If you don't like Lord of the Ring, does that mean you don't like fantasy books?

Sarashay said:

Lord Dunsany wrote The Gods of Pegāna when Tolkien was still a schoolboy. Fantasy didn't begin with Tolkien and certainly doesn't end with him.

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This.

The Hobbit wasn't published until 1937. LoTR wasn't published until 1954.


There was a lot of good fantasy before, during, and after those dates.

Not that I was born then, but from what I can tell they were originally written and marketed as fantasy, with teh sci fi elements coming later in a sort of creation-myth origin story.

As far as calling them epic, sure, the dragons have a pretty important job, but the story isn't "chosen one must save the world", it is regular people who have very regular human dramas against the backdrop of a very irregular and dangerous job. I wouldn't call a story about firemen epic, either. The fact that it's a large series doesn't make it epic, it just makes it successful.

I also wasn't saying that it predated or even was contemporary of Tolkien, just that they are not "recent" as the OP stated, nor are they Tolkienesque in any way.

ETA: There are recent books, but the origin of the series is not recent at all. Just to clarify.

Roxxsmom said:

Not to pick nits here, but the Pern books were technically Sci Fi (though the sci fi element was pretty soft and they certainly could be billed as science fantasy in many ways), and they actually did have an epic feel to them. The entire world was in mortal danger (from thread) and the stories grew into a humungous series that spanned ages and lifetimes. There was no arch villain in Pern (though there were various bad guys--usually people who ignored the threat of thread, forgot their responsibility to fight it, or abused the people's fear of it to their own ends), but really, the main antagonist throughout WAS thread and the danger the world would be if they couldn't stay united in fighting it.

But McCaffrey (and later her son) wrote her Pern books in the 70's, 80's and 90's (even into the 21st century). I think the novella that Dragonflight was based on (Weyr Search) was published earlier, though.

Lord of the Rings was written in the late 30's and 40's, first published in the early 50's (the Hobbit much earlier). There are indeed epic fantasy traditions that predate Tolkien. He, in fact, drew from earlier myths and legends in the creation of his world and stories. But the novels seemed to really become popular in the States at least in the 60's and 70's.

For many who came of age reading during those times, they do define the fantasy genre, but there were other popular fantasy and Science fantasy series (a lot of S&S) that also became popular in the 60's and 70's (think Conan, Fafherd and the Gray Mouser, Kane and even those godawful Gor books) that probably did not owe all (or even most of) their success to Tolkien, as they were a very different kind of fantasy with very different kinds of heros.

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amergina said:

No.

It means you don't like Tolkien's writings.

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THIS.

Thread could have been closed after 2nd post. Asked and answered. (-:

I HATE HATE HATE The Lord of the Rings...et al. But I have many favs in this genre.

It really depends on why you don't like Lord of the Rings. I'm not that fond of those books myself, but it has nothing to do with the genre. On the contrary, I love fantasy. But fantasy, like every genre, comes in many flavours. Just because one likes some fantasy books doesn't mean that one enjoys all of them.

WildScribe said:

Not that I was born then, but from what I can tell they were originally written and marketed as fantasy, with teh sci fi elements coming later in a sort of creation-myth origin story.
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I know what you're trying to say, but McCaffrey always considered them to be science fiction, and the first edition of Dragonflight had a prologue that explained the existence of Pern as a colony world.

And I wasn't aware that an epic fantasy required the person who saves the world to be superhuman or anything. In fact, the general formula for epic fantasy is that a farmer's son or street urchin or some such person gets dragged into something larger than himself and ends up saving the world. He or she may discover he or she has some special ability or power (and may even be the secret heir to the throne or something) but is ordinary in most respects, even flawed.

And in LoTR, Frodo was a normal guy who was doing the best he could. He didn't have any special powers or anything aside from courage and a sense of honor. But he got the ring thrust off on him by his uncle and had to see things through to the end, even though it nearly destroyed him. He wasn't even a chosen one, really, except that he inherited the ring from Bilbo. So is LoTR not epic fantasy because Frodo lacked special powers and because he was "chosen" more by happenstance than divine providence or something?

In Dragonflight, Lessa started out living a life in hiding (the last of a noble house), and she was chosen by her world's last queen dragon (who knew, subconsciously at least, that she needed a special rider). Lessa had a special and unusual ability (talking to dragons that weren't hers ... though that became more common in later Pern stories). She gave up her inheritance (Ruatha) to do the right thing, and she saved her world in book one by taking a terrible risk and almost dying. Then in later books, her leadership and ingenuity continued to be a factor (though she had plenty of faults).

The Pern stories never had an out and out war, except for FAx's depredations at the beginning of DF. Once thread started falling, war became untenable (though the dragons came close to fighting at one point). But the world was still threatened by something larger than everyone.

I still say that sounds pretty epic to me, fantasy or no. More so, even, than LoTR when you compare Lessa to Frodo.