash. I actually thought about LeGuin, but really, I'd rather see someone do The Riddlemaster series than most of her stuff. I like Vance, but am not sure there's enough to work with in The Dying Earth and haven't read enough Kay to make a call either way(I kinda slowed down on Fantasy when I got in college and shifted more toward Bios, hard core history and shit like Aristotle and Rawls). As for Tolkien, I have lots of trouble seeing LoTR as a child's series. First, cripes man, Tolkien contributed to the OED as a teenager, was one of the worlds great scholars re the origins of the English language, specializing in (IIRC) where Saxon words come from. He was a fricken Oxford Don for crying out loud. He also specialized in ancient epics, particularly Icelandic eddas. And the man didn't just teach, he could write. Reread the scenes where Galadriel turns down the ring, or the charge of the riders of Rohan and the Battle of Pellinor fields(Or go to the appendices and read the Death of Arwen)-it's just amazingly well written. The man is kinda the Hobbes of the field. He set the bar and everyone since has been compared to him Perhaps a touch prosaic for some (especially modern readers) but hey, I'm a cat who prefers the King James version to the contemporary bibles, I like my thees and thou's. Compare that CV to most modern writers and it's not even a battle. edited cuz I can't type
< Message edited by Kana -- 10/15/2012 3:18:56 PM >
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"One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die. " HST
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