# China Mieville on Tolkien and Epic/High Fantasy



## Cthulhu's Librarian (Nov 5, 2003)

This is kind of old, but it is an interesting debate that China Mieville is arguing. 

http://www.panmacmillan.com/Features/China/debate.htm

Just to give a taste of it, here is his opening statement:


> Two untrue things are commonly claimed about fantasy. The first is that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally different genres. The second is that fantasy is crap.
> 
> It's usually those who claim the first who also claim the second. The idea is that where SF is radical, exploratory and intellectually adventurous, fantasy is badly written, clichéd and obsessed with backwards-looking dreams of the past - feudal daydreams of Good Kings and Fair Maidens.



Thoughts? Opinions?


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Nov 5, 2003)

Just to start things off, Tolkien is one of my favorite authors, although I wouldn't consider myself an expert on him by any means. China Mieville is one of my favorite new authors. I agree with alot of what he says, but at the same time, don't agree with some of his opinions on Tolkien. I do think that most of the high fantasy being published today is crap. There are some very good writers, but for every one that is branching out into new territory and making something new with epic fantasy, there are 20 or more that are just rehashing the same thing over and over. 

I try to look for new twists in fantasy, and sometimes I find those twists in older litereature. I'm a big fan of Lovecraft and some other "Weird Fiction" writers who were writing before Tolkien, and those who have followed along after them while incorporating elements of epic fantasy without falling into the same old plots and elements. This is not to say I don't read epic fantasy-I do, and I enjoy much of it. However, once I find it going in the same directions as everything else, I have a hard time continuing with it. I can't count how many books I have sitting on my shelves with bookmarks in them that I'll never finish. 

Now all of this isn't to say that if you only read epic fantasy, there is something wrong. Obviously, lots of people love it, and there is nothing wrong with that. But, having come from an SF/fantasy publishing background, I can say from personal experience, the cutting edge stuff gets rejected in favor of "Its just like Tolkien, but with dwarves instead of elves!" It sells, and in the end, publishing is a business just like everything else. If you want something different, you have to look hard for it.


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## Mark (Nov 5, 2003)

Cthulhu's Librarian said:
			
		

> There are some very good writers, but for every one that is branching out into new territory and making something new with epic fantasy, there are 20 or more that are just rehashing the same thing over and over.




I'd say that ratio might have been true in the early eighties, but with the proliferation of the Internet, I dare say it has grown exponentially each year since.  My own belief is that there is a fundemental mistake made by potential fantasy (and perhaps Sci-Fi) authors.

The "pros" will say time and time again that to write, you must also extensively read.  With this I agree.  However I would stipulate that reading other fiction should not be the main focus, but rather the reading of autobiographies, biographies, history, medicine, psychology, sociology, and other works of intended non-fiction.  I think this error accounts in a large part for the rehashing of which you post.

I do not say that if one wishes to be a writer of quality fiction one should isolate themself from other works of fiction, but I do suggest better writers find their stimulus, if not also their style, from other quarters.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Nov 5, 2003)

Mark said:
			
		

> The "pros" will say time and time again that to write, you must also extensively read. With this I agree. However I would stipulate that reading other fiction should not be the main focus, but rather the reading of autobiographies, biographies, history, medicine, psychology, sociology, and other works of intended non-fiction. I think this error accounts in a large part for the rehashing of which you post.
> 
> I do not say that if one wishes to be a writer of quality fiction one should isolate themself from other works of fiction, but I do suggest better writers find their stimulus, if not also their style, from other quarters.



I agree with you completely. Writers not only need to read the genre they are writing in, but also they need to read many other, disparate things as well. It only takes a little bit of outside influence to make the difference between a well written novel that fails because it doesn't present anything new, and a well written novel that succeeds because it pushes the envelope in a way that hasn't been done before.  This is where SF may have an advantage over fantasy, if writers and readers insist on dividing the two genres. I've heard plenty of people say that "SF is the literature of ideas." In my opinion, that is bs. Its no more the literature of ideas than any other genre, it just has writers who are more open to taking their outside interests and influences and pushing the envelope. Fantasy needs a kick in the a** to do the same thing. The writers who are out there doing the kicking are trying, but there are just too many a**es churning out the same old stuff. (No offense intended)


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## drnuncheon (Nov 5, 2003)

Sturgeon's Law:

90% of science fiction is crap.
Then again, 90% of _everything_ is crap.

J
can I say that on these boards?


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## Dimwhit (Nov 5, 2003)

Cthulhu's Librarian,

I think this is on topic, so here goes:

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine about the different between fantasy and Sci-Fi. The quote in your first topic stating that they are two different genres is interesting. Take Star Wars, for example. It's not Sci-Fi, it's a Space Fantasy (I think I got that right). But, since it takes place in space, it's usually lumped in with Sci-Fi.

We basically came to the conclusion that a movie is fantasy if it takes place in a make-believe world, be it a traditional fantasy setting or another galaxy (like Star Wars). Movies like Star Trek and Alien remain Sci-Fi because they're based in a reality where Earth exists. The only hole we found in that logic is with fantasy movies taking place during Earth's medieval times, like Excalibur and, to a lesser extent, Dragonslayer. They're certainly not Sci-Fi

But I find China Mieville's statement that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally different genres interesting, because I think it's just the opposite. It would be very hard to completely separate the two without re-defining movies like Star Wars.


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## Mark (Nov 5, 2003)

Dimwhit said:
			
		

> The only hole we found in that logic is...




Perhaps there are more holes, since Outland starring Sir Sean Connery (which is based on High Noon) takes place on a remote, off-Earth mining colony but might best be categorized as a _Space Western_, despite the directional contradiction...


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## reutbing0 (Nov 6, 2003)

I'd argue that the difference between Sci-Fi and fundamentally lies fundamentally in how the 'weird' stuff (that is the things that couldn't happen in our own reality) is explained. Sci-Fi obviously uses  (pseudo) technology/science whereas Fantasy uses the supernatural/mystical to explain the starnge phenomena alien to our own world. Indeed, Star Wars (original trilogy) is Space Fantasy because The Force, the intangible mystical power, is so central to the story. Of course after George Lucas introduced all that midi-chlorian #$$^%$#%$ its starts to get closer to Sci Fi.


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## s/LaSH (Nov 6, 2003)

(I recall that Eddings makes it a point to never read within the genre.)

Anyway, this is actually a good point. Fantasy tends to be poorly innovative. Perhaps it has so many tropes that simply toying with ones that real people don't care about is a demanding process, and it would all make more sense if we started crunching numbers, I dunno.

The thing is, fantasy has certain elements that scifi doesn't. Fantasy is traditionally medieval-tech. There isn't much room for things that are meaningful, because we've already dealt with them. Does this mean that they're finished, though? No. Spirituality is a very real element of this world, no matter your thoughts on the matter - because it's important to everyone else. Fantasy is better-suited than scifi to exploring spiritual questions. We should see more of that. And there are elements in fantasy that deserve exploration - things like demihumans, armies of evil humanoids - what's the moral aspect of slaughtering the lot of them? These are things that can relate to the real world.

Anything more esoteric than that is just 'here's a hypothetical, now deal with it', which doesn't allow the reader to empathise with the narrative.

See what I mean?


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## Wombat (Nov 6, 2003)

The basic division that I have found over the years is that sci fi _tends_ to be "Idea Driven" and fantasy _tends_ to be "Character Driven".

These are, of course, sweeping generalities, but let me explain.

"Idea Driven" stories are based around a concept, a notion of how things do or should work.  Sci fi stories are often derived from this mold, particularly Hard Sci Fi.  Indeed the ideas used in the stories are often based around some article in a journal, possibly even a scientific journal.  The notion is to extrapolate upon the idea and see where it takes you.  Setting in sci fi books becomes important because the setting changes so radically from author to author, even from work to work.  A lot of time must be spent in defining a lot of "nuts n bolts" of how the world works.  More time spent on setting generally means less time spent on characters, but this is far from invariable.

"Character Driven" stories are based around a character, an individual whose personality drives the actions.  More fantasy authors go this rout because the "assumed setting" (unlike sci fi) is pretty well defined.  Oh, there are the odd bits that change, but mostly you are dealing with a pseudo-medieval, pre-gunpowder world with some form of magic.  Step too far out of line and doubts set in as to whether it is "really a fantasy book".  Since most of the ideas are taken up there, characters become much more important.  Motivations are stressed and set scenes become important, since the background is "already known".

As stated these are _very_ broad generalizations and hosts of discrepencies could be noted, but by and large this trend has held in my readings.  

Of course this also falls over into gaming -- it is really easy to set up a fantasy game, because the basic notions of social structure, technology, and the like are fairly well agreed upon, albeit with notable small differences.  Conversely sci fi games require a lot more supporting background material due to the fact that (to use three easy examples) Foundation, Ringworld, and Dune have little or nothing in common.


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## LightPhoenix (Nov 6, 2003)

I haven't read the entire article, but I do agree with the first statement quoted.  That is to say, Sci-Fi and "Fantasy" are, IMO, the same genre looked at two different ways.  Hell, I'd be so bold to say that would include stuff like Horror and Romance too - I mean, they're all fantasies (lowercase) in that they're not real.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy stand out in the level of detachment from the modern world however, and in this sense they are fundamentally the same.  They both tell stories in worlds that are substantially different than the one we live in.  One prefers to focus on technology, the other on mysticism, but that's just setting, they're both highly fantastical.

There's also a prevailing attitude that Fantasy _is_ crap, but that doesn't necessarily mean that's true.  That's a cultural thing, and thankfully that trend seems to be on the decline.  However, there are still _many_ people who will dismiss Fantasy out of hand, without considering it's the same as everything else - predominantly crap, but some of it is good.

I would like to take a stand on some points made, using Wombat's post as a springboard.  Mainly, that there are types of stories, traits that they have.  These types and traits are independant of genre however.  Any genre can be idea-driven or character-driven, poorly innovative or highly innovative, or any other trait you can choose to attribute to a story.  Furthermore, these are solely dependant on the author - it's an author that's poorly innovative, or character-driven, not a genre.

Someone mentioned that the internet has raised the ratio between good and bad works.  I also disagree with that.  It's an illusion, simply because you don't need a publisher on the internet.  Anyone can post anything they want.  And if you can't get a publisher, you might as well post it on the internet.  I believe the ratio going through the publishers is probably about the same.  Possibly it's increased the ratio solely because the internet allows for small publishing companies to advertise, but I don't think that has as big an effect as it may seem.


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## Celtavian (Nov 6, 2003)

*re*

I don't read enough fantasy fiction to comment on China's musings. I do know that the only fantasy fiction I reread is Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_. Best fantasy books ever written in my opinion.



			
				Mark said:
			
		

> The "pros" will say time and time again that to write, you must also extensively read.  With this I agree.  However I would stipulate that reading other fiction should not be the main focus, but rather the reading of autobiographies, biographies, history, medicine, psychology, sociology, and other works of intended non-fiction.  I think this error accounts in a large part for the rehashing of which you post.
> 
> I do not say that if one wishes to be a writer of quality fiction one should isolate themself from other works of fiction, but I do suggest better writers find their stimulus, if not also their style, from other quarters.




Author's should only read fiction to keep up with what's already been done or to keep motivated. An author needs to know if he is copying someone else, and perusing a few chapters or reading the back of a fantasy novel should give you a good idea of its content. Authors always need reminding of why they are pursuing a career in speculative fiction, and reading from a fantasy book that inspires or moves you is a great way to keep the dream alive.

Reading other sources such as those mentioned is a much better way to build the breadth of knowledge necessary to create quality content. I generally seek out academic sources when I am writing a fantasy story.


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## Olive (Nov 6, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> I don't read enough fantasy fiction to comment on China's musings. I do know that the only fantasy fiction I reread is Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_. Best fantasy books ever written in my opinion.




Sure, I love it too, but it's hard to disagree with this statement:



			
				China Miéville said:
			
		

> And there's a lot to dislike - his cod-Wagnerian pomposity, his boys-own-adventure glorying in war, his small-minded and reactionary love for hierarchical status-quos, his belief in absolute morality that blurs moral and political complexity.




Isn't it?


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## Viking Bastard (Nov 6, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> I don't read enough fantasy fiction to comment on China's musings. I do know that the only fantasy fiction I reread is Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_. Best fantasy books ever written in my opinion.



How do you know that if you haven't read that much fantasy?

Anyhoo, it's through the works of one author that I realized 
that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are pretty much the same thing, just
with very minimal differences. Terry Pratchett. His work, despite
being fantasy, often explores more scifi-ish themes and each
story is structured around a 'what if' concept. What if you took
technology X and put in a fairy tale or what if this and what if
that. Concept writing that puts Asimov to shame IMO.


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## shilsen (Nov 6, 2003)

Viking Bastard said:
			
		

> Anyhoo, it's through the works of one author that I realized that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are pretty much the same thing, just with very minimal differences. Terry Pratchett. His work, despite being fantasy, often explores more scifi-ish themes and each story is structured around a 'what if' concept. What if you took technology X and put in a fairy tale or what if this and what if that. Concept writing that puts Asimov to shame IMO.




I've always enjoyed Asimov, but I agree totally with the last statement. Pratchett rocketh greatly! 

A big difference I find between many fantasy and sci-fi authors (and which I think tends to cause problems in genre classification - which is a debatable endeavour anyway) is the degree to which the chosen sci-fi or fantasy background informs the work. It's hard to imagine Tolkien being able to write the same kind of thing in a non-fantasy setting. Pratchett, of the other hand, is writing satire and humorous fiction more than fantasy (even though he's created a very memorable fantasy setting) and could very likely do the same thing effectively in a non-fantasy setting. I would put Asimov closer to Pratchett in this regard, while Arthur C. Clarke, for example, would lean a little towards Tolkien.

That'll be $0.02, please.


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## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 6, 2003)

Hello, 



> Posted by Olive:
> *Isn't it?*




No.  But it's about what I'd expect from the author of the vastly overhyped _Perdido Street Station_, which reads like a so-so William Gibson pastiche written after a two-week LSD and _Final Fantasy_ bender.

Even a cursory reading will show that Tolkien's villains were much bigger fans of "hierarchical status-quos" than his heroes.  

_but we must have power, power to order all things as we will, for that good which only the Wise can see._

and 

_the high and ultimate purpose: Knowledge, Rule, Order, all things that we have so far striven in vain to accomplish, hindered rather than helped by our weak or idle friends._

are spoken by Saruman in his corruption.  Compare this to the original mission of the Wizards, who in opposing Sauron

_were forbidden to match his power with power, or to seek to dominate elves or men by force or fear._

The people of Gondor, who were the closest among Tolkien's heroic nations to having a "hierarchical status-quo", were explicitly in decline.  The Shire has no real hierarchy until Saruman (through Lotho) intervenes, setting up "Gatherers" and "Sharers" and multiplying the Shirrifs, which sends the Shire into a disgruntled decline.  

The comment about absolute morality blurring complexities is telling, too.  It is the other way around - complexities are created to blur absolute morality, usually to the advantage of the ones doing the blurring, who would typically be judged harshly by such morality if their attempts at sophistry fail.  Even so, hard moral choices are made in Tolkien's work, most notably by Faramir (who, if he were so fond of "hierarchical status-quos", would have had Frodo and Sam shot down on sight without a second thought).

As to "glorying in war", you get a glimpse into Tolkien's ideas on the subject with Bilbo's thoughts before he gets clocked by a rock towards the end of _The Hobbit_, and in some of Aragorn's discussion with Eowyn.  In any case, I'd consider Tolkien, who saw service in one of the more brutal wars of a brutal century, better qualified to comment on the subject than a trendy poseur like Mieville.

With all that said, I will note that Mieville is right that there is a segment of SF fandom that thinks disparagingly of fantasy.  I just think that even to bother addressing the concerns of this crowd is all but pointless, since, from what I have seen, they're almost uniformly horrible people, well worthy of adjectives that would not meet with the approval of various moderators' grandmothers.  Mieville obviously has some sympathy for them and some concern for their opinions, though - not surprising in one so pathetically captivated by "radicalism", apparently for its own sake.  And this concern has apparently led to the little article linked to in the first post of this thread.


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## Desdichado (Nov 6, 2003)

To follow up on Tratyn Runewind's post, consider Gollum for just a brief moment, and then come back and tell me again how morality is absolute in Tolkien's work?  I've rarely seen so compelling a villain, primarily because you never really know for sure if he truly is a villain to be hated and feared or a victim to be pitied and helped.


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## Henry (Nov 6, 2003)

Mark said:
			
		

> The "pros" will say time and time again that to write, you must also extensively read.  With this I agree.  However I would stipulate that reading other fiction should not be the main focus, but rather the reading of autobiographies, biographies, history, medicine, psychology, sociology, and other works of intended non-fiction.




Very true - this point is the same for the "training" in being a good Dungeon Master, too, in my opinion. I would love to find this again, but I once had a link to a person's advice on how to improve your DM'ing. His advice was basically get as much physical and intellectual non-DM'ing experience as possible. (e.g. some of his advice ran along things like participate in nature hikes, ride a horse, read up on medicine both conventional and holistic, etc.) The more well-read and experienced you are, the more you can draw on that experience to craft a more entertaining tale.

People say, "Write what you know"; the phrase should actually be closer to, "You do write what you know."


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## The Fool (Nov 6, 2003)

*bleh...*

Apart from Star Wars, all SF ive seen to me is worse than crap...They call what i read Fantasy, but from what ive seen of SF its more make believe and Fantastical than anything im into...   

Oh, and like someone mentioned, SW isnt really Sci Fi...


The Fool


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## Dimwhit (Nov 6, 2003)

I wanted to mention the Fantasy Is Crap part of this, when compared to Sci-Fi. I think if we look back 40-50 years or more, Sci-Fi was also crap. Now it is much better. Most likely because the reality in the majority of modern Sci-Fi is much closer to our present reality than Fantasy, and thus easier to create and relate to. Society in general is much better able to relate to lasers and spaceships than the magic of Fantasy because we can see the possibilities of the former. Especially after the last 20-30 years.

But I suppose I disagree with the notion that Fantasy is crap. I think much of it is, but only the unimaginitive pieces. There is plenty out there that is much more thought-provoking and profound than...well, most of current pop culture. I'm not sure today that we can claim any type of genre sucks when we look at the current state of entertainment.


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## Desdichado (Nov 6, 2003)

I do like where he's going though -- I think gritty, urban fantasy is tons of fun, and I'd like to see more of it.

Unlike him, however, I don't particularly need to be challenged by books I read, I need to be entertained.  It's less likely I'll be entertained by cliched and thoughtless books, but that doesn't mean that traditional epic fantasy can't entertain me from time to time.  Popular fiction doesn't have to be a high-brow artform, and to try to demand that it must be seems a bit pretentious, to say the least.

But the idea of a Next Wave of fantasy, bypassing Tolkien and building instead off of "weird tales" -- I'm certainly interested in such a movement.  As long as it is parallel rather than replacing Tolkien-esque fantasy.


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## Mark (Nov 6, 2003)

s/LaSH said:
			
		

> (I recall that Eddings makes it a point to never read within the genre.)




This might be a good time to add this to the reading list-

http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/sample/rivancodex.html


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## wortworm (Nov 6, 2003)

Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> Hello,
> 
> 
> 
> With all that said, I will note that Mieville is right that there is a segment of SF fandom that thinks disparagingly of fantasy.  I just think that even to bother addressing the concerns of this crowd is all but pointless, since, from what I have seen, they're almost uniformly horrible people, well worthy of adjectives that would not meet with the approval of various moderators' grandmothers.  Mieville obviously has some sympathy for them and some concern for their opinions, though - not surprising in one so pathetically captivated by "radicalism", apparently for its own sake.  And this concern has apparently led to the little article linked to in the first post of this thread.




The rest of Runewind's post was well stated but that above is one hell of an 'ad hominum' attack (attacking the person instead of the argument).


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## Olive (Nov 6, 2003)

Dimwhit said:
			
		

> But I find China Mieville's statement that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally different genres interesting, because I think it's just the opposite. It would be very hard to completely separate the two without re-defining movies like Star Wars.




Of course he agrees with you which is why he says that that saying that Sci-Fi and Fantasy are fundamentally different is untrue.   



			
				Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> No.  But it's about what I'd expect from the author of the vastly overhyped _Perdido Street Station_, which reads like a so-so William Gibson pastiche written after a two-week LSD and _Final Fantasy_ bender.




Ouch. Of course I think it was one of the few things I've had recomended on this board that actually lived up to and surpassed expectations, but different strokes and all that.



> Even a cursory reading will show that Tolkien's villains were much bigger fans of "hierarchical status-quos" than his heroes.




That of course doesn't stop there being 'benign' heirarchies among the fellowship, and the 'goodies'.



> The people of Gondor, who were the closest among Tolkien's heroic nations to having a "hierarchical status-quo", were explicitly in decline.  The Shire has no real hierarchy until Saruman (through Lotho) intervenes, setting up "Gatherers" and "Sharers" and multiplying the Shirrifs, which sends the Shire into a disgruntled decline.




Except that the main heirachical status quo is the relationship between man and servant, or in this case hobbit and servant, shown by Sam and Frodo. To argue that the Shire had no heirarchies demonstrates a somewhat cursory reading in and of itself. Interesting point about Gondor, but with the wizards (which I've slipped for space) I think that there are heirarchies that aren't based on domination, but that can still be seen as bad if you are uncomfortable with heriarchy. To discuss this further gets dangerously close to discussing politics, but it's hard not to do that when discussing the ideas of someone like Meiville whose work is so politically informed. In fact, your point about radicalism for its own sake further down pretty much demonstrates what I'm talking about here. To discuss that further means discussing politics, and I'm a big believer in a politics free ENWorld.



> The comment about absolute morality blurring complexities is telling, too.  It is the other way around - complexities are created to blur absolute morality, usually to the advantage of the ones doing the blurring, who would typically be judged harshly by such morality if their attempts at sophistry fail.  Even so, hard moral choices are made in Tolkien's work, most notably by Faramir (who, if he were so fond of "hierarchical status-quos", would have had Frodo and Sam shot down on sight without a second thought).




On this, I think we might have to agree to disagree. Again, hard moral choices are amde in LotR, but that doesn't in and of itself disallow the possibility that Tolkien demonstrates a liking for heirarchies.



> As to "glorying in war", you get a glimpse into Tolkien's ideas on the subject with Bilbo's thoughts before he gets clocked by a rock towards the end of _The Hobbit_, and in some of Aragorn's discussion with Eowyn.  In any case, I'd consider Tolkien, who saw service in one of the more brutal wars of a brutal century, better qualified to comment on the subject than a trendy poseur like Mieville.




The other side of this coin is that Tolkein, who was involved in WW2, was to personally involved to have had any real emotional distance form it and therefore lacks the ability to make any kind of rational comment on it, unlike Meilville, who in case it matters, is as highly educated as Tolkein was. One comment about 'War beign heck' is not the same as not glorifying war.

'trendy poseur' isn't a particulalry helpful line for anything expect exposing your bias. It doesn't really mean anything as a term of analysis. That goes for the epithets used in the last paragraph too.



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I do like where he's going though -- I think gritty, urban fantasy is tons of fun, and I'd like to see more of it.
> 
> Unlike him, however, I don't particularly need to be challenged by books I read, I need to be entertained.  It's less likely I'll be entertained by cliched and thoughtless books, but that doesn't mean that traditional epic fantasy can't entertain me from time to time.  Popular fiction doesn't have to be a high-brow artform, and to try to demand that it must be seems a bit pretentious, to say the least.
> 
> But the idea of a Next Wave of fantasy, bypassing Tolkien and building instead off of "weird tales" -- I'm certainly interested in such a movement.  As long as it is parallel rather than replacing Tolkien-esque fantasy.




This is more or less how I feel too. I like Tolkein, I like Meilville and I think there's a place for all of it in this world. I can see critiques of both being easy to make. I guess the difference between me and Joshua on this is that I do like to challenged by my reading. Not all the time, but I almost always enjoy something that challenges me on some level mor ethan something that doesn't.


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## takyris (Nov 6, 2003)

This argument gets kicked around a lot on writing websites. My personal opinion is that most writers arguing about it should shut up and write, and most readers are not going to convinced of one thing or the other.

I've read plenty of Science Fiction that wasn't idea fiction, to the point where I could with some internal justification call it "The Literature of Tropes" rather than the literature of ideas -- almost every issue of Asimov's SF and the Magazine of FSF has yet another story that uses quantum physics in some overly cute way, yet another future-slice-of-life story that uses Internet extrapolation and wearable computer research to spice up a "Divorce in the Hamptons" story, and yet another been-there-done-that-idea story by a writer who is famous enough to look good on the cover.  This isn't a dig at those magazines -- they only publish it because people want to read it.

By the same token, saying that Fantasy is the literature of characters is unsupportable.  You could say the same thing about Romance novels.  They both use archetypes rather than actual characters most of the time.  You can't throw a rock in the fantasy section of Borders without hitting an oft-scorned scullery lad who is castigated for having 21st-century ethics in a Middle Ages setting, as well as a birthmark shaped like a phoenix holding a crown in one claw and a flaming sword in the other, who then goes on to save the world six times from progressively more horned-and-scaly manifestations of that guy who bullied the author back in middle school -- or the orphan girl who is amazingly beautiful but odd in some way that causes all the locals to call her ugly until some incredibly handsome (and also possessed of 21st-century ethics despite living in the Middle Ages and being tutored and raised by people with Middle Ages ethics) young man in a position of power falls for her and realizes that her gift of using song/poetry/dancing/weaving to control/predict/talk to/feel the emotions of the savage and untamed dragons/whales/rainbows/unicorns/star-magic-people is precious and wonderful, and then he makes her into a princess, and everyone is happy.

EDIT: And there are exceptions in every genre.  There are really original SF novels and amazingly real Fantasy novels -- and really funny and realistic and enjoyable Romance novels, too.  So what we've established is that some people have generalizations one way, some people have generalizations the other way, and there are exceptions to all generalizations. 

So, really, writing is writing.  Genre is only useful in helping you find what you like.  Using it for sweeping philosophical judgements is great for starting arguments and not much else.


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## drnuncheon (Nov 6, 2003)

Olive said:
			
		

> The other side of this coin is that Tolkein, who was involved in WW2, was to personally involved to have had any real emotional distance form it and therefore lacks the ability to make any kind of rational comment on it, unlike Meilville, who in case it matters, is as highly educated as Tolkein was. One comment about 'War beign heck' is not the same as not glorifying war.




One could equally say that Tolkien, who was involved in WW2, actually has the capability to comment on it intelligently, as opposed to someone who has only read about it in the book.  No book, no matter how well written, is going to give the same impression as actually being there, feeling the ground vibrate under your feet as the German bombs hit, of wondering if the next one is going to land on you, of knowing that talking will not stop the bombs from falling, that it is them or you.

I have a hard time thinking of Tolkien's work as "glorifying war".  Heinlein's _Starship Troopers_? I'll buy that.  But not _The Hobbit_ or _The Lord of the Rings_.  Glorifying the people who are willing to die protecting their homes and loved ones, sure.  And why shouldn't he?  That is noble.

J


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## Olive (Nov 6, 2003)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> One could equally say that Tolkien, who was involved in WW2, actually has the capability to comment on it intelligently, as opposed to someone who has only read about it in the book.  No book, no matter how well written, is going to give the same impression as actually being there, feeling the ground vibrate under your feet as the German bombs hit, of wondering if the next one is going to land on you, of knowing that talking will not stop the bombs from falling, that it is them or you.




This arguement isn't going to get us anywhere, especially as I don't believe that the one I put forward is any more correct than the one you're putting forward. Needless to say there is a reason historians use primary AND secondary sources.



> I have a hard time thinking of Tolkien's work as "glorifying war".  Heinlein's _Starship Troopers_? I'll buy that.  But not _The Hobbit_ or _The Lord of the Rings_.  Glorifying the people who are willing to die protecting their homes and loved ones, sure.  And why shouldn't he?  That is noble.




Sure, but it's still a glorification of war. And writing stories set during a war so that your characters have a noble reason to fight is still a glorification of war. In fact it's a particularly full on glorification. Thinking that just war is a good thing that should be glorified is pretty much exactly what Meilville's talking about. Again, this is difficult to discuss without talkibng politics.

I don't neccesarily think that all the things that Meiville points out about Tolkein are actually bad things myself. I just think that Tolkein DOES do all the things (to a greater or lesser degree) that Meiville says he does. Like I said originally, I'm a Tolkein fan. I'm a DnD player for ghod's sake!


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## Celtavian (Nov 6, 2003)

Viking Bastard said:
			
		

> How do you know that if you haven't read that much fantasy?




If it did not satisfy me so completely, then I would seek out other fantasy literature to read. And I have read other fantasy fiction or started to read it, and it didn't stir me like _Lord of the Rings_ nor make me want to read it again. _Lord of the Rings_ has all the elements I love in a fantasy story written to perfection. 



			
				Olive said:
			
		

> Isn't it?




No, not a single bit of it. He took a moment in time and wrote about it. He was not writing about every little event that occurred in the lives of the characters, only what was occurring at that point in time in their lives. It was not his intent to stir discussions on morality or class. He wrote a fantasy story.

Judging from China's comments, he far over-reached his bounds by making such claims about Tolkien's work. Tolkien wrote a story with some grains of truth, alot of myth, and a great deal of love.

By the way, I get real tired of pseudo-intellectual windbags reading more into speculative fiction than is there. IMO, Tolkien wrote stories because he loved to write stories, not to be a pedagogue about morality or other issues. I enjoy a story for the sake of the story, and I don't attempt to read social issues into a made up story.


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## Olive (Nov 6, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> No, not a single bit of it. He took a moment in time and wrote about it. He was not writing about every little event that occurred in the lives of the characters, only what was occurring at that point in time in their lives. It was not his intent to stir discussions on morality or class. He wrote a fantasy story.
> 
> Judging from China's comments, he far over-reached his bounds by making such claims about Tolkien's work. Tolkien wrote a story with some grains of truth, alot of myth, and a great deal of love.




Surely the absence of these discussions, the choice of the period in which to write and the unstated but very real presence of class and gender and morality in the story back up Meilville's claims? None of which alters your last sentence - what you say about Tolkein and waht Meiville says about Tolkein are in conflict.

Meiville is really just carrying on what pleanty of others have said about Tolkein. See Michael Moorcock on him here:

"What I found lacking in Tolkien which I had found in, for instance, the Elder Edda, was a sense of tragedy, of reality, of mankind's impermanence. Tolkien really did set out to write a fairy tale and in my view that's exactly what he did—provide a perfect escape plan, which had the added attractions of having been written by an Oxford don. I knew and liked Tolkien who in a bufferish sort of way was very kind to me and encouraging. I looked forward to those books coming out. I was deeply disappointed by their lack of weight and their lack of ambitious language."

And also here . Be warned, this link is Political. More by Meiville here. This is probably even more Political than the last link...

I like this discussion better than arguing about Paladins and conduct, let me tell you! Although there are some similar overtones...


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## Fast Learner (Nov 6, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> If it did not satisfy me so completely, then I would seek out other fantasy literature to read. And I have read other fantasy fiction or started to read it, and it didn't stir me like _Lord of the Rings_ nor make me want to read it again. _Lord of the Rings_ has all the elements I love in a fantasy story written to perfection.



This doesn't explain how your opinion that it's the best fantasy ever written means a whole lot. You still haven't read much of anything else. 



> It was not his intent to stir discussions on morality or class. He wrote a fantasy story.



I think you have a very narrow view of his works. He absolutely expressed all kinds of opinions about what's good, what's evil, the duty of the average person, the sad loss of the upper class, and all kinds of things about morality and class.



> IMO, Tolkien wrote stories because he loved to write stories, not to be a pedagogue about morality or other issues.



And IMO he wrote stories to tell a tale, which almost always has deeper meaning. All good stories have a message, imo.



> I enjoy a story for the sake of the story, and I don't attempt to read social issues into a made up story.



That's cool, and a perfectly fine way to enjoy stories. That doesn't mean there's not a ton of meaning behind them that you happen to be ignoring or not noticing.


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## Desdichado (Nov 6, 2003)

Olive said:
			
		

> This is more or less how I feel too. I like Tolkein, I like Meilville and I think there's a place for all of it in this world. I can see critiques of both being easy to make. I guess the difference between me and Joshua on this is that I do like to challenged by my reading. Not all the time, but I almost always enjoy something that challenges me on some level mor ethan something that doesn't.



Just to make sure I'm stateing myself clearly: I like to be challenged too.  But I don't have to be.  I do, however, have to be entertained.  I'm quite often entertained by challenging books.  Maybe that's the reason I read a lot of very dry non-fiction for entertainment.


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## Olive (Nov 6, 2003)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Maybe that's the reason I read a lot of very dry non-fiction for entertainment.




My thesis has put an end to that.


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## CCamfield (Nov 7, 2003)

I feel compelled to point out that Tolkien fought in World War _1_, not 2.  I believe the dead marshes (I can't remember their name) were supposed to be reminiscent of the No-Man's Land between the trenches...


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## Pants (Nov 7, 2003)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> And IMO he wrote stories to tell a tale, which almost always has deeper meaning. All good stories have a message, imo.



He wrote it to tell a story.  Tolkien hated allegory in any form and activally tried NOT to put it into his stories.  Thus any message or deeper meaning is in there not of his accord.


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## Dragonblade (Nov 7, 2003)

China being an out and out socialist doesn't surprise me. His ignorance of the mythic tradition built upon by Tolkien and subsequent leftist rant against Tolkien are amusing.


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## Desdichado (Nov 7, 2003)

Pants said:
			
		

> He wrote it to tell a story.  Tolkien hated allegory in any form and activally tried NOT to put it into his stories.  Thus any message or deeper meaning is in there not of his accord.



There's a difference between allegory and having a message or deeper meaning on broad levels.  I think the latter is definately true of Tolkien, although the former is not.  In fact, he even once wrote a quick synopsis of how the story would have differed (very dramatically) if it had been an allegory for WW2 as many supposed.


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## Mark (Nov 7, 2003)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> In fact, he even once wrote a quick synopsis of how the story would have differed (very dramatically) if it had been an allegory for WW2 as many supposed.




Is that available somewhere in print?  Online, perhaps?  If so, can you dig up a link?


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## Olive (Nov 7, 2003)

Dragonblade said:
			
		

> China being an out and out socialist doesn't surprise me. His ignorance of the mythic tradition built upon by Tolkien and subsequent leftist rant against Tolkien are amusing.




It doesn't surprise me either, but I have no idea why you assume that he's ignorant of the mythic tradition that tolkein builds upon. I think you missed the point about what Meiville was saying. I'm aware of the tradition, and largely agree with what he says about Tolkein.

As for the allegory, I don't thin it matters. Regardeless, I agree with Fast Learner, and more preciesly with Joshua - Tolkein is talking abotu issues, but that doesn't mean he was trying to cemment on WW2.


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## Celtavian (Nov 7, 2003)

*re*



			
				Fast Learner said:
			
		

> This doesn't explain how your opinion that it's the best fantasy ever written means a whole lot. You still haven't read much of anything else.




It's literature, it's not some technical process that can be measured scientifically. I like it better than anything else I have read as in it satisfies all my fantasy needs.

I'm reading G.R.R. Martin right now, and I find _Game of Thrones_ quite entertaining. I still like Tolkien better. 




> I think you have a very narrow view of his works. He absolutely expressed all kinds of opinions about what's good, what's evil, the duty of the average person, the sad loss of the upper class, and all kinds of things about morality and class.




No, I don't he did. Any inferences to class were in the background of his story, and were not intended to be analyzed. If he wrote another story, he might not even include similar characters. That is what I am getting at.

Writer's want to give a pseudo-realistic, as well as fantastic feel, to their world. Tolkien knew class systems existed, so he incorporated them into Middle Earth as a convention others could understand, not to make a statement of their rightness or wrongness.  

For someone like yourself or China to attempt to deride his work based on the idea that he incorporated elements that are viewed as negative by modern day morality for a mythic story is being overly critical for no good reason.




> And IMO he wrote stories to tell a tale, which almost always has deeper meaning. All good stories have a message, imo.




Not always. Tolkien had a hard life. Escapism was very important to him. I think tale-telling was a way for Tolkien to escape the mundane real world and go someplace more to his liking. 

I'm sure he held strong opinions on what was right and wrong and how society should be run, but I don't think he was attempting to send a message. If there is any message, it is inferred by readers. The readers often interpret his work in different ways because all interpretations are subjective.




> That's cool, and a perfectly fine way to enjoy stories. That doesn't mean there's not a ton of meaning behind them that you happen to be ignoring or not noticing.




In the case of Tolkien, I don't think he intended for their to be a meaning. He was creating a world and telling you about through the lives of a certain group of characters. That is why I don't look for it.

Now if we were talking about Mark Twain or Ursula LeGuin, I might be inclined to believe that there is a deeper meaning. I don't think all authors try to include deeper meanings, some just want to tell an enjoyable tale. Take what meaning you want from it, but don't proscribe your view to the author. That is rude.


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## Celtavian (Nov 7, 2003)

*re*

Olive,

There is really nothing more to discuss. I believe Tolkien told a tale because he liked to tell tales. Either you like his story or you don't. 

I don't agree with China's assessment because he is commenting on a fantasy story. It's like me going to grocery store and criticizing someone for choosing apples over oranges. 

"Oh, you chose to have a class system with a ruling family instead of doing away with class? And the main nine characters are male? You wrote about war being honorable and glorious? How gauche."

Tolkien based alot of his world on Norse Myth. He is faithful to the material while adding more than a touch of originality. This debate is pointless and Tolkien's work is criticized because it is the most popular. If his work had done nothing and fallen into obscurity, then I guess pseudo-intellectuals like China wouldn't have anything to rail against. 

About the only thing I agree with is that too many folks try to copy Tolkien unsuccessfully and Tolkien's work is so prolific it has become a fantasy standard affecting how publisher's and the sci fi/fantasy community might perceive a work. 

It shouldn't be such an issue in the modern day because authors have been combining elements of fantasy and science fiction for quite some time.

I still don't understand China's complaint or point. "Fantasy radicalism"? What is he talking about?


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## Celtavian (Nov 7, 2003)

*re*



> But given that the pleasure of fantasy is supposed to be in its limitless creativity, why not try to come up with some different themes, as well as unconventional monsters? Why not use fantasy to challenge social and aesthetic lies?




I am beginning to feel the main reason I don't see his point is because I game. Gamer's have been reading or participating in "radical fantasy" for years. The number of monsters and fantastic worlds created by people in the gaming industry probably puts most published author's to shame.

If China wants to read "radical fantasy", then he should game and read about gaming. I'm spoiled by the fact that I come here to En World and read all kinds of creative uses of traditional and non-traditional fantasy and science fiction. 
I've played so many games with different, creative backstories that I don't even know what traditional fantasy is anymore. 

I thought fantasy/sci fi books had moved in the same direction as gaming since many game designers draw their ideas from fantasy/sci literature.


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## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 7, 2003)

Hi again, 



> Posted by wortworm:
> *The rest of Runewind's post was well stated but that above is one hell of an 'ad hominum' attack (attacking the person instead of the argument).*




That paragraph isn't really an argument or debate of the sort that might contain _ad hominem_ or other logical fallacies - heck, I flatly agree with his premise in the opening statement .  It's just speculation on why he'd bother writing such an article, that happens to express some less-than-complimentary opinions of certain SF fans and aspects of Mieville's attitudes.  



> Posted by Olive:
> *To argue that the Shire had no heirarchies demonstrates a somewhat cursory reading in and of itself. Interesting point about Gondor, but with the wizards (which I've slipped for space) I think that there are heirarchies that aren't based on domination, but that can still be seen as bad if you are uncomfortable with heriarchy.*




The Shire had a Mayor, who gave speeches, ran the postal system, and supervised the Shirrifs.  It had a Thain, which was a vague title, and more or less honorary by the time of the events in LotR.  It had wealthy families who owned a lot of land.  This is a hierarchy?  Simple elements of traditional polite deference in friendly business relationships (the Frodo-Sam "master-servant" thing) don't constitute a "hierarchy" to me.

"Hierarchies not based on domination" sounds a bit oxymoronic to me.  Perhaps you mean Denethor-type insane rantings about Gandalf standing behind all thrones.  But domination is still domination even if it is kept secret, and I think it would have changed the books considerably if Gandalf were really willing to do that.



> Posted by Olive:
> *The other side of this coin is that Tolkein, who was involved in WW2, was to personally involved to have had any real emotional distance form it and therefore lacks the ability to make any kind of rational comment on it, unlike Meilville, who in case it matters, is as highly educated as Tolkein was.*




It was the Great War (World War I) in which Tolkien served in the trenches, though he may have lost a son in World War II, and may have been in England during the Blitz.  As to education - well, Mieville's writing is well-executed technically, but I don't think I'd consider _any_ modern liberal-arts education comparable to what you could get from Oxford in its glory days, which is what Tolkien had.  Nor is the young Mieville's education yet leavened by the years of life experience Tolkien had before writing LotR.



> Posted by Olive:
> *'trendy poseur' isn't a particulalry helpful line for anything expect exposing your bias. It doesn't really mean anything as a term of analysis. That goes for the epithets used in the last paragraph too.*




If by "exposing your bias" you mean "expressing my opinion" of how he stands in comparison to Tolkien, then yes, that is what those words were meant to do.  They are not an argument in themselves.  



> Posted by Olive (quoting Moorcock):
> *What I found lacking in Tolkien which I had found in, for instance, the Elder Edda, was a sense of tragedy, of reality, of mankind's impermanence.*




Man, I'd have expected more perception from him.  

_"Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom?  For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the enemy.  Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away.  We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and be forgotten."_

_"The love of the elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged.  Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron:  for they know him now."_

_"'Yet also I should be sad,' said Theodén.  'For however the fortune of war may go, may it not so end that much that was fair and wonderful shall pass for ever out of Middle-earth?'

'It may,' said Gandalf.  'The evil of Sauron cannot be wholly cured, nor made as if it had not been.  But to such days we are doomed.  Let us now go on with the journey we have begun!'"_

_"But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam.  I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.  It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger:  some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them."_



> Posted by Fast Learner:
> *All good stories have a message, imo.*




As the old saying goes, "Art with a message is not art - it is propaganda."  There's a reason MGM's logo contains the words _ars gratia artis_ - art for art's sake.  



> Posted by Mark:
> *Is that available somewhere in print? Online, perhaps? If so, can you dig up a link?*




It's right in the Forward to LotR.  

_"The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion.  If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the Ring would have been seized and used against Sauron; he would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied.  Saruman, failing to get possession of the Ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into Ring-lore, and before long he would have made a Great Ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled Ruler of Middle-Earth.  In that conflict both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt; they would not long have survived even as slaves."_



> Posted by Celtavian:
> *In the case of Tolkien, I don't think he intended for their to be a meaning.*




Referring once again to the Forward...

_"As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none.  It is neither allegorical nor topical."_

Hope this helps!


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## TiQuinn (Nov 7, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> I am beginning to feel the main reason I don't see his point is because I game. Gamer's have been reading or participating in "radical fantasy" for years. The number of monsters and fantastic worlds created by people in the gaming industry probably puts most published author's to shame.




The industry may be coming up with some innovative settings, but I'll bet that most of the gamers out there are running campaigns that bear more resemblence to Middle Earth than anything else.


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## Umbran (Nov 7, 2003)

Hm.  Lots of stuff gone on before I noticed this thread.  Let's see...

On the subject of heirarchy and Tolkien, I'll only add that the master-servant heirarchy is maintained through most of the books, but at the end even it is broken - before leaving for the West, Frodo mentions that Sam will likely be mayor.  The servant overcomes his low state in the heirarchy to eventually become top dog.  Hardly status-quo there.

As to the original thesis:

I think there's something to be said for the idea that Sci-fi and Fantasy are both the same genre, and different genres.  Not so much a matter of being wishy-washy as it is a matter of duality.

The genres do have many similarities - fantastic events and abilities being foremost.  And, as the old saying goes, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  However, a genre is typically defined by the conventions it uses, and there the genres do have differences.  Some may claim they are not meaningful, but I'd have to go with a practical approach there.  The differences are strong enough to lead many people to read one of the genres, but not the other.  I cannot see how, to the reader, those differences can be said to be meaningless.  In the end, if the readers tend to think they are different genres, then they are different, whether Meiville likes it or not.

Meiville contends that generally there's a correlation - those who tend to separate the genres are also those who pan fantasy.  Well, yes.  You cannot pan one of the genres without first separating them.  It's a logical necessity of the position.

I think Meiville is revealing a strong bias, slant, or lack of perspective.  As often as I've seen folks say that fantasy is crap, I've seen other folks say that sci-fi is crap.  Even more common is that statement that any genre fiction is crap.  As was noted by another poster, 90% of everything is crap.  So, while some of what Meiville may be saying is true in some sense, I find it to be only half the story, and thus misleading.  

It is true that being widely read outside of fiction will help an author.  However, to say that an author should avoid reading within their genre is to say that authors should deny what is taken as a basic truth by most other art forms - one of the best ways to be a great artist is to be a student of art.  Great painters are generally students of art history and the techniques of other painters.  Same for dance, sculpture, music, what have you.  Authors should somehow be different?


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## Desdichado (Nov 7, 2003)

Mark said:
			
		

> Is that available somewhere in print?  Online, perhaps?  If so, can you dig up a link?



D'oh!  Someone beat me to the punch!


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## Desdichado (Nov 7, 2003)

Dragonblade said:
			
		

> China being an out and out socialist doesn't surprise me. His ignorance of the mythic tradition built upon by Tolkien and subsequent leftist rant against Tolkien are amusing.



I don't know that Mieville is ignorant of the mythic tradition.  For the most part, his complaints about Tolkien don't really address any mythic ideas, he's more about the deeper implied messages of an Edwardian status quo with country gentlemen and their relationship to their lesser neighbors.  It's one that completely grates the wrong way against a socialist (as Mieville seems to be in many respects) but doesn't have anything to do with any mythic themes Tolkien has.

To address the quote from the forward that says there is no message, if you read further down in the same document (if I recall correctly), Tolkien specifically states that he doesn't like purposed domination by the author, he prefers applicability to the experiences of the reader.  That is, his quote is hardly is to mean that certain themes and broad concepts aren't explored, either on the surface or below, merely that he doesn't put them in your face.  Personally, I believe it's impossible to write anything without a message, although certainly you can make your message as innocuous and inconspicuous as possible.  But, if you look hard enough, author's -- by default -- are _saying_ something.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Nov 7, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> If China wants to read "radical fantasy", then he should game and read about gaming. I'm spoiled by the fact that I come here to En World and read all kinds of creative uses of traditional and non-traditional fantasy and science fiction.
> I've played so many games with different, creative backstories that I don't even know what traditional fantasy is anymore.



Actually, China used to be a gamer, and still follows the gaming industry to some degree and buys books. He talks about it in this interview on RPGnet: http://www.rpg.net/news+reviews/columns/china24apr02.html

For those who don't want to read the whole thing (it's not too long), here is the relevent question & answer: 


> *GMS:* You once mentioned to me that you've done some gaming. What sort of stuff did you get into?
> 
> *MIÉVILLE:* I used to roleplay quite a lot between the ages of about 11 and about 14. I started out with D&D and AD&D, but pretty quickly got into other stuff. The games I was most interested in were Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest - though in my time I've also played Bushido, Villains & Vigilantes, MERP, Traveller, Paranoia, Star Frontiers, Boot Hill, TMNT, Toon and some others... I was always most into the Chaosium 'engine', the percentile system, skill-based, not levels.
> 
> ...



And in another interview at Strangehorizons.com (http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20011001/china.shtml) he has the following to say about gaming: 



> *Cheryl:* You mentioned _White Dwarf_ (Games Workshop's house magazine). That indicates a background in role-playing. Has that been an inspiration to you in your writing?
> *China:* It has. I used to play a lot of games, between the ages of about 10 and 13. I haven't played them for about 12 to 13 years and I have no interest in playing them again, but I have a great interest in them as a cultural phenomenon. I quite often buy and read game manuals because I am interested in the way that people design their worlds, and how they decide to delineate them.


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## Umbran (Nov 7, 2003)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> There's a difference between allegory and having a message or deeper meaning on broad levels.




*nod*.  Quite true.  In addition, the author's stated, conscious intent is not the end-all be-all in determining what is in the story.

Tolkien was a man of his times.  He wasn't particularly happy with where it seemd the world was headed, and mourned the disappearance of some things from the world.  That shows in the writing.  Whether or not he intended to write a story about an idealized master-servant relationship, it's there on the page.  Whether or not he wanted to write a WWI allegory, he wrote about what he knew.  Some of his personal opinion and experience with war does seem to be pretty clearly present in the work.


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## nikolai (Nov 7, 2003)

My take:



> Two untrue things are commonly claimed about fantasy. The first is that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally different genres. The second is that fantasy is crap.
> 
> It's usually those who claim the first who also claim the second. The idea is that where SF is radical, exploratory and intellectually adventurous, fantasy is badly written, clichéd and obsessed with backwards-looking dreams of the past - feudal daydreams of Good Kings and Fair Maidens.




http://www.panmacmillan.com/Features/China/debate.htm

I think Mieville has hit a couple of nails on the head. What I see him trying to do in the piece is to emphasise the stuff that sits in "between" genre archetypes of Hard Science Fiction and Epic Fantasy. I also think his championing of _wierd fiction_ is a very good thing. There's a whole type of fantasy fiction which has been submerged by Tolkien spawned epic fantasy. This is the sort of Lovecraft and Ashton Smith type fantastic literature published in *Weird Tales* and Robert E. Howard and Moorcock style "Sword and Sorcery" that there isn't that much of. He also brings up the "Surrealist" Gormenghast style stuff. I am in total agreement with this.

He then shoots himself in the foot with a totally misguided attack on Tolkien. I don't think you can justifiably blame Tolkien for what his imitators have inflicted upon the reading public. I also think a lot of what he says about the Lord of the Rings is just wrong. I've recently re-read it after five years and was shocked at just how bleak it is and, how even though I've read much more stuff since, it's still unique. There's a lot of complexity and depth in Tolkien that just isn't in the Tolkien spin-offs. I can see Mieville point about the sheer dominance of second-rate LotR clones. But Tolkein does represent a powerful tradition of Norse/Authurian saga in fantasy, and I don't think ditching it is a good idea.

If you look at what the recent "success stories" in the genre are, you've got *Harry Potter*, *His Dark Materials*, *A Song of Ice and Fire*. There's no Tolkien style elf-opera, I do think the genre is moving away from it and this is a good thing.

nikolai.


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## Celtavian (Nov 7, 2003)

*re*

I think it is impossible to write a story without meaning, but it is easy to write a story without a message. 

A message is something entirely different in my opinion than meaning. When an author attemps to send a message, they are purposefully writing about a particular topic with a particular point. 

Meaning is more often dependent on an author's or reader's individual experience and education. 

I don't believe Tolkien intended to send a message, but the work had a great deal of meaning to him and because of this it will inevitably have meaning to those who read it. I know some people spend countless hours trying to figure out the intentions of the Professor. Given his life, I cannot help but think that just like so many others who live within the confines of human society simple escapism was his goal, for himself and happily for others who have had the joy of reading his work.


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## Celtavian (Nov 7, 2003)

*re*

Cthulhu's Librarian,

Glad that China acknowledges how creative the gaming community is. I know my outlook on movies and books is utterly different because of gaming. 

A good example is the recent movie _Underworld_. To non-gamers it probably seemed original, but to gamers it was a derivation of _White Wolf_ games that have been around for years. 

Gaming makes it hard to step out of the box sometimes and understand that though we have embraced "radical fantasy", most of the mainstream speculative fiction publishing industry is behind the curve.

The whole idea that fantasy and science fiction are still in each in separate genre seems strange. I thought they had been interlaced for years and that is why they almost always discuss them together.


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## Mark (Nov 7, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> ...Tolkien ... the intentions of the Professor. Given his life, I cannot help but think that just like so many others who live within the confines of human society simple escapism was his goal, for himself and happily for others who have had the joy of reading his work.




It's my understanding his goal was to create a mythological equivalent for England (akin to those of the Norse, Teutons, etc.) with all of the meaning and message that goal carries and implies.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 7, 2003)

I love Tolkien and Mieville, although the latter definitely moves me more than the former.  Both are fantastic storytellers.

I don't think Mieville has any more of a message than Tolkien has, but it's clear they're writing from different political viewpoints.  In Perdido Street Station, there's no political leader that comes across as a good guy; in Lord of the Rings, the workers never go on strike.  The need to live up to one's ancestors appears prominently in Lord of the Rings; the necessity of a free press figures into Perdido Street Station.

I'd recommend both authors to readers, but I'd recommend Perdido Street Station to folks who hate fantasy before I'd recommend Tolkien.

Daniel


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## Celtavian (Nov 7, 2003)

*re*



			
				Mark said:
			
		

> It's my understanding his goal was to create a mythological equivalent for England (akin to those of the Norse, Teutons, etc.) with all of the meaning and message that goal carries and implies.




His goal was to create a mythology for his country, but not as a message on how to live. Or do you currently believe that the English read Arthurian stories and attempt to live up to those ideals? His ambition was more that of an idealistic man who loved his country and wanted to give them something of their own written by one of their own countrymen. 

I still recall what he said to C.S. Lewis concerning his peers negative views about fantasy and speculative fiction.

Tolkien: "What kind of person discourages escape?"
 Answer: A jailor. 

Escapism was very important to Tolkien. Writing tales was his method of escape. 

Tolkien was writing fantasy tales and telling fantasy tales long before he decided to write _Lord of the Rings_. His love of mythic tales was an ongoing passion.


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## Umbran (Nov 7, 2003)

Oops!  Sorry!  Double post.


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## Umbran (Nov 7, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> Or do you currently believe that the English read Arthurian stories and attempt to live up to those ideals?




Turn that around.  Do you currently believe that the values and ideals addressed by Arthurian legend have gotten so much stress and repetition over time because the people don't give a whit about them?  I think you'd have a hard time backing that position up.  Arthurian legend doesn't persist in pupularity merely because it is entertaining.  It carries on partly because of it's meanings as well. 

Note also that this isn't a digital thing, where the story is either intended to have no message whatsoever, or is intended to be a literal plan for how you live your life, with no middle ground.  Nor is it a thing that the author has to plan out and intend explicitly at the outset.  It isn't even entirely within the author's control.  The audience will see things in a work without the author's permission.


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## Mark (Nov 7, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> His goal was to create a mythology for his country, but not as a message on how to live. Or do you currently believe that the English read Arthurian stories and attempt to live up to those ideals?




I believe that all mythology, fables, parables, fairy tales, etc. are meant to convey a message, and often on "how to live" or conduct oneself.  I believe that it is the driving force behind why they are written.  Your question is one of temporal relevance which is irrelevant to the issue of their origin, IMO.

As to Tolkein's work, there's no doubt in my mind that if he strove to emulate mythologies, and give his countrymen such a work, he would have to have done so with those same intentions.


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## nyrfherdr (Nov 7, 2003)

This is one of the best conversations in a long time.  You've managed to drag me out of lurker mode...  And because of that I'll kill the thread.

I haven't read any of Mieville's work, but I'm not sure why he feels the need to tread so heavily on Tolkien.  Tolkien didn't define the genre, nor did he define what elements of his novels would become so significantly 'overdone' in the fantasy genre.  The genre as it exists today didn't exist when Tolkien wrote his novels.

The genre of Fantasy and also Science Fiction are defined by the writers, the publishers and us, the reading (or more accurately buying) public.

I love to critique individual works and feel that Tolkien did some great things and not so great things in his work, but you have to look at his writing in context of the author, the time of the writing, and the reader and the time of the reading.  The meaning one finds in the novel has much to do with the maturity, education and interests of the reader as much as the author.

That is the joy, isn't it?
I get much more from the novel now than I did 25 years ago when I read it the first time.  That is true of almost any book I re-read. (Although sometimes I wonder why I enjoyed a book so much when I was younger...  Tastes do occasionally change)

Anyway.  Don't stop the discussion because a lurker piped in.  I would be sorely disappointed.


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## Mark (Nov 7, 2003)

nyrfherdr said:
			
		

> You've managed to drag me out of lurker mode...




There he is!  GET HIM! 

I'm not familiar with Mieville's work either, but my end of the conversation hasn't been related to it, so I hope I'm on safe ground.

Another point I would like to make is in the style of the writing.  Unlike most modern fantasy, we don't know what Tolkein's characters think except by what we can extrapolate through their actions.  Modern fantasy has a tendancy to lay all of its cards on the table leaving the characters' motives all-too-often transparent, and perhaps shallow.  Noble ideals, IMO, are best expressed without being privy to the details of the second-guessing.  I'm not sure I would have appreciated Aragorn's struggle if I was aware of his actual thought processes.


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## Pants (Nov 7, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> I don't believe Tolkien intended to send a message, but the work had a great deal of meaning to him and because of this it will inevitably have meaning to those who read it. I know some people spend countless hours trying to figure out the intentions of the Professor. Given his life, I cannot help but think that just like so many others who live within the confines of human society simple escapism was his goal, for himself and happily for others who have had the joy of reading his work.



This is what I was trying to say, but I guess I failed.  I think Tolkien has hotly denied ever having put any meaning into his books.  In fact, I did a college paper on Tolkien's life and I believe that the main purpose that he wrote the LotR was to tell a story.  Now maybe, subconsciously, there are some hidden meaning and messages in the story, but my belief is that he didn't consciously put them in there.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 7, 2003)

I think Moorcock's dismissal of Tolkien's language has to be seen in the perspective of what Moorcock and the other New Wave SF writers were doing -- which was deeply radical to a degree that Mieville, for example, appears neither imaginative, thoughtful, nor skilled enough to attempt. SF has retreated from the high-water marks of Moorcock, Delaney, Dick and Ballard -- as indeed have most of those writers themselves (try Ballard's latest, "SuperCannes" as an example -- or rather, don't bother).

SF, Fantasy, whatever you call it, however you divide it, the true excitement of these genres (indeed of genre writing in general) USED TO BE that because they were overlooked by "serious" critics and largely marginalized by the industry, writers could get away with murder. Nowadays, genre writing is big business, and it's rare to find a writer who's actually pushing any boundaries.

Certainly Mieville isn't. He's rehashing Gibson, just like a million flash-in-the-pan writers before him. Like Gibson himself is doing.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Steven Brust. Brust is doing more daring, more innovative things with the fantasy genre than a hundred China Mievilles. He's actually pushing at the boundaries of what is or isn't fantastic fiction. And simultaneously yanking on the curtains of "serious" literature.

Beyond Brust, I see only Steven Erikson as somebody who's doing anything new. Martin? He's retreading Jordan and Eddings -- albeit he's a better writer than either, but there's nothing new in the Game of Thrones.

Brust and Erikson. And you don't see either of them hacking on other writers -- they're too busy writing great books to spend time generating attention for themselves.

He said, wildly attributing motives without evidence.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Nov 7, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Certainly Mieville isn't. He's rehashing Gibson, just like a million flash-in-the-pan writers before him. Like Gibson himself is doing.
> 
> I've said it before and I'll say it again: Steven Brust. Brust is doing more daring, more innovative things with the fantasy genre than a hundred China Mievilles. He's actually pushing at the boundaries of what is or isn't fantastic fiction. And simultaneously yanking on the curtains of "serious" literature.



What do you recommend by Brust? I've read a few of his books, and they really didn't do anything for me. They didn't strike me as terribly original. In fact, I thought they were fairly generic. Maybe I didn't read the right ones? What boundries do you see him pushing? 

On the other hand, I have found Mieville to be very innovative, a refreshing mix of Fantasy, Horror, and as he is fond of saying, Weird Fiction. I wouldn't compare him to Gibson, he doesn't even come to mind for me. While reading Mieville's work, I get the same creepy, dirty, something-is-wrong-in-the-shadows feeling I get from Lovecraft and the like.


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## Celtavian (Nov 7, 2003)

*re*

I think some folk are a little presumptuous in assuming that Tolkien intended or included a message in _Lord of the Rings_. I respect his stated position that he did not.

Given the evidence of his life, I believe him. He was passionate about storytelling. When he wrote a story he did not do so to create a work of moral relevance, but to create an entertaining, epic story. 

I stand by that assertion and will not be convinced otherwise.

As far as the topic at hand, I will reiterate that I have spent far too much time gaming, reading gamebooks, and reading a vast array of literature from author's such as Tolkien, Malorie, King, Lovecraft, Clancy, Gibson, LeGuin, Orwell and so many other authors that I have no idea what constitutes fantasy, sci fi, suspense, horror or any other genre. The lines have been crossed for every genre.  Dean Koontz has incorporated suspense and horror in more than a few of his books. I know some lady writes about a detective that hunts down vampires in a style reminiscent of pure mystery novels.

As far as fantasy goes, Tolkein is really only one type of fantasy. China's point seems irrelevant given the plethora of modern day literature that defies categorization.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 7, 2003)

Brust: read _The Sun, The Moon and the Stars_, _Agyar_, and then work your way through the Vlad Taltos books and the Paarfi romances. The first two Taltos books are good, if not particularly innovative. It's with the third book that things start to turn around. He starts to play around with our expectations of a hero, a protagonist, with the notion of narratorial authority. His command of language and structure goes beyond any writer I'm aware of. 

A Brust novel is constructed like a real Rolex -- not one of those fakes you used to be able to buy on the streets of Bangkok, where the second hand made a little tick with each motion, but a REAL Rolex, where the second hand sweeps smoothly, silently around the dial in remorseless precision. Michael Ondaatje beats him for sensual poetry, but nobody tops Brust for precise diction and keen phrasing.

I don't consider mixing genres to be a substitute for innovation. Gibson was innovative (or at any rate _Neuromancer_ was innovative) because he used a whole new type of language to talk about a whole new set of ideas -- namely, how the interconnectedness of data affected our world. Brust is innovative because again he's brought a new kind of language to bear on a new set of ideas -- largely the question of how to maintain heroism in the face of life's constant mundanity. Which, at the time he started writing was a pretty new idea in fantasy -- interesting that both he and Glen Cook started exploring that at about the same time. Cook just isn't (bless him to pieces) as talented a writer as Brust.

Just to blithely sum up three complicated writers in a couple of nice, sound-bitey sentences.

Mieville doesn't appear skilled enough a writer, nor imaginative enough a thinker, to do this. Certainly I don't think _Perdido_ did.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 7, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> When he wrote a story he did not do so to create a work of moral relevance, but to create an entertaining, epic story.



Just to say that an entertaining, epic story had better have some moral relevance, or it won't be very entertaining OR epic.

Great stories are great because of what they say, regardless of the author's intention. _Winnie the Pooh_ is immortal not only because of the brilliant prose of A. A. Milne, but because that prose is in the service of stories that tell us something about ourselves that we recognize as important.

Ideas of "messages" and "meanings" are naive. Literature doesn't "mean" things. It says things. It tells us things, things more than just the events of the story. If it doesn't, it's pornography. (That's my secret definition of the two, if you care)

"Hamlet" doesn't have a "meaning". It doesn't have a "message". But it does say something very profound about our relationship with ourselves.

_The Lord of the Rings_ doesn't mean anything. But it does have a great deal to say about duty, about friendship, about the cost of fighting evil. It's a big book, you can find a lot in it, and you can probably find things in it you don't like.

Entertaining and Epic? You darn betcha, featherbreath. Moral Relevance? Sure does for me.


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## Mark (Nov 7, 2003)

Edit -



			
				Celtavian said:
			
		

> I stand by that assertion and will not be convinced otherwise.




OK


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## drnuncheon (Nov 7, 2003)

Not to dis on Brust - I love the guy, I love his stuff, I read everything he puts out - but I'm not so sure I'd call what he's doing 'new'.  A lot of it is going over ground that Roger Zelazny has trodden (among others), and I think that Brust himself will be the first to admit the effect that RZ has had on him.  (It's probably most visible in _To Reign in Hell_, but the smartass protagonist of the Taltos books has pretty strong echoes of Corwin as well.)  Playing with expectations about the protagonist isn't anything new either - take Donaldson's Covenant books as a big example, where the expectations are shattered so thoroughly that many people despise the books.

J


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## nyrfherdr (Nov 7, 2003)

> MARK: In the end meaning and message are what someone draws from literature, rather than (perhaps regardless of) what might be the intent of the author.




This was my point exactly!

Based on Barsoomcore's comments I need to re-read some Brust.  I'd forgotten about his work.  THANKS Barsoomcore.  I needed something for an upcoming flight...

Barsoomcore:  Do you feel that Fantasy/SF genre becoming mainstream has diminished the quality of writing?  

I don't think so.  If only a small % that is published is really good, doesn't more getting published equal more that is really good or does it become too hard to find that really good stuff? Or am I rambling?

(Admitting that everyone will have a different opinion of what is good.)


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## barsoomcore (Nov 7, 2003)

drnuncheon said:
			
		

> Not to dis on Brust - but I'm not so sure I'd call what he's doing 'new'.  A lot of it is going over ground that Roger Zelazny has trodden (among others), and I think that Brust himself will be the first to admit the effect that RZ has had on him.



 It's VERY interesting to re-read Zelazny in the wake of where Brust has taken that style (because there is no doubt that Brust draws heavily upon Zelazny, you're quite correct). Now Brust is far too humble to say so himself, but he has far outdone his predecessor. Zelazny simply isn't as skilled a technician as Brust.

What I see in Zelazny is somebody bringing a new language (taking hard-boiled writing and applying it to swords and sorcery -- though you could probably make a case for Leiber doing much the same thing a couple of decades previously) but not really having anything new to say with it. Whereas Brust steps beyond both Zelazny's style (I'll agree that TRIH and the original character of Vlad are heavily derivative -- but Vlad goes places Corwin simply isn't rich enough a character to go, and Zelazny never wrote anything like the Paarfi romances) and beyond the borders of what the genre encompassed at the time.


> Playing with expectations about the protagonist isn't anything new either - take Donaldson's Covenant books as a big example, where the expectations are shattered so thoroughly that many people despise the books.



Donaldson's a good case, but to me he falls short on two counts -- one, he's a sloppy writer, and two, too many of his ideas are so thoroughly taken from standard fantasy tropes (that is, from Tolkien) that even the reinvention that he does is not sufficient to render them truly new.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 7, 2003)

nyrfherdr said:
			
		

> Do you feel that Fantasy/SF genre becoming mainstream has diminished the quality of writing?



No, not at all. The signal-to-noise ratio may have gotten a little worse, but I think there's just as much good stuff now as there ever has been.

That is, almost none. 

But there are at least two GREAT writers (Brust and Erikson) and a bunch of GOOD writers (Gaiman, Martin, Pratchett and so on) and even plenty of, let us say, workmanlike writers, to satisfy those times when you just need a fix and don't want to hate yourself too much afterwards.



I think it's going to be very interesting to see what happens to writing, especially genre writing, over the next twenty years as the influence of the Internet begins to make itself felt. Suddenly there are communities for writers, something the world has never really had before. Not like this, where writers can come together with no other purpose, no other interaction, than the sharing of their work. Which is very different from something like, say, the Algonquin Circle, where the socialization was more important than the writing the individuals were up to.

And it's genre writing that's going to be influenced the most, since genre communities are much more easily formed and are, in most cases, already forming on the internet spontaneously. Like ENWorld, which is in many ways a potential breeding ground for writers.

It makes it easier for writers to get rid of their crap. I hold to the theory that we all generate a certain amount of crap. If you want to write good stuff, you first have to write out all the crap. Only once the crap is gone can you even start trying to produce good stuff. The internet gives us a forum for, er, dumping crap on each other.

That metaphor didn't work out quite the way I thought it would Never mind.

Yeah, more fantasy. Woot.


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## Umbran (Nov 7, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Just to say that an entertaining, epic story had better have some moral relevance, or it won't be very entertaining OR epic.




Good show here, and I thoroughly agree.



> Ideas of "messages" and "meanings" are naive. Literature doesn't "mean" things. It says things. It tells us things, things more than just the events of the story.




Is it naive, or semantics? I'd counter that you cannot "say" a thing unless your words have meaning.  You cannot "tell" me something without delivering some message.  It need not be the message you intended, but if I don't get a message from you, I'd hardly say you told me anything.

Words without meaning or messages are sound.  Noise.  Phonic-music. Call it what you will.  But if there really is no meaning, then Beowulf is equivalent to you writing down "Gooble dingthor corthollop" and then claiming you told me something.


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## Atridis (Nov 7, 2003)

TiQuinn said:
			
		

> The industry may be coming up with some innovative settings, but I'll bet that most of the gamers out there are running campaigns that bear more resemblence to Middle Earth than anything else.




Well, of course much of D&D is straight out of Middle Earth, so to a certain extent it's unavoidable. But otherwise, I'd be inclined to bet against you on that. The magic system, for one thing, bears no resemblance to Tolkien's, and many of what I see as typical "D&D-isms" aren't to be found in the LOTR. My own campaign, and general style of play, owes far more to Mieville, "Thieves' World" and Gibson than to Tolkien. 

More on the topic, though: I once heard a priest on the radio, I forget which denomination he was, who said that Tolkien's stories strongly reflect Christian values. I'm not Christian, so I have no idea if this is true, but I thought it was interesting. If it is true, it suggests that D&D has strayed badly from the core ethos of its own greatest inspiration. And that's without even trying to address all the Christians over the years who have bashed D&D on specifically religious grounds. 

Myself, I enjoyed Meiville's books in part because they were so un-Tolkien-like, and because they didn't adhere to a genre. I find the scifi-v-fantasy debate itself limiting, forcing those who take part to think along rigid lines. I was a little disappointed that he wrote this essay at all, because I had assumed that he was somewhat above the fray.


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## Olive (Nov 7, 2003)

Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> It had wealthy families who owned a lot of land.  This is a hierarchy?  Simple elements of traditional polite deference in friendly business relationships (the Frodo-Sam "master-servant" thing) don't constitute a "hierarchy" to me.




Taditional polite deffernce? you must be reading a different book. But regardless the whole thing is about returning 'rightful' heirarchies to power over 'bad' heirarchies. The last book is called the return of the king for ghod's sake.

Regardless, here's dictionary.com's first 2 definitions of heirarchy:

1. A body of persons having authority. 

2. a) Categorization of a group of people according to ability or status. 
    b) The group so categorized. 

Feudalism is herarchical. The main relationships in Tolkein are feudal. Nice and fair heirarchy is still a heirarchy. All Meville is saying is that the books are based upon the elevation of a heirarchy, as opposed to a more democratic tradition. He doesn't like that. I don't care myself, but I don't feel the need to say it doesn't exist simply because I like Tolkein.



> It was the Great War (World War I) in which Tolkien served in the trenches, though he may have lost a son in World War II, and may have been in England during the Blitz.  As to education - well, Mieville's writing is well-executed technically, but I don't think I'd consider _any_ modern liberal-arts education comparable to what you could get from Oxford in its glory days, which is what Tolkien had.  Nor is the young Mieville's education yet leavened by the years of life experience Tolkien had before writing LotR.




My thesis is on "Representations of Race in the British Media of the Great War" so I know what the Great war is. My mistake about which war he served in tho. Personally I'd consider most liberal arts educations as being better than the classical hidebound tradition of 'glory days' Oxford, but there you go.



> As the old saying goes, "Art with a message is not art - it is propaganda."  There's a reason MGM's logo contains the words _ars gratia artis_ - art for art's sake.




I thinkt he point is that Tolkein has a message. Intentional maybe not but if Tolkein didn't realise that he was evoking certain cultural and societal norms then he was showing a remarkable lack of self-perception. That'sa ll I mean by message.



			
				Celtavian said:
			
		

> There is really nothing more to discuss. I believe Tolkien told a tale because he liked to tell tales. Either you like his story or you don't.




_*I DO LIKE TOLKEIN!!!*_ How many times do I have to say it! I just thinkt hat every thing that Meiville says about it is correct. I like the psuedo Wagnarian pomposity and the war stuff.



> Tolkien based alot of his world on Norse Myth. He is faithful to the material while adding more than a touch of originality. This debate is pointless and Tolkien's work is criticized because it is the most popular. If his work had done nothing and fallen into obscurity, then I guess pseudo-intellectuals like China wouldn't have anything to rail against.




Of course it's being discussed because it's popular. So, interestingly enough is (though obviously not on Tolkein's level) Philip Pullman who Meiville regards as one of the best fantesy writers ever.

If it was obscure none of us would be discussing it.

Just for the record, I think that Gibson and Meiville have vey little in common, except that they are both urban and have unfamiliar tech. Cthulhu's Librarian described the things that Meiville evokes for me as well.

Interestingly enough, I've never seen any writer evoke the level of passion and debateabout his work that Meiville does from fantasy/sci fi fans, except probably Tolkein.

And one more time for the hope someone will notice: I LIKE TOLKEIN AS A WRITER!!!


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## barsoomcore (Nov 7, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Is it naive, or semantics? I'd counter that you cannot "say" a thing unless your words have meaning.
> 
> _snip_
> 
> Words without meaning or messages are sound.  Noise.  Phonic-music. Call it what you will.  But if there really is no meaning, then Beowulf is equivalent to you writing down "Gooble dingthor corthollop" and then claiming you told me something.



Well, yeah, okay. But there's a big difference between claiming that the words Beowulf is built out of have meaning (which I'm more than prepared to say they do), and claiming that Beowulf itself means some particular thing. It doesn't, and any claims that it does are at best naive.

Disproving me should be simple, if I'm wrong. State the meaning of Beowulf.

The very idea seems absurd, doesn't it? The idea of saying, "Beowulf means such and such," is patently nonsense. Beowulf does no such thing. Or at least, Beowulf doesn't ONLY do such a thing. Would anybody seriously entertain the possibility that one could conceivable come to an end of the debate on what the meaning of Beowulf is? That at some point, some Medieval Studies professor is going to jump up and cry, "My goodness! It's so obvious! Beowulf means XXX!" and that will be an end to the debate?

The fact that we endlessly debate what these things mean indicates that they don't in fact mean anything that we can usefully define. They tell us stuff, they hint at things and offer parallels to things, but they don't deliver an unambiguous message that we can neatly sum up and thus contain the entire power of the work itself.

I am not, as you seem to think, arguing that meaning is impossible in a general, semantic sense. I am arguing that art does not offer meaning -- that it offers thought, investigation, and points of view. It offers theories, asks questions and maybe even provides explanations -- but it does not mean.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 7, 2003)

Hey Olive, how come you hate Tolkien so much? Give the guy a break, why don't you?


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## Aaron L (Nov 7, 2003)

Actually, Tolkein wrote his story so he could have a place for his constructed languages.  The Lord of the Rings is a vehicle for Quenya and Sindarin.  He also wanted to make something to fill the place of an English national legend following the model of a Norse epic.


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## Umbran (Nov 8, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Disproving me should be simple, if I'm wrong. State the meaning of Beowulf.
> 
> The very idea seems absurd, doesn't it?




Yes, but not for the reason you suggest.  You now seem to contend that the thing is binary.  Either the work has absolutely no meaning, or it has one unique, clear, and unambiguous meaning.  That completely ignores the possibility that the work can have many meanings - some placed there intentionally by the author, some placed unintentionally by the author, and some read into it by the reader.

Humans are not computers, and our literature is not in C++.  We have text and subtext.  We have denotation and connotation.  We have interpretation and implication without direct statement.  Our language is ambiguous.  But that doesn't result in our literature having no meaning.  It instead results in our literature having multiple meanings.


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## Desdichado (Nov 8, 2003)

Of course Tolkien doesn't have "meaning."  But there are several messages that ring through quite strongly.  The importance of blood (ancestry), the value of heroism and sacrifice, the importance of loyalty and friendship (or the master servant relationship; however you want to interpret that exactly), the nature of evil.

Despite your ability to latch on to one phrase in the forward, those messages don't go away.  In fact, Tolkien himself explores them to some detail in the _History of Middle-earth_ papers, in part giving the lie to his own statement of lack of meaning or message.


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## Olive (Nov 8, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Hey Olive, how come you hate Tolkien so much? Give the guy a break, why don't you?




I think it's his fans that turn me off him...


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## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 8, 2003)

Hi again, 



> Posted by barsoomcore:
> *I've said it before and I'll say it again: Steven Brust. Brust is doing more daring, more innovative things with the fantasy genre than a hundred China Mievilles. He's actually pushing at the boundaries of what is or isn't fantastic fiction.*




Haven't read any Brust myself, alas, but I'll throw Tim Powers' name into the discussion at this point.  I don't know that I'd say he's pushing fantasy boundaries, but he certainly is blurring them in interesting ways with other branches of genre fiction.  It's certainly debatable whether much of his stuff is "fantasy" at all.  "Weird Fiction" is actually a pretty good tag for his blends.  He seems to have a better handle on his ideas than Mieville did in _Perdido Street Station_, he does his homework, and he's a competent artist and technician with the English language.



> Posted by Cthulhu's Librarian:
> *I wouldn't compare him to Gibson, he doesn't even come to mind for me.*




Since I've also compared Mieville to Gibson, I'll just say here that the writing style of _Perdido Street Station_ reminded me of _The Difference Engine_ and the attitude reminded me of the "Sprawl" stuff.



> Posted by Olive:
> *Regardless, here's dictionary.com's first 2 definitions of heirarchy:
> 
> 1. A body of persons having authority.
> ...




Such broad definitions of "hierarchy" given would take in Frodo and Sam's master-servant interaction, but they'd also encompass pretty much any form of government or leadership, democratic or not.  Does anyone think Tolkien's nations should have been leaderless?  I doubt even Mieville believes that.  That would have been even less believable than the elves, dwarves, and magic.



> Posted by Olive:
> *Feudalism is herarchical. The main relationships in Tolkein are feudal. Nice and fair heirarchy is still a heirarchy.  All Meville is saying is that the books are based upon the elevation of a heirarchy, as opposed to a more democratic tradition.*




I'd call the leadership of Tolkien's heroic nations far more tribal than feudal.  The Rohirrim are explicitly a barbaric tribe, and the leadership of the Dunedain is about the same, except with a few more generations between Aragorn and Beren and the other tribal chiefs of the Edain.  Of the major marks of feudalism, land tenure for regular military service is implicit at most, and serfs bound to the land are nowhere to be seen.  



> Posted by Olive:
> *I DO LIKE TOLKEIN!!! How many times do I have to say it!*




I believe you.    I actually didn't outright dislike _Perdido Street Station_, though my previous description of it was far from a ringing endorsement.  It was vastly overhyped, though that can hardly be blamed entirely on the author.  Mostly I was frustrated with it, since Mieville's skill with the language strongly indicates that he could have done a better job with his ideas - instead, we get a very "hey, this sounds cool, let's throw it in the mix" hodgepodge worthy of August Derleth.  And the self-consciously cutting-edge-hip attitude, subtle as he is with it at times, starts to grate very quickly when half or more of the oh-so-cool concepts are ones I (and probably millions of other gamers) have seen around in one form or another for years.



> Posted by Umbran:
> *You now seem to contend that the thing is binary. Either the work has absolutely no meaning, or it has one unique, clear, and unambiguous meaning.*
> [...snip...]
> *Humans are not computers, and our literature is not in C++.*




Somehow this makes me wonder how much C++ programming you've done...especially dealing with virtual functions in code written by other people...  

For now, I'll finish up with Tolkien's likely reaction to Mieville's article, taken again from the Foreword to LotR:

_"Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing they evidently prefer."_

Hope this helps!


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## Celtavian (Nov 8, 2003)

*re*



			
				barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Just to say that an entertaining, epic story had better have some moral relevance, or it won't be very entertaining OR epic.
> 
> Great stories are great because of what they say, regardless of the author's intention. _Winnie the Pooh_ is immortal not only because of the brilliant prose of A. A. Milne, but because that prose is in the service of stories that tell us something about ourselves that we recognize as important.




I highly disagree with this assertion. I personally read just because I enjoy reading. I have read _Hamlet_ and I don't spend my time contemplating the story. It was a good entertaining read. 

People have been telling tales for all of human history. Mainly because they are entertaining and break up the monotony of everyday life.




> Ideas of "messages" and "meanings" are naive. Literature doesn't "mean" things. It says things. It tells us things, things more than just the events of the story. If it doesn't, it's pornography. (That's my secret definition of the two, if you care)




That's right. It says things that we give meaning to based on our experience and education. I include education because if you are educated, you will often have been told what the meaning of a book is. 




> "Hamlet" doesn't have a "meaning". It doesn't have a "message". But it does say something very profound about our relationship with ourselves.




No it doesn't. Once again you are trying to give to others what is yours. I didn't identify with any of the characters in _Hamlet_. I continued to read the story because it was a well-written, compelling story and I wanted to see what happened. 

I have no personal investment in the story. It tells me nothing about my relationship with myself.



> _The Lord of the Rings_ doesn't mean anything. But it does have a great deal to say about duty, about friendship, about the cost of fighting evil. It's a big book, you can find a lot in it, and you can probably find things in it you don't like.




I found meaning in the book. Nuff' said.




> Entertaining and Epic? You darn betcha, featherbreath. Moral Relevance? Sure does for me.





Is it morally relevant as in affecting the morality of those who read it? I don't think so.

I enjoy the book because I agree with the morality of the characters prior to reading the story. _Lord of the Rings_ will not change someone's morality.


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## Celtavian (Nov 8, 2003)

*re*



> MARK: In the end meaning and message are what someone draws from literature, rather than (perhaps regardless of) what might be the intent of the author.




I don't quite understand how it was missed. This is what I was saying. The only difference is that I believe a message is intended by the author, whereas meaning is something indirectly implied by the author filtered through the lense of the reader.

For example, Mark Twain intended to send a message with the story _The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg_. Orwell's _1984_ is another example of an author intending to send a message to the reader.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 8, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> You now seem to contend that the thing is binary.



I "now" seem to contend? I don't think my position has changed, but I apologize if I give that impression. My words don't always come out meaning what I think they do.


> _That completely ignores the possibility that the work can have many meanings - some placed there intentionally by the author, some placed unintentionally by the author, and some read into it by the reader._



I have no complaint with this idea. Indeed, this is pretty much exactly what I've been (apparently unsuccessfully) trying to say. Thanks for making it more clear.


> _Our language is ambiguous.  But that doesn't result in our literature having no meaning.  It instead results in our literature having multiple meanings._



Multiple meanings? Try infinite meanings? Or do you think there is a limit to the number of meanings (I don't like the word but it seems to be what we're using) that readers can draw from a text? How do we tell when we're done?

Of course we are never done. And so the task of the reader is not to determine the meaning or meanings of a work, for there are always more to be determined. I know I'm starting to sound terribly pendantic (sorry, I've just been reading _Danse Macabre_) but I do feel pretty strongly about all this.

The task of a reader is to engage with the book, to use it like a sort of mental can-opener to tug away some rusted tin and have a look at what's been preserved inside. Sometimes we like to use the same can-opener and look in the same tins over and over again, and there's nothing wrong with that. But a truly great book is like an electric can-opener, with a feeding line and a whole pantry full of tins to yank open and show you, tins you never even knew were up on the shelf.

That's when reading gets FUN.

Meaning? I don't give a snot about meaning. Tell me what it shows you, tell me what it makes you see and think about. Don't tell me what the writer meant, or what the message is. That's a waste of space.


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## Celtavian (Nov 8, 2003)

*re*



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Of course Tolkien doesn't have "meaning."  But there are several messages that ring through quite strongly.  The importance of blood (ancestry), the value of heroism and sacrifice, the importance of loyalty and friendship (or the master servant relationship; however you want to interpret that exactly), the nature of evil.
> 
> Despite your ability to latch on to one phrase in the forward, those messages don't go away.  In fact, Tolkien himself explores them to some detail in the _History of Middle-earth_ papers, in part giving the lie to his own statement of lack of meaning or message.




He discusses those subjects because people were interested in them. He received countless letters from fans wanting more information on Middle Earth and the underlying mythology. The real telling factor here is his other book _The Hobbit_. An entirely different story from _Lord of the Rings_ which people quite ignore when they attach such significance to _Lord of the Rings_.

Any messages or meanings are implied by the reader. He is not saying anything about the "importance of blood (ancestry)" or "friendship". He used those particular elements because they seemed to fit the genre. 

Just because an author derives characters and story elements from historical precedence, doesn't mean he is saying anything about those characters or elements. He is using them like pieces of a puzzle to put a story together.

I don't know if you have read the alternative scenes that Tolkien contemplated including in _Lord of the Rings_, but if you have then you know the story could just as easily have been very different from what it currently is. He even contemplated having Boromir become a dastardly villain violently opposing Aragorn and Aragorn started off as a vagabond met on the road by the traveling hobbits.

Stories grow from the author's imagination. For Tolkien to have intended a message, he would have had to have thought about that message and directed the story towards communicating that message. Instead, he let the story take him where it would, and any message or meaning is implied by the reader not the author.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 8, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> I personally read just because I enjoy reading. I have read _Hamlet_ and I don't spend my time contemplating the story. It was a good entertaining read.



If I ever said you had to "contemplate" I apologize. It was cruel and unfair of me. While I have no complaint with contemplation, nothing I have said about the necessity of moral relevance requires it.

What I am saying is that a tale is MORE entertaining when we recognize moral relevance in its reality to our own. Hamlet is a good entertaining read (one of the better summations of the play I've seen) BECAUSE we recognize that Hamlet's predicament is one that we might have moral difficulties in, too. We sympathize with his moral situation and we continue to read, in part at least, to see how he'll resolve it.

Will he turn out a hero or a coward?

That's what I mean by moral relevance.


> _I include education because if you are educated, you will often have been told what the meaning of a book is. _



Interesting. I believe I have been educated, but I don't know that anybody ever told me what the meaning of a book was. Have you an example?


> _I have no personal investment in the story. It tells me nothing about my relationship with myself._



My definition of "personal investment" is, I suspect, different from yours. If I said, "We come to care about what happens to the people described in the story," would you agree with that? Because that's all I'm REALLY trying to say.

If you don't want it to tell you anything about yourself, rest assured I won't insist.


> _I found meaning in the book. Nuff' said._



Which is a very different proposition from pretending the book means a particular thing. 'Nuff repeated.


> _Is it morally relevant as in affecting the morality of those who read it? I don't think so._



Are you suggesting that nobody has ever had their morality changed by reading a story? Or are you saying that while books exist that are capable of changing people's morality, _The Lord of the Rings_ is not one of them?

If so, then you are committing the very sin you (rightly) accused me of, and are trying to give others what is yours alone. Because I promise you at least one person has had their morality changed by reading a book. Me. It's happened many, many times to me, as I have read books that challenged my view of the world. Michael Moorcock did it to me with _A Cure For Cancer_ and _The War Hound and the World's Pain_. Steven Brust did it to me with _Teckla_, _Agyar_ and other books. William Shakespeare keeps on doing it to me. Plato did it to me. Steven Erikson did it to me.

And yes, John Ronald Reuen Tolkien did it to me. Several times over. And probably will again, because he's still that much smarter and wiser than me.

And if no book has ever had that effect on you, then I wonder how your morality gets changed. Have you ever had your morality changed by something somebody said? By something you saw? Do you put reading in a special class of experience, the class from which moral lessons cannot emerge? Why is that? I'm curious.

But all of that isn't even what I'm talking about when I say "moral relevance" -- what I was talking about above, there, with Hamlet and moral predicaments. I hope I was able to clarify that enough.


> _I enjoy the book because I agree with the morality of the characters prior to reading the story._



I'm fascinated by this statement.

How did you know what the morality of the characters was before you read the story? How do you decide what books to read if this is one of your criteria?


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## shilsen (Nov 8, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> I enjoy the book because I agree with the morality of the characters prior to reading the story.






			
				barsoomcore said:
			
		

> How did you know what the morality of the characters was before you read the story? How do you decide what books to read if this is one of your criteria?




I think Celtavian meant that _his_ morality even before reading the story agreed with that of the characters.


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## Celtavian (Nov 8, 2003)

*re*



			
				shilsen said:
			
		

> I think Celtavian meant that _his_ morality even before reading the story agreed with that of the characters.




Yes, that is what I meant. Thanks for stating it more succinctly than I.


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## Celtavian (Nov 8, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> If I ever said you had to "contemplate" I apologize. It was cruel and unfair of me. While I have no complaint with contemplation, nothing I have said about the necessity of moral relevance requires it.
> 
> What I am saying is that a tale is MORE entertaining when we recognize moral relevance in its reality to our own. Hamlet is a good entertaining read (one of the better summations of the play I've seen) BECAUSE we recognize that Hamlet's predicament is one that we might have moral difficulties in, too. We sympathize with his moral situation and we continue to read, in part at least, to see how he'll resolve it.
> 
> ...




My interest in the actual characters varies. For some books, like _Lord of the Rings_ I completely concur with your sentiment and I do want to know how the characters resolve the conflicts they face.

For others, like a _Forgotten Realms_ novel, I'm far more interested in the events that occur.



> Interesting. I believe I have been educated, but I don't know that anybody ever told me what the meaning of a book was. Have you an example?




If you a take a course on literature, you often get to read other people's analysis of a story. It is more often true of short stories. I have analyzed short stories by authors such as Maya Angelou and Mark Twain where there was an expected answer based on previous person's analysis. 



> My definition of "personal investment" is, I suspect, different from yours. If I said, "We come to care about what happens to the people described in the story," would you agree with that? Because that's all I'm REALLY trying to say.




For some stories, I completely agree. 




> Are you suggesting that nobody has ever had their morality changed by reading a story? Or are you saying that while books exist that are capable of changing people's morality, _The Lord of the Rings_ is not one of them?




I am saying that Tolkien, the author, did not intend the tome to be one you turn to for answering moral questions. That's pretty much it. 



> If so, then you are committing the very sin you (rightly) accused me of, and are trying to give others what is yours alone. Because I promise you at least one person has had their morality changed by reading a book. Me. It's happened many, many times to me, as I have read books that challenged my view of the world. Michael Moorcock did it to me with _A Cure For Cancer_ and _The War Hound and the World's Pain_. Steven Brust did it to me with _Teckla_, _Agyar_ and other books. William Shakespeare keeps on doing it to me. Plato did it to me. Steven Erikson did it to me.




I am not so easily swayed. I spend alot of time deeply analyzing morality based on cause/effect relationships. Books do not dictate my morality. Never have, never will.

Information helps me make moral decisions. Books and print give information, so indirectly there have been a few books that have contributed to my moral develolpment. None of them fiction, save for possibly the Bible.




> And if no book has ever had that effect on you, then I wonder how your morality gets changed. Have you ever had your morality changed by something somebody said? By something you saw? Do you put reading in a special class of experience, the class from which moral lessons cannot emerge? Why is that? I'm curious.




Not fiction, in any form. Living life itself challenges my morality. I don't know about you, but I have led a trying life and have had plenty of opportunities to make moral decisions. Not to mention the macro-moral decisions required of you as a citizen of a nation. No way I trust fiction to influence my morality.

 I read fiction to escape to other places. One of the reasons I can understand a writer wanting to have no damn message or meaning whatsoever in a story. Sometimes a writer may make a tale just to get away from it all.

I have always felt that Middle Earth was Tolkien's escape. He lived a hard life. He created a place for himself and explored that place through the written word.
Alot of authors do the same without the intent to sway your morality one way or the other. Doesn't mean it can't happen, just means that the author didn't intend it to happen.



> I'm fascinated by this statement.
> 
> How did you know what the morality of the characters was before you read the story? How do you decide what books to read if this is one of your criteria?




I'm sorry. I misstated myself. I have read it so many times that it almost feels like I knew before I picked it up the first time.

I already enjoyed the kind of traditional, idealistic morality Tolkien used as a basis for his character's actions prior to reading the novel. I never questioned its presence in the story.


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## Umbran (Nov 8, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> I "now" seem to contend? I don't think my position has changed, but I apologize if I give that impression. My words don't always come out meaning what I think they do.




Your words don't come out with the "meaning" you intend?  Shouldn't you instead be asking what you say to me?  Sorry, but in this context that's somewhat ironic.  

But you can relax.  The phrade "you now seem to contend" wasn't an indication that you'd changed your position, but instead indicated that at a given time, I thought you meant a particular thing which hadn't been clearly stated before.

Again ironic.  We sit here and write words with multiple meanings.  How can authors of more complicated works do otherwise?



> Multiple meanings? Try infinite meanings? Or do you think there is a limit to the number of meanings (I don't like the word but it seems to be what we're using) that readers can draw from a text? How do we tell when we're done?




I dunno about infinite.  Infinite is a lot.  I'm not sure that the human mind is capable of coming up with an infinite number of concepts.  In addition, despite some schools of thought, there are some limits of reasonability on what meanings are in a text.  I don't think any rational person can say that Beowulf is about how good tomatoes are to eat.



> Meaning? I don't give a snot about meaning. Tell me what it shows you, tell me what it makes you see and think about. Don't tell me what the writer meant, or what the message is. That's a waste of space.




Eh.  Semantics.  Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe.  When you ask what the thing says or shows, I ask what it means.  Perhaps a matter of connotation...

I choose to ask about meaning because I find your method of asking "what does it say to you" tends to neglect the cases where the author had specific messages in mind, and tends to neglect the historical framework in which the piece was written.  Your way seems to focus on the you and the now.  While that's something that ought to be looked at, it is far from complete.

George Orwell had a number of messages he wanted to get across in "1984".  He certainly did not write it as mere entertainment.  And if you only talk about what it says to you now, you miss out of much of what can be gotten from the work.  Tolkien may not have had such intended meaning, but as a man of his times, but his personal commentaries on some things are there, regardless.  

Asking what meanings the authro placed there, and what the work means to other people, keeps one from re-inventing the wheel, and leads one more quickly to greater understanding.


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## Fast Learner (Nov 8, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> It's literature, it's not some technical process that can be measured scientifically. I like it better than anything else I have read as in it satisfies all my fantasy needs.
> 
> I'm reading G.R.R. Martin right now, and I find _Game of Thrones_ quite entertaining. I still like Tolkien better.



Which makes perfect sense and is a perfectly valid and understandable opinion. That's a very different statement from "it is the best fantasy ever written," something that you simply can't know without having read all of fantasy.



> No, I don't he did. Any inferences to class were in the background of his story, and were not intended to be analyzed. If he wrote another story, he might not even include similar characters. That is what I am getting at.



It matters not whether they were intended to be analyzed or simply accepted and, as noted later in this thread by better communicators than I, JRRT need not be conscious about his messages to instill them. If you said "John, please rewrite the story so that Sam gets sick of Frodo telling him what to do and poisons his food, so the elves are in fact a cruel, corrupt group that only look high-minded and that their fading away is in fact a feint, so that Sauron is simply misunderstood and is doing good things for the world and the 'heroes' are in fact the villains, so that Aragorn says that it's wrong to lead and works to create a Communist collective, and _then_ you'll have a good story," it seems very clear that he would have declined to do so, noting that he doesn't want his story to say that. That's meaning, and that's implied message, whether he was conscious about it or not.



> Writer's want to give a pseudo-realistic, as well as fantastic feel, to their world. Tolkien knew class systems existed, so he incorporated them into Middle Earth as a convention others could understand, not to make a statement of their rightness or wrongness.



Again, he doesn't need to _consciously_ mean to make such a statement in order to intend to do so on some level. When my mother, bless her heart, unconsciously lays a guilt trip on me she _is_ in fact trying to control me, though I can guarantee you she never thought about it consciously for a second.



> For someone like yourself or China to attempt to deride his work based on the idea that he incorporated elements that are viewed as negative by modern day morality for a mythic story is being overly critical for no good reason.



You seem to have fallen into a trap here. I _like_ Tolkien. I'm _not_ deriding his work. There's nothing -- NOTHING -- wrong with meaning and message in fiction. I _would_ argue that fiction without meaning or message is crap, and if I felt that JRRT didn't have a ton of meaning and message in his works then you can bet I'd be deriding it.



> Now if we were talking about Mark Twain or Ursula LeGuin, I might be inclined to believe that there is a deeper meaning. I don't think all authors try to include deeper meanings, some just want to tell an enjoyable tale. Take what meaning you want from it, but don't proscribe your view to the author. That is rude.



Here we very fundamentally disagree. I and others here have described what meaning and message we see Tolkien as imbuing, and you have clearly stated that it doesn't matter what anyone says, you simply won't believe it, LALALALALA. That's fine, as you're fully entitled to your opinion. That doesn't make us rude for seeing something different.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 8, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> I dunno about infinite.  Infinite is a lot.  I'm not sure that the human mind is capable of coming up with an infinite number of concepts.  In addition, despite some schools of thought, there are some limits of reasonability on what meanings are in a text.



Oh, yes, infinite. And by infinite I mean not that any given person can sit down and think up an infinite number of reasonable interpretations, but that we will never come to an end of reasonable interpretations. People are still finding new things to say about Genesis, which surely has to rank as one of the oldest tales of all time. I'm reasonably confident we will not run out of things to say about Hamlet.

Human creativity is a funny thing. It always defeats expectations and always finds a new point of view, just when you think it's exhausted every avenue.


> _I choose to ask about meaning because I find your method of asking "what does it say to you" tends to neglect the cases where the author had specific messages in mind, and tends to neglect the historical framework in which the piece was written.  Your way seems to focus on the you and the now.  While that's something that ought to be looked at, it is far from complete._



We are in complete agreement on everything except terminology. And I'm willing to let that slide.

Bigger fish to fry in this here pot...


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## Null Boundry (Nov 8, 2003)

Olive said:
			
		

> I think it's his fans that turn me off him...




Definately, just saying you don't like the books is enough to get insults about your intelligence and reading ability.

Some people don't take criticism well.


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## Desdichado (Nov 9, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> He discusses those subjects because people were interested in them. He received countless letters from fans wanting more information on Middle Earth and the underlying mythology. The real telling factor here is his other book _The Hobbit_. An entirely different story from _Lord of the Rings_ which people quite ignore when they attach such significance to _Lord of the Rings_.
> 
> Any messages or meanings are implied by the reader. He is not saying anything about the "importance of blood (ancestry)" or "friendship". He used those particular elements because they seemed to fit the genre.



Actually, the more I read of Tolkien's notes and Tolkien's life, the more I believe Tolkien included them because they meant something to him, and he believed strongly in the concepts the story uses.  They are _not_ just "part of the genre, or something used because it was interesting and it fit.  The more I read of Tolkien, the more I understand that Tolkien wrote about what he believed in very strongly.  Tolkien didn't write to be popular, he didn't write for critical or commercial acclaim, he wrote his books because those books were a window into who he was, and he deeply resented the way modern literature had grown.  He deeply resented the change in values in society.  His story was meant to be an escape to the kind of world he wished that ours was.

Granted, he didn't make those messages the focus of his story, so he can get away with saying that the stories have no intended meaning.  But I think you are premature and, indeed, flat out wrong, to dismiss elements such as the ones I used as examples as mere tools to tell the genre story Tolkien wanted to tell.


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## CCamfield (Nov 9, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> It's VERY interesting to re-read Zelazny in the wake of where Brust has taken that style (because there is no doubt that Brust draws heavily upon Zelazny, you're quite correct). Now Brust is far too humble to say so himself, but he has far outdone his predecessor. Zelazny simply isn't as skilled a technician as Brust.




I don't know... stylistically, maybe you're right.  I love Brust's work, but I don't think he's better than Zelazny was on every score.   Brust hasn't written anything that compares on a world-building level, in my opinion, with (say) Lord of Light.  I read something online recently that explains the Jenoine a bit more to me, but I found them _extremely_ intrusive and off-putting in the Vlad book in which they appeared heavily.  

And I don't know if I've read anything in Brust as beautiful/evocative as some things I've read in Zelazny.  I guess I'm a sentimentalist, but the passage that comes to mind is the one in which Corwin inscribes his Pattern, remembering Paris at the turn of the 20th century.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 9, 2003)

I find Dragaera _more_ thorough and compelling a world than Amber, frankly, though perhaps less ambitious philosophically.

However, I'm not saying that Brust is better than Zelazny in every single possible way. I'm just saying that, overall, Brust is the better writer. Obviously that's a very subjective thing to say, but I will say that he's demonstrably more competent a wordsmith than Zelazny ever was.

Beautiful and evocative? _Agyar_, _Brokedown Palace_ and _The Sun, the Moon and the Stars_. Brust is a very terse writer and never wallows in his own sentences -- which subjectively is a style I prefer, so I find a great deal of beauty in his writing. Milage. Vary.


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## Celtavian (Nov 9, 2003)

Fast Learner said:
			
		

> Here we very fundamentally disagree. I and others here have described what meaning and message we see Tolkien as imbuing, and you have clearly stated that it doesn't matter what anyone says, you simply won't believe it, LALALALALA. That's fine, as you're fully entitled to your opinion. That doesn't make us rude for seeing something different.




Everything you stated concerning an author sending an unintended message is understood and true, but the onus is on the reader for any message that they receive when the author does not intend one.

Tolkien could just has easily have used completely different characters, ideas, plot elements, etc, etc. What would you be saying now had Sam turned evil and coveted the ring and Gollum been redeemed? What if Boromir had been seduced by the ring and fought Aragorn? What message would there have been then?

The only objective way to decide whether or not a work has a message is to determine the author's intent. Tolkien personally professed that he had no underlying message included within _Lord of the Rings_. 

That does not preclude a work from having a meaning or message, a term I use loosely since I feel a message must be intended, to an individual reader. I personally find the _Lord of the Rings_ very meaningful. I love the characters, the story, the traditional idealistic morality, the strange creatures, Sam and Frodo's friendship, and so many other elements included in the story. Yet I also understand that Tolkien could just as easily have changed any of those elements at any point in time because he was writing a tale and testing different ideas to see which ones he liked best.

I have already stated examples of authors such as Orwell who intended to send a message and made it quite clear.  An author can create a meaningful work without intending to do so. An author can also send a clear message with the full intent to do so. There is a subtle difference between the two.

If there was not, then every author would be sending a message with every work. That is not the case, at least not from many author's standpoint and not from mine either.


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## Celtavian (Nov 9, 2003)

*re*



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Actually, the more I read of Tolkien's notes and Tolkien's life, the more I believe Tolkien included them because they meant something to him, and he believed strongly in the concepts the story uses.  They are _not_ just "part of the genre, or something used because it was interesting and it fit.  The more I read of Tolkien, the more I understand that Tolkien wrote about what he believed in very strongly.
> 
> Granted, he didn't make those messages the focus of his story, so he can get away with saying that the stories have no intended meaning.  But I think you are premature and, indeed, flat out wrong, to dismiss elements such as the ones I used as examples as mere tools to tell the genre story Tolkien wanted to tell.




They did mean something to him. I don't doubt that. Tolkien is my favorite author as I have already professed. I have read quite a deal on him and watched a few biographies on his life.

The one constant in his life is that he loved storytelling. He built Middle Earth over a number of years based on a variety of influences including the Bible, Beowulf and other forms of Norse mythology. He started a few storytelling groups and was an outspoken advocate of what is now termed speculative fiction.

Elements of his story that you mentioned could just as easily have been changed were the story's needs different. As I stated, there are alternative scenes he constructed for many of the characters which would have completely changed the story. Tolkien was a storyteller first. It brought him joy. 



> Tolkien didn't write to be popular, he didn't write for critical or commercial acclaim, he wrote his books because those books were a window into who he was, and he deeply resented the way modern literature had grown.  He deeply resented the change in values in society.  His story was meant to be an escape to the kind of world he wished that ours was.




This statement is very true. He knew he could not stop the changes, they were inevitable. So he created a place to escape from the bothers of daily life, and he did such an extraordinary job that others grew to love the work when it was published.

The above statement is exactly the reason why I don't think he intended to send a message. He was escaping, much like we do when we game. That doesn't mean that you can't gain insight into the man and his beliefs through his work, I just don't think he was sending a message to the masses in the same way that _Orwell_ or _Twain_ did in some of their works.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 9, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> The only objective way to decide whether or not a work has a message is to determine the author's intent.



Objective? That presupposes that people have an objective point of view on their own thought processes. And then that they have an error-free means of transmitting that point of view. And that we possess a perfect way to translate that transmission into our own terms.

None of which are true, so I guess there is no objective way to decide whether or not a work has a "message".

I'm not saying (Umbran) that investigating authorial intent is valueless. I am saying that expecting to derive objective statements on a work of art from ANY source is a sure route to disappointment.

Here's a couple of interesting quotes from the good Professor for you to chew on:


> Letter 142 to Robert Murray, S. J. (2 December 1953) _
> 
> "The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism." _





> Letter 181 to Michael Straight (early 1956) _
> 
> I hope that you have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings? ... It is a 'fairy-story', but one written for adults. Because I think that fairy story has its own mode of reflecting 'truth', different from allegory, or (sustained) satire, or 'realism', and in some ways more powerful. ... But, of course, if one sets out to address 'adults' (mentally adult people anyway), they will not be pleased, excited, or moved unless the whole, or the incidents, seem to be about something worth considering, more e.g. than mere danger and escape: there must be some relevance to the 'human situation' (of all periods)._



Clearly while Professor Tolkien did not intend for one single "message" to be read into his book, he DID hope that people would draw what I've been bludgeoned into calling "meaning" from it. Clearly he expected it to do more than provide an escape from the world.


			
				Celtavian said:
			
		

> An author can create a meaningful work without intending to do so. An author can also send a clear message with the full intent to do so. There is a subtle difference between the two. If there was not, then every author would be sending a message with every work.



An artist does send a message with every work. Just as you send a message with every gesture you make, every word you say, every post you write (does anyone else hear the Police?). We send messages, will or no, with every action. Our acts are interpreted by others to mean things. Very often things we did not intend. Indeed, very often the most important messages we send are the ones we do not intend to send.

Art (action) gives rise to interpretation. I have said before that a work of art does not have "a meaning" or "a message". What I meant is that no work of art admits to only one interpretation -- it is the nature of art that every reader, every audience, produces their own interpretation. It can be useful, powerful, to compare interpretations -- but nobody can ever claim that a single interpretation is the correct or final or ultimate one.

We can assess interpretations, of course. There are two criteria, neither of which have anything to do with authorial intent. The criteria for assessing interpretations are firstly, is the interpretation supported by the work itself, and secondly, is the interpretation itself interesting? For example, an interpretation of Hamlet that is well-supported by the text is that Hamlet is about a Danish prince whose father is dead. Well-supported, but not very interesting. Useful interpretations are those that are both well-supported AND interesting, but no interpretation, no matter how well-supported or interesting, will ever be the final interpretation.

Authorial intent -- you seem to keep coming back to this. There's a lot of problems with your position, some of which I've tried to outline already. It's hard to determine -- claims of objectivity are patently false. It changes -- you're applying your own interpretation (whoops! there we are again!) to Tolkien's other writing as a means of claiming primacy for another interpretation of a different work? Shaky logic, my friend. Finally, it doesn't supply much to the debate.

Critical discussion should never be about closing off possibilities -- except as the evidence and the interest of the possibilities themselves dictates. If somebody wants to suggest that LotR is an allegory for gasoline prices in the 70's, let 'em try. I submit that my two criteria above will demolish such an interpretation without any need for recourse to authorial intent (let alone date of publication!). But introducing authorial intent as a means of shutting down possibilities is just foolish. Use it to offer new possibilities -- not until I learned that Tolkien had been a devout Catholic did it ever occur to me to look for the Catholic ideas contained within the book. Now I see them clearly and they're among the book's most powerful ideas. So knowing about the author can be helpful -- but it does not provide any authority to any interpretation.

So when somebody posits that LotR reveals Tolkien's class snobbery, the supposed fact that Tolkien intended no messages in his work is of no value in assessing that idea. We have to turn to the work itself and see what IT says, not what the Professor says it says.


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## Salthanas (Nov 9, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> So when somebody posits that LotR reveals Tolkien's class snobbery, the supposed fact that Tolkien intended no messages in his work is of no value in assessing that idea. We have to turn to the work itself and see what IT says, not what the Professor says it says.





I don't really think that this statement is fully applicable to Tolkien purely because his writing methods were quite radical compared to other authors (remember that the whole work of Middle earth is primarily linguistic in inspiration as he said many times). To start with Tolkien used to name his characters and places and then derive from that standpoint alone how the name defined the character. His writing therefore never followed the standard path of fleshing a character out for example, he actually tried to work out how something came to be or what is was like in a much more logical fashion. He after all regarded himself as more of a historian reporting what happened in Middle earth so when he wrote something it was not the case that he wrote it because thats how he wanted it to be, more that from his standpoint that was the only possible way it could be. Tolkien always regarded Middle Earth as something he had discovered not created himself.

Whilst its pretty much impossible for an author to not have a message in any work he writes, because after all that work is based on his on life experiences and will always therefore reflect his persective on the world the problem it seems with people like Melville is that they don't really understand just how fastidious Tolkien was with the above method. This is the same man after all who when asked by a by a farmer if she could name some of her bulls after the elves in Rivendell flatly told her that it was inappropriate  and suggested a name like Mundo instead. Following that though he then had to sit down and work out why Mundo was a word related to bulls. Therefore while trying to say that Tolkien had no message is as such probably wrong however trying to draw extreme conclusions from the work is also equally inaccurate (which is what Melville has done). Indeed the fact that people seem to disagree so much about what Tolikens book means and what it supposedly says is probably an indication of some sort as to just how much freedom the reader is allowed to draw conclusions of his own rather than being forced in a particular direction by the author. 

Anyway the whole idea that Tolkien was some sort of class snob is ridiculous. He even explicitly states in his letters that Sam Gamgee was based on the privates he met in the trenches, people who he says he regarded as being much superior to himself even though he was an officer. He must have been a very strange class snob if he regarded the supposed "lower class" as being superior to the "higher class". Personally I think that this view is illustrated by how Tolkien writes about Sam throughout the book. If Melville is trying to suggest that Tolkien is a class snob I'd think it more likely that his observation seems more one drawn by an agenda than by common sense , even though I'm sure that many people would be shocked that such a thing happens in the world of literary criticism


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## Celtavian (Nov 9, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Objective? That presupposes that people have an objective point of view on their own thought processes.




Not really. It presupposes that they have a subjective view of their own thought processes as in Tolkien knew that he did not intend to send a message. He voiced that subjective opinion of his own work.




> Clearly while Professor Tolkien did not intend for one single "message" to be read into his book, he DID hope that people would draw what I've been bludgeoned into calling "meaning" from it. Clearly he expected it to do more than provide an escape from the world.




Why is it when I read those quotes I understand them as saying he wanted to stay true to his religious beliefs. If you search further, you will find that there was actually alot of pressure from his Catholic and Christian friends to not stray from his faith. He would actually allow a certain Catholic friend to peruse the unpublished story to see if there was anything within it that could be deemed heresy.



> An artist does send a message with every work. Just as you send a message with every gesture you make, every word you say, every post you write (does anyone else hear the Police?). We send messages, will or no, with every action. Our acts are interpreted by others to mean things. Very often things we did not intend. Indeed, very often the most important messages we send are the ones we do not intend to send.




Yeah, ok. I didn't say anything about a unintended meaning. 



> Art (action) gives rise to interpretation. I have said before that a work of art does not have "a meaning" or "a message". What I meant is that no work of art admits to only one interpretation -- it is the nature of art that every reader, every audience, produces their own interpretation. It can be useful, powerful, to compare interpretations -- but nobody can ever claim that a single interpretation is the correct or final or ultimate one.




Ok. I never said otherwise.



> We can assess interpretations, of course. There are two criteria, neither of which have anything to do with authorial intent.




I respect an author's intent enough not to use my interpretation to deride their work or to assume that they take a certain moral stance on a given issue.



> The criteria for assessing interpretations are firstly, is the interpretation supported by the work itself, and secondly, is the interpretation itself interesting? For example, an interpretation of Hamlet that is well-supported by the text is that Hamlet is about a Danish prince whose father is dead. Well-supported, but not very interesting. Useful interpretations are those that are both well-supported AND interesting, but no interpretation, no matter how well-supported or interesting, will ever be the final interpretation.




Your point? 



> Authorial intent -- you seem to keep coming back to this. There's a lot of problems with your position, some of which I've tried to outline already. It's hard to determine -- claims of objectivity are patently false.




No, they are not. There is nothing else to go on but what the author himself says about a work. If he tells me he did not write it with any message in mind, then I believe him.

Certainly doesn't mean I can't take what I want from the story that seems to have meaning and interpret as I will. It just means that I can't go cajoling the author into some corner attributing a variety of opinions to him because I interpret his work a certain way. Tactless and rude. The main reason I don't care for Mieville's assessment of Tolkien's work.



> It changes -- you're applying your own interpretation (whoops! there we are again!) to Tolkien's other writing as a means of claiming primacy for another interpretation of a different work? Shaky logic, my friend. Finally, it doesn't supply much to the debate.




I am respecting the author and showing that he can indeed claim he intended no message. He has written other stories with completely different elements and themes such as _Sir Gawaine and Green Knight_ and I believe a science fiction tale of which I cannot remember the name.

When an author uses certain plot elements or themes to create a story, that doesn't mean he is the definitive source on them or they are necessarily his own absolute opinions. 



> Critical discussion should never be about closing off possibilities -- except as the evidence and the interest of the possibilities themselves dictates. If somebody wants to suggest that LotR is an allegory for gasoline prices in the 70's, let 'em try. I submit that my two criteria above will demolish such an interpretation without any need for recourse to authorial intent (let alone date of publication!). But introducing authorial intent as a means of shutting down possibilities is just foolish. Use it to offer new possibilities -- not until I learned that Tolkien had been a devout Catholic did it ever occur to me to look for the Catholic ideas contained within the book. Now I see them clearly and they're among the book's most powerful ideas. So knowing about the author can be helpful -- but it does not provide any authority to any interpretation.




Authorial intent allows an author to explore themes they may agree or disagree with while not condoning or taking an opinion on the matter. It is important to consider the intent of the author prior to labeling his work or attempting to analyze it using your own subjective morality.

For example, if someone writes a tale with a serial as the main "protagonist", does that somehow mean that he or she thinks serial killing is an acceptable form of behavior? I think not.

Authors can and do use plot elements and themes to create stories. A competent story teller does such things and I believe Tolkien was a competent storyteller capable of telling a tale without sending me a message about how I or anyone else should live or whether or not class systems are right or how every friendship should be.



> So when somebody posits that LotR reveals Tolkien's class snobbery, the supposed fact that Tolkien intended no messages in his work is of no value in assessing that idea. We have to turn to the work itself and see what IT says, not what the Professor says it says.




Only if you wish to consider a work such as Tolkien's capable of promoting the idea of class snobbery. Do you consider _Lord of the Rings_ capable of morally persuading others to embrace the idea of class snobbery?

I don't. I think Tolkien can include a class system in his work for no other reason than historical precedence to lend believability to a tale set in a long ago time. Whereas he himself may have had vastly different ideas about the class system.

To force a message on an author because of something he created from his imagination primarily to entertain himself and other willing readers is ludicrous and rude. I'll have no part of it.


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## Salthanas (Nov 9, 2003)

Another point on this topic, if people really want to look for Tolkien's message as such they should rather read the Silmarillion and his various essays on Middle Earth.  Thats where the philosophy behind his creation lies and its outlined alot more clearly. In fact looking at most of Tolkien's remarks and also his various writings on Middle Earth merely serves to illustrate just how off base Melville is. 
Lord of the Rings as a standalone book is simply not the place to go to get a really clear idea regarding what Middle Earth is about IMO. 

Political strutures in Middle Earth are not their because Tolkien might have had a preference for them, they are their because those were the structures that he figured would exist in a medivial setting, and as he was a professor of Anglo -Saxon studies who am I to argue with him   He expressed two favoured forms of goverment in his letters, either total anarachy or a monarch with total power who hardly ever exercised it ( a model you can see in both Aragorn and Manwe). It was all the forms inbetween that he was suspicious about. As for Tolkien trying to glorify war this is patently absurd seeing as how the central character is essentially a pacifist who by the end of the book has a problem with even wearing a sword. The fact is that some medivial societies did glorify war, the vikings considered death in battle as the only way to go. And what a surprise Tolkien incorperated some of this in his work.   

As for Tolkiens quote about the book being a fundamentally religious work, well I take that in the same vein as I took his quote about it being deviod of allegory, particually as that quote came after the book had been written. I don't see how people can argue that you can't take Tolkien's remark about allegory seriously and that you have to consider only the text and then raise a quote he came out with afterwards as some standard of proof. You can't have it both ways, you either ignore all comments he made about the book and just concentrate on the text( which won't get you very far because you have to look at the whole body of work on ME not just the LOTR) or just accept that as his perspective changed so to did his ideas about the book, which is why some of his remarks are contradictory.  He changed his mind about a number of things regarding the book so that would be nothing new. If he definetly knew it was a religious message I probably think he'd have been aware of this at the time. It also flies in the face of what he has said on more than one occassion that the book is fundamentally about death, a topic he says that any book having the virtue of being written by a man will ultimately be about.


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## drnuncheon (Nov 9, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Beautiful and evocative? _Agyar_, _Brokedown Palace_ and _The Sun, the Moon and the Stars_. Brust is a very terse writer and never wallows in his own sentences -- which subjectively is a style I prefer, so I find a great deal of beauty in his writing.




When I think of 'beautiful and evocative' in reference to Zelazny's works, I think more of his short stories - especially ones like "For a Breath I Tarry", "The Man who Loved the Faoli",  and "A Rose for Ecclesiastes".

For Zelazny's long novels, the prize (for me) goes to _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, which often gets unfairly overlooked in favor of _Lord of Light_ - if you want to talk about someone playing with structure, messing with your expectations, that's the book to look in.  As far as that goes it's way beyond anything Brust's done.  IMO, of course.

Dragging back on topic, I think I went into Meiville's work with completely wrong expectations - essentially, I didn't expect it to be an monster-hunting story, I expected it to be something _really_ different.  So I wasn't quite sure what to make of PSS, and I'm going to give it a second read at some point now that I've got a better understanding of what is going on.

J


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## Celtavian (Nov 9, 2003)

Salthanas,

I think alot of the reason Tolkien contradicts himself is because after a work becomes popular an author is forced to justify his work to the fanbase and critics. I know Tolkien was also very sensitive about how fellow Catholics would view his work. 

I feel alot of sympathy for Tolkien because I firmly believe his original intent in writing the story was to tell a good tale. Once it was published and became popular, it grew into more of a responsibility than the man expected. He had to answer alot of questions without offending anyone, especially the religious folks he held in high regard.

I still recall a discussion on the One Ring where he was expected to justify the fact that the orcs were seemingly irredeemable because it was considered heresy by the Catholic church to imply such a thing of a living sentient being. Very different times when Tolkien wrote his book.


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Nov 9, 2003)

Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> Since I've also compared Mieville to Gibson, I'll just say here that the writing style of _Perdido Street Station_ reminded me of _The Difference Engine_ and the attitude reminded me of the "Sprawl" stuff.



I may be mistaken, but wasn't _The Difference Engine_ primarily written by Bruce Sterling from ideas the Gibson came up with? Gibson's name is credited first, but thats just a publishing feature to have the book shelved with the more popular of the authors. The writing was more akin to Sterling than Gibson. 



			
				Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> I actually didn't outright dislike _Perdido Street Station_, though my previous description of it was far from a ringing endorsement. It was vastly overhyped, though that can hardly be blamed entirely on the author. Mostly I was frustrated with it, since Mieville's skill with the language strongly indicates that he could have done a better job with his ideas - instead, we get a very "hey, this sounds cool, let's throw it in the mix" hodgepodge worthy of August Derleth.



Derleth? I wouldn't even mention that name in comparison with authors I dislike. Thats pretty low. He was nothing more than a hack who happened to have been friends with Lovecraft, and managed to weasel his way into literary history by exploiting the name of someone who trusted him. The only good thing he ever did was bring HPLs stories back into print. After that, he shamelessly promoted his own works as being "co-authored" by HPL, when most of them were little more than ideas that HPL mentioned in letters and Derleth expanded upon. He did more harm than good to HPL and others, mainly by his attempts to force their works into a "Mythos," claiming that there was an heirarchy among the various creations, and making things up when he needed to in order for everything to work.


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## Desdichado (Nov 10, 2003)

How did Derleth do more harm than good to HPL by trying to force things into a Mythos?  I honestly don't know; I don't think I've ever read a Derleth piece.


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## Desdichado (Nov 10, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> This statement is very true. He knew he could not stop the changes, they were inevitable. So he created a place to escape from the bothers of daily life, and he did such an extraordinary job that others grew to love the work when it was published.
> 
> The above statement is exactly the reason why I don't think he intended to send a message. He was escaping, much like we do when we game. That doesn't mean that you can't gain insight into the man and his beliefs through his work, I just don't think he was sending a message to the masses in the same way that Orwell or Twain did in some of their works.



You don't think that is a message?  The fact that he resented the way modern society and literature was going and wrote something that deliberately thumbed it's metaphorical nose at both isn't a powerful message?

Granted, I'll agree with you if you restrict your comments to the _details_ of _Lord of the Rings_ only, but if you talk about the work as a broader whole, it most certainly did send a message, and a powerful one at that.


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## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 10, 2003)

Hello, 



> Posted by Cthulhu's Librarian:
> *I may be mistaken, but wasn't The Difference Engine primarily written by Bruce Sterling from ideas the Gibson came up with? Gibson's name is credited first, but thats just a publishing feature to have the book shelved with the more popular of the authors. The writing was more akin to Sterling than Gibson.*




Not sure on this.  The only other Sterling I'm sure I've read is _The Artificial Kid_, and that was a while ago; I may have caught some of his short work in _Mirrorshades_ or other places.  Nothing in the writing of _The Difference Engine_ seems beyond Gibson's capabilities, to me at any rate.  Who actually did how much of the writing, I'm not aware of.  



> Posted by Cthulhu's Librarian:
> *Derleth? I wouldn't even mention that name in comparison with authors I dislike. Thats pretty low.*




It wasn't a comment on Mieville's ethics or technical skill, just the way he shoehorned concepts into _Perdido Street Station_.  In the few Derleth stories I've seen in Mythos anthologies, he tends to throw in extraneous references to various Mythos-beings to an extent that resembles little more than blatant name-dropping, putting them in just for the purpose of having them there because he thought them "cool", regardless of any coherence with the rest of the story, the way Mieville seems to do with some of his concepts.  A little of that goes a long way with me, especially when the concepts are widely disparate.  Derleth was no great shakes with the language, drew heavily on Lovecraft and his circle of correspondents for his concepts, and produced concepts of his own that were arguably bad for the Mythos.  But I've seen worse from people with better reputations, usually writing for licensed properties like _Forgotten Realms_ novels, _Star Trek_ novels, and so forth.  I suspect that, with a sharp editor, Derleth could have been competent for that sort of thing.  



> Posted by Joshua Dyal:
> *How did Derleth do more harm than good to HPL by trying to force things into a Mythos? I honestly don't know; I don't think I've ever read a Derleth piece.*




He attempted to rationalize that which gains much of its power from its irrationality, trying to organize the Mythos beings along "elemental" lines and such.  If I remember correctly, he didn't do all of this in his stories; much of it was attempted in correspondence, commentaries, and introductory essays to other works.

Hope this helps!


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## Pielorinho (Nov 10, 2003)

Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> It wasn't a comment on Mieville's ethics or technical skill, just the way he shoehorned concepts into _Perdido Street Station_. In the few Derleth stories I've seen in Mythos anthologies, he tends to throw in extraneous references to various Mythos-beings to an extent that resembles little more than blatant name-dropping, putting them in just for the purpose of having them there because he thought them "cool", regardless of any coherence with the rest of the story, the way Mieville seems to do with some of his concepts.



Could you give some specific examples of this?  I read PSS because I'd heard it recommended, but I was skeptical that I'd enjoy it.  It blew me away when I read it, though: the sheer force of Mieville's nightmarish imagination tapped directly into my own fears in a way few authors have ever managed to do.

I don't understand comparing him to Gibson.  Gibson's storylines are utterly forgettable (I've read Neuromancer three or four times, and I can't remember or care what it's about), and his characters are little more than personifications of Kewl.  I read Gibson not for his plots or characterization, but for his imagery. For women whose tear-glands are rerouted to their mouths so that instead of crying, they spit.  For ATMs that spritz saboteurs with salt-water and then charge their chassis with electricity.  For battles atop sonically-amplified shrieking platforms of discarded machinery strung between the tops of abandoned skyscrapers.  And i read him for his direct, glossy, Kewl prose, the kind of writing that makes me want to hop on a motorcycle and race down the highway.

Mieville's got the images, sure -- beetle-headed lovers, cactus-men, sphincter-headed mosquito creatures.  But he's also got a richness to his world, a suggestion that there are far more stories going on than the few we hear about.  His characters are far better developed.  And his prose, while not bad, is the opposite of Gibson's:  rather than being glossy and Kewl, it's dense and difficult and borderline-academic.

The only similarities I see between Gibson and Mieville is that they both describe decaying urban environments.  Inasmuch as that's true, one could equally compare either author to Charles Dickens.

Daniel


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## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 10, 2003)

Hi again, 



> Posted by Pielhorino:
> *Could you give some specific examples of this?*





the monster bones big enough to encompass a city, right out of _Heavy Metal_, 
the tough cactus-people, lacking only a "10,000 Needles" attack to have come straight out of _Final Fantasy_, 
Motley struck me as a winged Gibbering Mouther, with perhaps some Mongrelman elements thrown in, 
the devils the city leaders bargain with, seemingly thrown in just to establish how much cooler his villains were compared to "traditional" fantasy antagonists, 
the magical steampunk-cyber of the Remade, seen in different forms in various places, from Nuada of the Silver Hand to the half-golem template for D&D.
the sheer plethora of races that seems like the contents of monster manuals from several different RPGs mixed together at random.  

There are others.  And there's no denying that a lot of the stuff is cool, but there is such a thing in a novel as having too much cool background material.  It's great in, say, a game setting, where you can extrapolate it into lots of interesting adventures.  But it can certainly distract from the narrative in a novel.  

In the comparison with Gibson, there seems to be a shared fascination with little cults and sub-cultures, and some of these in _Perdido Street Station_ seemed to have rough parallels in Gibson's stuff; the machine-cult, and Tough Sisters and Palgolak and the Insect Aspect put me in mind of the likes of Gibsons Big Scienists and Christ the King terrs and net voodoo and Pantisocrats.  There's also a similarity between the "crisis energy" stuff and the early perceptions of chaos theory and "catastrophe" in _The Difference Engine_, with the main characters both disdained for their unconventional views.  

I should probably point out in particular that it was the combination of magic-and-Industrial-Revolution-tech, with guns, airships, railroads, cyber, Cactus Men, untrustworthy authorities of scattered independent city-states, and adventuring parties of warrior and mage types that brought the _Final Fantasy_ comparison from me.  

Hope this helps!


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## Pielorinho (Nov 10, 2003)

Tratyn, I'm not sure what you're saying.  Are you suggesting that because many of the ideas in PSS have appeared in disparate works, PSS is itself a kluged-together mess?

If so, I disagree.  The history of fantasy fiction is one of stealing liberally from other sources, whether from classic mythology or from other authors.  PSS is firmly in this tradition, and indeed steals a lot less from other sources than do many works.

Take, for example, the cactus-men.  I'm unfamiliar with the ones in Final  Fantasy.  DO they live in a great glass greenhouse?  Is their imperviousness to pain one of their main features?  Do they have special bows designed for killing other cactus-men?  Are they xenophobic?  These are the main traits I remember about PSS's cactus-men; if they're different from FF's version, I'd guess that each source came up with the idea separately.

Or take Motley.  By a stretch you can compare him to a gibbering mouther with a mongrel-man thrown in, but that's ignoring the ultra-nifty biothaumaturgy that runs through PSS, of which Motley is the pinnacle achievement.  Motley comes across to me not as a gibbering mouther (which is insanity personified) nor as a mongrelman (who is ashamed of his appearance and was born into it), but rather as an avant-garde artist, a body-modification junkie who sees himself as creating an entirely new aesthetic.  Beyond a vague superficial similarity to a mongrel-man, Motley's theme, his emotions, his motivations are diametrically opposed to a mongrel-man's.

There's a lot of stuff in the book, but I find that an asset, not a problem:  he's writing about a metropolis, and he's got lots of different cultures there.  Instead of feeling that it was disorganized, I got the feeling that it was a developed world in which many other stories were happening at the same time.

As for the Gibson comparisons:  sure, the fascination with cults is a similarity.  I'd suggest this is something we're seeing more of in modern SF -- look also at Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials and at Tim Power's entire oevre.  I'm not sure I see the other parallels, though, and certainly the things that interest me about Gibson are not the things that interest me about Mieville.

Daniel


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## barsoomcore (Nov 10, 2003)

drnuncheon: Just to ensure that peace reigns between us, I consider Zelazny a master writer and a great benefit to the human race. When I say I think he's not as good as Brust, that is still leaving him lots of room to be awfully good.

Peace?


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## barsoomcore (Nov 10, 2003)

It all starts like this...


			
				Celtavian said:
			
		

> The only objective way to decide whether or not a work has a message is to determine the author's intent.





			
				barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Objective? That presupposes that people have an objective point of view on their own thought processes.





			
				Celtavian said:
			
		

> Not really. It presupposes that they have a subjective view of their own thought processes as in Tolkien knew that he did not intend to send a message. He voiced that subjective opinion of his own work.



You are going to have to explain how reading an author's subjective view of their own thought processes provides an objective way to decide anything about their work.

To my thinking, subjective statements cannot provide objective information about ANYTHING. That, to me, is simply part of the definition of "subjective". I cannot accept your statement here without an explanation of the logic behind it.

My position is based on the lack of objective information about a work. I believe (as does most of the critical community) that the only objective source in analysis is the work itself. I'll develop this idea in more detail below. Obviously, if you can prove there are other sources of objective information, my position has no ground to stand on. But so far, you have been unable to prove that.


			
				Celtavian said:
			
		

> I respect an author's intent enough not to use my interpretation to deride their work or to assume that they take a certain moral stance on a given issue.



Deride? They take? I think you are misunderstanding the basic point of critical analysis. I don't investigate possible interpretations of literary works in order to either deride them or to make assumptions about the author. I investigate them in order to learn more about the world and myself.


			
				barsoomcore said:
			
		

> (whole bunch of stuff about assessing interpretations)





			
				Celtavian said:
			
		

> Your point?



I think I can be forgiven for assuming you don't know anything about critical analysis, so I thought to provide you with the basics in an effort to show you why authorial intent is not required to assess interpretations. This is basic, first-year sort of stuff. I'm not offering some crazy idea on criticism, here. These are the basics you need to know if you want to set about investigating artistic works.

My hope was that by offering a coherent system of analysis you would see that knowledge about the author's intent is not required.


> _There is nothing else to go on but what the author himself says about a work._



There's the work itself.

The ONLY objective fact in critical analysis is the work itself. What the author thinks he said or claims to say is subjective. What anybody else thinks or says is subjective. All we have is the work. 

All we need is the work. Historical context is interesting, and may provide fruitful avenues of exploration, but we don't need it. Biographical information is interesting likewise, but we don't need it. Certainly it's possible to learn a great deal from works about which we know relatively little -- there's no clear knowledge about Homer, and yet there seems to be a great deal to say about _The Iliad_. Is that discussion fruitless because it lacks any authorial credibility? Of course not.

Ergo, we don't need to pay the slightest attention to anything author says. If we don't want. We probably should, because we'll have new and maybe more interesting ideas, but judging an interpretation according to how closely it aligns with a given statement of the artist's serves no intellectual purpose.


> _Certainly doesn't mean I can't take what I want from the story that seems to have meaning and interpret as I will. It just means that I can't go cajoling the author into some corner attributing a variety of opinions to him because I interpret his work a certain way. Tactless and rude._



You seem to think that suggesting that a work contains certain ideas is equivalent to saying that the author possesses the same idea.

Rejection of authorial intent works both ways, though. If you reject intent as an objective source of information on the work, then of course the work ceases to be an objective source of information on the author's intent.

Does that ease your outrage? So when somebody creates an interpretation of a work, that is not equivalent to them creating an interpretation of the artist. And any effort to "prove" that an author must hold a certain idea because their work does fails.


> _He has written other stories with completely different elements and themes such as Sir Gawaine and Green Knight and I believe a science fiction tale of which I cannot remember the name._



Just as an accuracy point, Professor Tolkien did not write _Gawain and the Green Knight_. He was one of two editors (the other being Eric Gordon) of the primary published edition. It's a tremendous work and well worth the effort it takes to read it in the original Middle English.


> _Authors can and do use plot elements and themes to create stories. A competent story teller does such things and I believe Tolkien was a competent storyteller capable of telling a tale without sending me a message about how I or anyone else should live or whether or not class systems are right or how every friendship should be._



What exactly is the position you think you're attacking here? I never said anything remotely like this.

OF COURSE he's capable of doing this. You're quite right. In fact, this is exactly what he did. I have never said that LotR is a set of instructions on how to live or a statement on the rightness of any particular social structure. But it DOES reflect the Professor's point of view on the world. It does contain ideas about how people relate to each other, how evil affects human life, and what the price is of fighting against it. It's full of ideas like this. And there are almost certainly ideas about class structure in this book -- indeed, it would be bizarre if there were not. 

Many of these ideas Professor Tolkien will have used intentionally. Many MORE of these ideas he will have used unconsciously, simply incorporating them into the work as part of his world-view. It's more than possible that ideas are present in the work that he did not intend to include. It's even possible that the work presents ideas he would not, if he thought about them consciously, agree with.

Certainly I have done things without being aware at the time that I was manifesting ideas (say, about violence or compassion) that I disagree with. Sometimes I never realised what my actions were saying until somebody pointed it out to me. I think this is a common failing and certainly one I would think the Professor capable of.

At the very least, I would not simply dismiss such a notion out of hand because it might be rude. It is not rude to suggest that an artistic work contains ideas not consciously inserted by the artist. An artistic work is on public display and as such is open to all interpretations that can be made to fit. If you don't want your work interpreted, don't publish it.


> _To force a message on an author because of something he created from his imagination primarily to entertain himself and other willing readers is ludicrous and rude._



To say that a given work contains a particular idea about the world is not "forcing a message on an author". It is a statement, an idea, about the work. Nothing more or less than that. It offers us no objective insight into the thought processes of the author, and certainly anyone who claims it does is talking right through their hat.

And you can tell them I said so.


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## drnuncheon (Nov 10, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> drnuncheon: Just to ensure that peace reigns between us, I consider Zelazny a master writer and a great benefit to the human race. When I say I think he's not as good as Brust, that is still leaving him lots of room to be awfully good.
> 
> Peace?




No! It is to be *war* between us!

*cough*

Er, yeah.  Nothing personal, I just see the situation as exactly reversed.   But they're two of my favorite authors, so I'll take any excuse to talk about them.

J
so how 'bout that Tim Powers guy?


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## Pielorinho (Nov 10, 2003)

Tim Powers? Overrated .

Actually, I felt about his novels like I do about far too many novels.  The first thing I read by him, _Expiration Date_, was pretty good.  The second thing i read by him, _Last Call_, knocked my socks off -- I found myself literally having to put the book down near the climax because I was sweating, my heart racing, my hands trembling.  It was a damn fine novel.

After that, though, everything I've read by him has impressed me increasingly less.  He comes across as writing the same novel again and again.  The last novel I read by him, the one that won the World Fantasy Award, was downright disappointing:  I found none of the characters interesting, and the overall theme of the book was unpleasantly creepy.

Gimme Mieville any day over Powers.
Daniel


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## Salthanas (Nov 10, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> It all starts like this...
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The one problem I can see with all of the above is that it does not take into account that the work in question can be interpreted in a manner which the author actually was simply not aware of or that the interpretation is arrived at in a manner which is inconsitent with the work itself. Because the author is indeed writing from his own perspective it can be safe to assume that he not only considers any message he intends to send but also how that message should be delivered and understood. To understand the authors perspective you have to look beyond the book. Indeed you can choose to interpret a book in three different manners.

a) That any message drawn from a book is as valid as another no matter what basis an individual use to arrive at his or her conclusion.

b) That no message at all is inherant in a book therefore all conclusions are meaningless.

c) That some interpretations are a better approximation to what the actual message is than others. That messages read from a book operate on a sliding scale with some nearly matching the authors intent and which are consitent with the work whilst  others have no real value at all.

A and B essentially imply the same thing, if we allow any interpretation to be as viable as another then the book in question has effectively infinite messages which in turn results in no actual message of any coherence.

The problem with B is that you can never tell if you interpretation is entirly correct because unless you have some idea of what the authors intent was then how do you know if your viewing the work in the way that it was intended.
To understand how the work is supposed to be viewed you can really only try to gain some insight to the authors perspective on life and evaluate what he was trying to do. This involves not only considering his comments on the work but also his comments on life in general and also any other works related to that particular one. If some of the interpretations drawn are therefore more consitent with what the author has said and his other works its probably the case that they are more accurate than others, after all we can only really approximate what the exact message is. The fact that Tolkien says he was trying to write a book with no inner message is in fact a message in its own right. You could say then that his only message is that life has no meaning apart from that which you give it (which of course implies option a and says that the book has no meaning at all    )


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## Desdichado (Nov 10, 2003)

I agree with Salthanas, I don't think "the message" is binary in terms of author intent.  Sure, something like the Iliad _must_ be interpreted based solely on the its content, because we have nothing to indicate what the authorial intent was.  Similarly, something like Orwell's 1984 _can_ be interpreted simply based on what Orwell himself said it means, because he was around to tell us what it means.

However, I don't prefer either pole, because they are missing crucial pieces of info.  To say that I can interpret 1984 based solely on the text of 1984, and then I come up with my idea that it's a scathing reply to the Reagan years and his domestic policy (again, ignoring the date of publication) and I completely ignore things that Orwell himself has said about the book, then that seems to be a fundamentally silly exercise.


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## Umbran (Nov 10, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> Because the author is indeed writing from his own perspective it can be safe to assume that he not only considers any message he intends to send but also how that message should be delivered and understood.




The fact that the writer is working from his own perspective in no way, shape, or form implies that any conscious consideration has been given to "messages".  Some writers may give great thought to this, others may not.  Humans are pretty well known for not really knowing what is going on inside their own heads.   

Perhaps "body language" is a good analogy.  When you talk to a person face to face, the details of their posture, movement, eye contact, and the like can tell you a great deal about what is going on inside their heads.  Some folks (good actors, for example) learn to control their body language, but most folk don't control it most of the time.  It projects meaning without any consicous intent on the part of the speaker.  Similarly, a writer who has no intent to send a message can still have things creep into his or her work unannounced.

The difficulty with the written word is that the intentional and unintentional meanings are conveyed through the same medium, so they are difficult to disentangle.  



> c) That some interpretations are a better approximation to what the actual message is than others. That messages read from a book operate on a sliding scale with some nearly matching the authors intent and which are consitent with the work whilst  others have no real value at all.




What about the case where the author's intended message is pretty vapid and empty, but the subtext and unintentional messages are interesting?  The "value" of a message is subjective, and may have little to do with the author's actual intent.



> The fact that Tolkien says he was trying to write a book with no inner message is in fact a message in its own right.




No offense meant to Tolkien in specific, but humans are not well-known for being 100% honest with each other, or with themselves.


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## Salthanas (Nov 10, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> The fact that the writer is working from his own perspective in no way, shape, or form implies that any conscious consideration has been given to "messages".  Some writers may give great thought to this, others may not.  Humans are pretty well known for not really knowing what is going on inside their own heads.
> 
> Perhaps "body language" is a good analogy.  When you talk to a person face to face, the details of their posture, movement, eye contact, and the like can tell you a great deal about what is going on inside their heads.  Some folks (good actors, for example) learn to control their body language, but most folk don't control it most of the time.  It projects meaning without any consicous intent on the part of the speaker.  Similarly, a writer who has no intent to send a message can still have things creep into his or her work unannounced.
> 
> ...




You can say that messages can be delivered unintentionally but you also have to accept that messages can be totally misinterpreted. If an alien comes down from planet Melville and reads LoTR he might, based on Melvillian interpretations of literature come to the conclusion that Tolkiens work obviously was about the political situation back on planet Melville. In the context of what some people seem to be saying we would have to consider this to be as valid as any other interpretation particually if we are using only the book as a reference point. However we can conclude that this interpretation is in fact bogus for the simple reason that Tolkien has never in fact visited Planet Melville (at least not to my knowledge), this however requires us to look outside the book and consider the context in which it was written in. The aliens conclusions from his particular perspective might seem entirely logical and accurate but that does not change the fact that they as near to meaningless as can be. Simply put trying to argue that any message is somehow relevant without considering the context of the work itself is IMO quite pointless unless the author has made it  overwhelmingly clear which Tolkien obviously has not, otherwise there would be no disagreement on what the message actually was   



			
				Umbran said:
			
		

> What about the case where the author's intended message is pretty vapid and empty, but the subtext and unintentional messages are interesting? The "value" of a message is subjective, and may have little to do with the author's actual intent.





There surely would have to be a reason for the author making his message vapid though unless your saying that he arbitarily made it subjective which would strike me as pretty meanlingless


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## barsoomcore (Nov 10, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> To understand the authors perspective you have to look beyond the book.



First off, I am unconcerned with understanding the author's perspective. If you wish to formulate theories as to what the author is trying to say in a book, then indeed investigating biographical material (such as, for example, the author's stated intentions in writing the book) is important.

But I'm not talking about figuring out what the author meant. I'm talking about investigating what the book says -- which may or may not have anything to do with the author's intentions. 







> _Indeed you can choose to interpret a book in three different manners.
> 
> a) That any message drawn from a book is as valid as another no matter what basis an individual use to arrive at his or her conclusion.
> 
> ...



You are missing the actual state of affairs. The question is not the manner in which interpretation is undertaken. That is immaterial. The real question is: "How do we assess different interpretations of a work?"

I refer you to my post on basic critical analysis -- we determine how well-supported the interpretation is by the text, and we decide how interesting the interpretation itself is. Some interpretations ARE better than others, but NOT because they more nearly match the author's intent. They are better either because they are better supported by the text, or they are more interesting, or both.

Interpretations are not "correct" or "wrong". They are more or less powerful, interesting, useful, insightful, whatever. But the notions of "correct" or "wrong", like the notion of "meaning" that I railed against previously (and still do, in my heart of hearts) suggest a non-productive way of thinking about interpretation.


> _If an alien comes down from planet Melville and reads LoTR he might, based on Melvillian interpretations of literature come to the conclusion that Tolkiens work obviously was about the political situation back on planet Melville._



And of course if he were to say the book is ABOUT Melville, then he is making a biographical statement about Tolkien's intent in writing the book, a statement that any listener would at least require some substantial evidence to before taking seriously.

But perhaps he instead says, "You know, when Tolkien talks about the Ring, he says a lot of things that sort of apply to the Wakkamakka back home. Maybe he's saying in the end you have destroy things like the Wakkamakka." There's no problem with that, surely? We wouldn't say he was WRONG, would we? We might be surprised that a work we think of expressing so clearly the sentiments of our times would have such broad applicability, but no doubt we would shrug and say to each other, "That Professor Tolkien sure speaks to a wide range of folks."

The reason we know, for example, that LotR is not an allegory on WWII is pretty simple -- it's awfully hard to make that notion work. Who's Hitler? Who's Churchill? Where's France? When's D-Day? In an allegory of WWII we could reasonably expect representations of these and a million other things. If we don't find representations of the key elements of WWII, then we will have a lot of trouble arguing that the text is a good allegory of WWII. That interpretation is not well-supported by the text.


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## drnuncheon (Nov 10, 2003)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> Tim Powers? Overrated .
> 
> Actually, I felt about his novels like I do about far too many novels.  The first thing I read by him, _Expiration Date_, was pretty good.  The second thing i read by him, _Last Call_, knocked my socks off -- I found myself literally having to put the book down near the climax because I was sweating, my heart racing, my hands trembling.  It was a damn fine novel.
> 
> After that, though, everything I've read by him has impressed me increasingly less.




When he's on top of his game, he's incredible - like in _Last Call_, or _The Anubis Gates_ (which I highly recommend! One of the best time-travel stories ever, and one you need to read a second time to truly appreciate).  He came to mind because of the 'pushing the boundaries' discussion - although in his case, the treatment of magic in _Last Call_ actually pushes it back towards its roots and away from the D&D-ish 'wave a stick and shout magic words' that has infected so much fantasy.  You can tell that there are rules and a certain "logic" to it, but it's not a scientific logic - and yet it still seems plausible.

I didn't care nearly as much for Expiration Date or Earthquake Weather, but that's another story.

J


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## barsoomcore (Nov 10, 2003)

What was Powers' very first novel -- I don't think it was _The Anubis Gates_, though I did read that and thought it was great. But I seem to remember one before that that was absolutely awesome.

For some reason, though, Powers has never snagged me as a devoted reader. I don't think I respond to his style well enough -- he just doesn't hook me in with enough force. Dunno.

But the books of his I've read have been great.


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## Salthanas (Nov 10, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> First off, I am unconcerned with understanding the author's perspective. If you wish to formulate theories as to what the author is trying to say in a book, then indeed investigating biographical material (such as, for example, the author's stated intentions in writing the book) is important.
> 
> But I'm not talking about figuring out what the author meant. I'm talking about investigating what the book says -- which may or may not have anything to do with the author's intentions.
> You are missing the actual state of affairs. The question is not the manner in which interpretation is undertaken. That is immaterial. The real question is: "How do we assess different interpretations of a work?"
> ...




Any statement about a work is going to be a biographical one using that logic. Any time you try to infer that an author is trying to say anything you have to consider it from that persepctive. The method your suggesting for analysis of literature seems to me to be rather circular. Your saying that any interpretation is valid, correct and that none are wrong. Well is'nt that what Tolkien essentially said at the start of the book. The meaning of it is left up to the reader. You've essentially just proved his point and argued that not only is it the case it has to be the case


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## Pielorinho (Nov 10, 2003)

I thought I'd read everything by Powers, but I just learned that I haven't even come close.  His earliest book that I've read is _The Drawing of the Dark_, a tale about Secret Mystical Beer that anticipates the Secret Mystical Wine of _Earthquake Weather.  _His upcoming novel, _The Running of the Bulls_, about Secret Mystical Malt Liquor, will continue the theme.

_Anubis Gates_ was pretty good, but had nowhere near as strong an effect on me as _Last Call_ had.  Maybe I should reread it to fully appreciate it.  

Barsoomcore, if you've not read _Last Call_, give it a whirl -- it's pretty great.  And I must say, you've got an awfully pomo approach to litcrit -- not that there's anything wrong with that.

Daniel


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## Umbran (Nov 10, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> You can say that messages can be delivered unintentionally but you also have to accept that messages can be totally misinterpreted.




Yes, it is possible to come up with interpretations that vary wildly from the author's stated intentions.  It is also possible to come up with interpretations based upon faulty logic and thin evidence.  



> If an alien comes down from planet Melville and reads LoTR he might, based on Melvillian interpretations of literature come to the conclusion that Tolkiens work obviously was about the political situation back on planet Melville.




This would be a case of thin and faulty.  Tolkien cannot be trying to speak directly about Melville if he never knew of the place's existance.  Tolkien may, however, be speaking about political situations in general.  Or he may say things that are analogous, and so may apply to the Melvillian situation. The Melvillians may find something in Tolkien that is relevant to them, even if Tolkien never heard of Melville. 



> There surely would have to be a reason for the author making his message vapid...




No, there need be no "reason it was made vapid".  Perhaps the authr is simply a vapid person.    In general, vapidity is the result of a lack of effort, rathe rthan the result of specific conscious plans to be so.  

Piers Anthony's "Xanth" books are a good example.  The first few aren't too bad.  Better and deeper than many, especially if you consider them to be YA books.  The later ones, however, are complete tripe.  I don't at all think Mr. Anthony specifically said, "I will now set out to write something vapid".  I think he simply stopped caring much about the content, and spewed out words to make a few bucks.  Perhaps we can consider this a case of "unintentionally insertign meaning".  If all Mr. Anthony cared about in writing them was the money, his own motives are rather vapid, and it shows in the books.


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## Salthanas (Nov 10, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Yes, it is possible to come up with interpretations that vary wildly from the author's stated intentions.  It is also possible to come up with interpretations based upon faulty logic and thin evidence.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




A book thats vapid will still be about "something". There has to be an underlying cause that makes the author write in a particular way surely. Even saying that the author is not really saying much is still saying something


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## barsoomcore (Nov 10, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> Any statement about a work is going to be a biographical one using that logic. Any time you try to infer that an author is trying to say anything you have to consider it from that persepctive.



You're going to have to be more specific here. Which bit of logic are you referring to? Because it seems to me that the primary logic in my post (how one differentiates between interpretations) is expressly directed towards excluding biographical information from the decision-making process. If you couldn't follow my logic let me know where I lost you.

Are you referring to my statement "if he were to say the book is ABOUT Melville, then he is making a biographical statement about Tolkien's intent in writing the book"? If so, then I apologize for not making clear that I believe it is possible to talk about what a book says without making a statement of any kind about what the author may or may not have _tried_ to say. So it is possible to make statements about a book that are not biographical statements about the writer.

A statement of the type "This book is ABOUT such and such," is implying that the book has been _intended_ to illustrate such and such, which is a biographical statement. I'll happily admit that it's possible to use such words and not mean to imply anything biographical.


> _The method your suggesting for analysis of literature seems to me to be rather circular. Your saying that any interpretation is valid, correct and that none are wrong._



I can only refer you to the post you just quoted, particularly the bit where I said, "Some interpretations ARE better than others, but NOT because they more nearly match the author's intent. They are better either because they are better supported by the text, or they are more interesting, or both."

If that doesn't refute your notion that I'm saying all interpretations are equal, I don't really know what else I can do.

But for the sake of completeness (I know there's an unturned stone in here somewhere), I will say that I believe the notion that interpretations are either valid or invalid, correct or wrong is a bad way to proceed. Some interpretations are BETTER than others. They are not all equal. But that doesn't mean some are right and others are wrong. Some may be so much better than others that we accept them unquestioningly. Some may be so poorly supported, so uninteresting, that we reject them out of hand. If you want to call the former "right" and the latter "wrong", I won't stop you. But if you only consider interpretations that fall into one of those two categories, you're missing out on all the fun.


> _Well is'nt that what Tolkien essentially said at the start of the book. The meaning of it is left up to the reader. You've essentially just proved his point and argued that not only is it the case it has to be the case._



Now I'm confused. Are you on the side that thinks meaning is dependent on authorial intent or are you on the side that thinks the reader is free to come up with any meaning they like, regardless of what the author may have intended? Because this statement seems like a complete reversal of everything else you've said.

However, if you think I have proved that meaning is up to the reader, then I'll take my bow. Thank you. With the caveat that you may be free to come up with any interpretation you like, but that doesn't mean any interpretation you come up with will be as good as any other.

*bows*

*then notes Pielorhino calling him post-modern*

I'm a structuralist, darnit! Lump me in with a bunch of French intellectual posers, will you? 

One of my favourite books on "pomo" thinking is _Against Deconstructionism_, by John Ellis. Hope that helps elucidate my position.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 10, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> In general, vapidity is the result of a lack of effort, rathe rthan the result of specific conscious plans to be so.



 Hey, I've tried very hard to be vapid. Not sure I was conscious most of the time...


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## Salthanas (Nov 10, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> You're going to have to be more specific here. Which bit of logic are you referring to? Because it seems to me that the primary logic in my post (how one differentiates between interpretations) is expressly directed towards excluding biographical information from the decision-making process. If you couldn't follow my logic let me know where I lost you.
> 
> Are you referring to my statement "if he were to say the book is ABOUT Melville, then he is making a biographical statement about Tolkien's intent in writing the book"? If so, then I apologize for not making clear that I believe it is possible to talk about what a book says without making a statement of any kind about what the author may or may not have _tried_ to say. So it is possible to make statements about a book that are not biographical statements about the writer.
> 
> ...




Any time you attempt to mention the authors intent or try to guess at his purpose you invariably have to link that back to his perspective. If I write a book and then people say this reminds me of the situation in xxx thats fine, thats them treating the book in an applicable manner. However trying to say that a book is sending a particular message is entirely different. A message invariable has to have some relevance to the authors situation, it suggests that you can understand what he was trying to do. Whilst you can try and infer this from the text alone and in some cases that might be all you need the idea that this will be the case all the time simply seems to me a rather primative way of trying to understand literature particually when the author is making a conscious attempt not to actually make the book have a singular message. Unless your saying that Tolkien willfully lied on this point I don't see how you can argue otherwise. 

With regards to your point about some interpretation being better you have to consider primariliy what actually makes an interpretation better. Ultimately the interpretation has to have a consitency with the work itself. Why is one interpretation better than another? They have to be supported by evidence. The problem is that your method of simply using the text can always be circumvented if the author wants that to be the case. If I deliberately use elements which are tangential to the central thrust of a book and people draw all sorts of conclusions from them does that mean that I deliberately set out to  make those conclusions possible or is it the case that someone has drawn inferences which simply were not there to begin with and then attributed them to the book as a whole. However if someone then reads that I've said actually those elements were purely arribtary don't they then have a greater understanding of the text as a whole and can argue from a point of greater strength. In fact can't they then quite catagorically say that yes those elements have an applicability but in essence they have no inner message.

With regards to the last point confusion is inevitable   In fact its what makes LoTR quite pardoxical. Tolkiens definative beliefs about language  essentially say that the meaning is what you make it, hence his statement about allegory and applicability, the domination of the author and his intent against the freedom of the reader. The difference is that the authors tryanny of purpose is to give the reader as much freedom as possible which is totally paradoxical, he is in fact trying to be as tryannical as possible in allowing you as much freedom as possible. You've tactically agreed with his initial statement which was that the meaning of the book is purely to what the reader gives it. However this is also the same as saying that the book actually has no message as such and that even if it did the message would be totally irrelevant anyway.


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## Umbran (Nov 10, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> The problem is that your method of simply using the text can always be circumvented if the author wants that to be the case.




What you're suggesting is that an author would deliberately add in stuff to make it so that one could not tell what the author was trying to get at?  Literary chaff?  While this could be done, in theory, dang few authors are going to delibareatley confuse the issue.

"Bwhahaha!  Those measly literary analysts!  I'll show them!  They'll never be able to figure out what this book is about.  Never, I say!  Bwahaaha!"


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## Salthanas (Nov 11, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> What you're suggesting is that an author would deliberately add in stuff to make it so that one could not tell what the author was trying to get at?  Literary chaff?  While this could be done, in theory, dang few authors are going to delibareatley confuse the issue.
> 
> "Bwhahaha!  Those measly literary analysts!  I'll show them!  They'll never be able to figure out what this book is about.  Never, I say!  Bwahaaha!"




No it just means he can add in elements which have no specific inner message or which he has no strong opinions about.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> Any time you attempt to mention the authors intent or try to guess at his purpose you invariably have to link that back to his perspective.



Right. Which is why the whole point of my argument has been -- don't try to guess at the author's purpose.


> _However trying to say that a book is sending a particular message is entirely different. A message invariable has to have some relevance to the authors situation, it suggests that you can understand what he was trying to do._



Are you just restating my position here? This is EXACTLY why I'm saying that talking about a book's "particular message" is bad terminology.


> _Whilst you can try and infer this from the text alone and in some cases that might be all you need the idea that this will be the case all the time simply seems to me a rather primative way of trying to understand literature particually when the author is making a conscious attempt not to actually make the book have a singular message. Unless your saying that Tolkien willfully lied on this point I don't see how you can argue otherwise. _



Could you state what it is you think I'm arguing? You seem to think I'm arguing that we should try to determine the particular message of a book without recourse to the author's intent. In fact what I'm arguing is that we should NOT try to determine the particular message of a book because we don't know what the author's intent was.

I am not saying Tolkien willfully lied because, ONE MORE TIME, I am not saying anything about Tokien's intentions at all. I am not interested in Tolkien's intentions -- his intentions have nothing to do with the interpretation of his book.


> _With regards to your point about some interpretation being better you have to consider primariliy what actually makes an interpretation better. Ultimately the interpretation has to have a consitency with the work itself._



And it has to be interesting in and of itself.

Or rather, it doesn't have to be either. But a better interpretation is one that is BOTH better supported and more interesting.

Are you reading my posts? Because I've been over this three times now.


> _The problem is that your method of simply using the text can always be circumvented if the author wants that to be the case. If I deliberately use elements which are tangential to the central thrust of a book and people draw all sorts of conclusions from them does that mean that I deliberately set out to  make those conclusions possible_



I don't care if you deliberately set out to do anything. But if it's in the text then it can be used to support an interpretation. 

Again, better interpretations are better-supported by the text. So if somebody describes an interpretation that is based on only one portion of the text, and is perhaps in contradiction with other portions, that's not very well-supported. Other interpretations that address more of the text will be considered superior to that one (assuming they're equally interesting), and rightly so.


> _However if someone then reads that I've said actually those elements were purely arribtary don't they then have a greater understanding of the text as a whole and can argue from a point of greater strength._



No, they don't. Reading statements by an author about their work may be, as I have said many times now, interesting. It may lead us in useful directions and may serve to cause us to come up with new, more powerful ideas -- but simply reading the statements themselves doesn't do that. And there are any number of ways to come up with new and powerful ideas about a text. The SOURCE of the ideas is unimportant -- it's the ideas themselves that matter.


> _In fact can't they then quite catagorically say that yes those elements have an applicability but in essence they have no inner message._



They can say whatever they like. They still have to defend their interpretation based on how well-supported it is by the text and how interesting it is. You can't just say, "It must be true because the author said so." You have to prove it if you want other people to take it seriously.

Again, the source of an interpretation is unimportant -- what matters is how good it is, using the criteria I've gotten sick of explaining.


> _With regards to the last point confusion is inevitable   In fact its what makes LoTR quite pardoxical._



My confusion as to what your logical position is has nothing to do with any quality of LotR. You could quite simply clear it up by saying either "I believe that meaning is determined by the author," or, "I believe meaning is determined by the reader," or "I have some other belief about the determination of meaning." It's got nothing to do with some special quality of this particular book.


> _You've tactically agreed with his initial statement which was that the meaning of the book is purely to what the reader gives it. However this is also the same as saying that the book actually has no message as such and that even if it did the message would be totally irrelevant anyway._



Okay, once again it seems like we're coming up against problems of terminology. 

"Message." 

"Meaning."

Umbran, see why I wanted to reject these terms?  

Okay, let's forget about those terms. Pretend I never used them. Pretend instead I am talking about interpretation. When we read a book, we can interpret it to apply to all sorts of things in our lives. This is the process I am talking about. Do you see that it has nothing to do with the intent of the author? Does this put to rest your objections to the idea that when we evaluate interpretations, we evaluate them solely on their relationship to the text, and their degree of interest?

LotR does indeed have NO MESSAGE, in certain definitions of the word MESSAGE (definitions I have never intended to make use of). I agree with that. In fact, I will go further and say that art is not about MESSAGES. An author may INTEND to send a message, but investigating that fact is one of purely biographical interest, not at all relevant in an assessment of the work's artistic power. Certainly not something I have much interest in.

A work that is intended to deliver a message is an essay, not an artwork. And to assess it according to the accuracy, importance or invention of its delivery is to assess it as an essay, and to ignore what makes it art.


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## Salthanas (Nov 11, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Right. Which is why the whole point of my argument has been -- don't try to guess at the author's purpose.
> 
> My confusion as to what your logical position is has nothing to do with any quality of LotR. You could quite simply clear it up by saying either "I believe that meaning is determined by the author," or, "I believe meaning is determined by the reader," or "I have some other belief about the determination of meaning." It's got nothing to do with some special quality of this particular book.
> 
> ...




The problem is you can't quite remove the purpose of the author from a book, if he points you in a particular direction is'nt he essentially imposing his will on your interpretation, is'nt he providing the evidence that you actually base your interpretation on or is all just some aribitary nonsence that a monkey on a type writer can come out with. Personally I think you can look at a book considering both the readers and the writers viewpoint, in fact I think its more interesting to see how my opinion of a work might differ from what an author had in mind and how it also might coincide. Trying to justify an interpretation purely on the authors view is defective because it doesnt allow you any creativity when reading the book, however basing it soley on that of the reader IMO is essentially meaningless and that would be my fundamental point which you can't grasp.



			
				barsoomcore said:
			
		

> No, they don't. Reading statements by an author about their work may be, as I have said many times now, interesting. It may lead us in useful directions and may serve to cause us to come up with new, more powerful ideas -- but simply reading the statements themselves doesn't do that. And there are any number of ways to come up with new and powerful ideas about a text. The SOURCE of the ideas is unimportant -- it's the ideas themselves that matter
> .




Only if your using your interpretation in an applicable sense, not if your trying to guess the intent of the author


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## Umbran (Nov 11, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Umbran, see why I wanted to reject these terms?




Yes.  I just don't agree with you.  

Some folks here have talked as if the author's will was paramount.  You, instead, talk as if the author is pretty much irrelevant.  I'm a middle-of-the-road person.  

I don't think you can come particularly close to fully appreciating what the work has to say unless you consider the author's intent, the time and culture in which the work was written, etc.  This is less important when reading something fairly contemporary, like Tolkien.  In such a case the author is rather similar to the reader in many respects.  However, it becomes more and more apparent when you read things from the distant past, or from other cultures.  

Japanese films are a reasonable approximation here.  An American viewer can watch a subtitled or dubbed Japanese film, and walk away without much idea of anything.  Without the cultural context, the behaviors of characters and even the cinematogrphical style just don't speak much to you at all. In order to dervie much meaning from them, you have to know something about the makers, and the conventions they use. 

Even in some places in Tolkien it becomes important.  The Frodo-Sam relationship, for instance.  A great many modern readers who ignore where and when Tolkien was from interpret it as a suppressed homosexual romance, and get confused by how the two characters then behave.  But it isn't really a romance.  It's a master-servant relationship the likes of which are extremely rare in modern America.  If you describe the relationship of an Edwardian lord and his head butler to the reader, however, the reader goes, "Oh!  That makes so much more sense!"

The terminology I prefer may cause more confusion.  However, your terminology tends to lead one to ignore things I find very important.  I'd prefer to have to wrangle in discussion and get it (IMHO) right than to miss so much.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> Trying to justify an interpretation purely on the authors view is defective because it doesnt allow you any creativity when reading the book, however basing it soley on that of the reader IMO is essentially meaningless and that would be my fundamental point which you can't grasp.



Okay, so let me get this straight. Your fundamental point is that basing an interpretation solely on the view of the reader is essentially meaningless. Is that correct? Have I now grasped your fundamental point?

If I have, I would like to address it, but I'll wait to hear from you that I have indeed grasped your fundamental point.


> _Only if your using your interpretation in an applicable sense, not if your trying to guess the intent of the author  _



Can I be any more clear about the fact that I'm not trying to guess the intent of the author? If you want to do that, you go right ahead. But I'm not talking about that. I am talking about "the applicable sense."

I take it, however, that in that sense we are therefore in agreement that it is the ideas that matter, not their source. Which is a source of some relief to me, I kid you not.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

Umbran said:
			
		

> I don't think you can come particularly close to fully appreciating what the work has to say unless you consider the author's intent, the time and culture in which the work was written, etc.  This is less important when reading something fairly contemporary, like Tolkien.  In such a case the author is rather similar to the reader in many respects.  However, it becomes more and more apparent when you read things from the distant past, or from other cultures.



I'm not necessarily in disagreement with any of this, which is why I let it go earlier. This is what I'm saying when I make statements like "learning biographical information can be interesting." That probably sounds like a dismissal, but it isn't. You can glean all sorts of useful information that can help you to appreciate a text from understanding the writer and his or her environment. In some cases it's practically impossible to formulate a useful interpretation until some sort of familiarization has been performed.

My point is that we cannot evaluate interpretations according to how well they correspond to any particular statements attributed to the writer. We can only evaluate them according to a) how well-supported they are by the text, and b) how interesting they are.


> _The terminology I prefer may cause more confusion.  However, your terminology tends to lead one to ignore things I find very important.  I'd prefer to have to wrangle in discussion and get it (IMHO) right than to miss so much._



Oh, yeah, sure. I agree. And the truth of the matter is that this is one of those areas where the English language seems to get rather muddy. The meaning of words like, er, "meaning" is fuzzy and hard to pin down, and so people end up using the same terminology to refer to different ideas. I'm not sure my insistent use of "interpretation" is free from that problem, either.

Wrangling, that's what it's all about....


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## Salthanas (Nov 11, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Okay, so let me get this straight. Your fundamental point is that basing an interpretation solely on the view of the reader is essentially meaningless. Is that correct? Have I now grasped your fundamental point?
> 
> If I have, I would like to address it, but I'll wait to hear from you that I have indeed grasped your fundamental point.
> 
> ...




Basing an interpretation purely on the view of the reader is ok, its just they have to accept that without considering their view in tandem with the context of the author their interpretation is really meaningless   

And I have at no point said that its the ideas that matter and not the source. What matters is how you choose to use those ideas, if its in an applicable sense fine, if you want to look for inner meaning then no, that needs  you to consider the context of the author *as well* as your own interpretation.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

Salthanas said:
			
		

> Basing an interpretation purely on the view of the reader is ok, its just they have to accept that without considering their view in tandem with the context of the author their interpretation is really meaningless.



I tried really hard to give you a pretty simple question. One that would encourage an answer sort of like, "Yes," or, "No."

Now it seems like you're still saying that "basing an interpretation purely on the view of the reader" is meaningless, which is what I think I asked you in my previous post. You then go on to say it's okay to do so, but failing to simultaneously consider the context of the author will render their interpretation meaningless. 

So now I don't know WHAT you're saying. If I base an interpretation purely on the view of the reader, BUT consider it in context of the author, then it's not really based purely on the view of the reader anymore, is it? So it seems like you're saying "Yes, basing an interpretation purely on the view of the reader is meaningless." It's just that first, you say it's ok. So I'm confused.

Is it meaningless or not? That's all I'm asking.

I don't even want to bother with the rest of your post until we are in agreement as to your fundamental point. If you don't like the way I'm stating it, could you at least post an unambiguous statement of your position? Right now you seem to be contradicting yourself, and it makes discussion sort of pointless.


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## Salthanas (Nov 11, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> I tried really hard to give you a pretty simple question. One that would encourage an answer sort of like, "Yes," or, "No."
> 
> Now it seems like you're still saying that "basing an interpretation purely on the view of the reader" is meaningless, which is what I think I asked you in my previous post. You then go on to say it's okay to do so, but failing to simultaneously consider the context of the author will render their interpretation meaningless.
> 
> ...





Well IMO it goes like this. Whats the point in reading something  if you consider your own interpretation the only thing of importance and the authors intent of no consequence. Its like reading a newspaper and ignoring what the journalist is actually saying and simply basing its worth on how it makes you feel. Such an act is pretty meaningless because not only does it mean the authors purpose in writing the article is circumvented but also the reader doesn't really learn anything, he just turns the act of reading into an exercise in symbology. Reading is about trying to understand another perspective in relation to your own, at least IMO. So when I read a book I'm interested in where I agree with the author and where I don't, its about understanding the differences in perspectives and why they exist. Reading a book without considering the intent of the author is therefore IMO about as useful as trying to write one which would be read only by yourself, in otherwords pretty pointless. That doesnt mean it can't be fun, lots of pointless activities are fun, it just depends on whether the activity in question has any real intrinsic value other than to amuse yourself.


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## Celtavian (Nov 11, 2003)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> You don't think that is a message?  The fact that he resented the way modern society and literature was going and wrote something that deliberately thumbed it's metaphorical nose at both isn't a powerful message?
> 
> Granted, I'll agree with you if you restrict your comments to the _details_ of _Lord of the Rings_ only, but if you talk about the work as a broader whole, it most certainly did send a message, and a powerful one at that.




First and foremost, I would like to state that I don't think messages and meanings cannot be drawn from _Lord of the Rings_. I find the work very meaningful and I can see all kinds of unintended messages.

I do not believe Tolkien sat down with the intent of sending a message. Tolkien seemed to enjoy writing tales. It was a break from the world for him. He had been doing it for years privately without really thinking that he was going to publish the work. I'm sure you read how _The Hobbit_ came to be when Tolkien wrote down one sentence that came to mind while he was correcting papers. He had a wandering imagination.

A writer can create a story without intending any message whatsoever for the sheer joy of storytelling. I think Tolkien was that type of writer. He loved to tell tales, it was a passion for him. He was good at it, and inevitably people found alot of meaning in his work and saw messages whether or not he intended them.

I don't know how to state it more clearly. It seems as though people think I am saying "Because Tolkien didn't intend any message or meaning, then there is no message or meaning." When what I am trying to to say is "Because Tolkien didn't intend any message or meaning, he cannot be blamed for the way others interpret the work."

Since this discussion was sparked by China Mieville's comments concerning Tolkien's work. I felt it important to note that attributing belief's to Tolkien such as glorifying war or supporting a class system and  requiring others to follow certain fantasy standards like incorporating elves and dwarves into their story baseless. He was a taleteller first, and any messages sent were of secondary importance and not meant to be taken as a literal statement of his stance on a variety of complex moral issues.

I hope this better denotes my position on this debate.


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## Celtavian (Nov 11, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> There's the work itself.
> 
> The ONLY objective fact in critical analysis is the work itself. What the author thinks he said or claims to say is subjective. What anybody else thinks or says is subjective. All we have is the work.




You missed my point by not looking at the reason this debate started in the first place. China Mieville derided Tolkien's work in a manner that attributed to the author certain moral ideas and fantasy standards that he used within _Lord of the Rings_. I shot back that Tolkien was a storyteller, and because he uses certain elements within his book the author himself is not necessarily in agreement or disagreement with said elements.

Tolkien told a tale. Within that tale there are a variety of elements that we as human beings can identify with morally or historically. That is the sign of a good tale one that can intertwine the real and unreal to make a compelling whole, not a personal statement by the author.





> You seem to think that suggesting that a work contains certain ideas is equivalent to saying that the author possesses the same idea.




Not my thinking at all. I believe a work can be completely separate, wholly or partially, from the author itself. 

On the other hand, I also believe an author can convey a very pointed and direct message to a reader which does convey his opinion or stance on a particual topic.



> What exactly is the position you think you're attacking here? I never said anything remotely like this.




That an author can't write a tale for the sheer joy of storytelling without an intended message while using moral and historical elements that we as human beings can identify with. For example, just because Tolkien writes about war in a manner that makes it seem high and glorious in certain passages in the book, doesn't mean he himself thinks war is high and glorious.



> OF COURSE he's capable of doing this. You're quite right. In fact, this is exactly what he did. I have never said that LotR is a set of instructions on how to live or a statement on the rightness of any particular social structure. But it DOES reflect the Professor's point of view on the world. It does contain ideas about how people relate to each other, how evil affects human life, and what the price is of fighting against it. It's full of ideas like this. And there are almost certainly ideas about class structure in this book -- indeed, it would be bizarre if there were not.




Never said otherwise. Just don't agree with you that it necessarily reflects Tolkien's views on such complex matters. The characters served the story. Tolkien let the story take him where it would.



> Many of these ideas Professor Tolkien will have used intentionally. Many MORE of these ideas he will have used unconsciously, simply incorporating them into the work as part of his world-view. It's more than possible that ideas are present in the work that he did not intend to include. It's even possible that the work presents ideas he would not, if he thought about them consciously, agree with.




Not arguing against this. Once again, look at the comments by China that started the debate.

Looks like we're debating nothing. I don't particularly disagree with your stance unless you insist that an "an author cannot write for the sheer joy of storytelling with no message or meaning intended." That's not the same as saying there is no message or meaning present. 

I  feel every author tries to structure a tale in such a way as to make it compelling to a human reader by using literal constructs that move us and make us think. I just don't think every author is making some kind of inalterable personal statement about life that we should take to heart. 

Certain authors do, I used an example of a few. Twain and Orwell crafted messages into their work about people and life that were unmistakable. They supported their position personally, and did not really intend the work purely for entertainment. Orwell's _1984_ was made as a warning and Twain's _The Man who Corrupted Hadleyburg_ was an insult. To my knowledge, both author's made it quite clear what the story was trying to convey. 

Authorial intent is relevant when analyzing a story to define the story's message and to judge whether or not the author did a competent job of conveying that intended message.


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## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 11, 2003)

Hello, 



> Posted by Pielorinho:
> *Tratyn, I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you suggesting that because many of the ideas in PSS have appeared in disparate works, PSS is itself a kluged-together mess?*




I do think there's a lot of stuff in there that distracts from the story rather than advances it, I think it's in there just for the purpose of being both "cool", and different from standard fantasy ideas, and I think the "coolness" is lessened by the fact that a lot of this stuff really isn't all that original.  

The cactus men are one example.  They could have been any of dozens of more typical fantasy races, werewolves or ogres or what-have-you; their real purpose in the book is to be tough, tough enough to enforce the isolation of their habitat in a harsh city, and yet still easy prey for the main villains.  Since darn near _everyone_ but insane Phase Spiders is easy prey for the main villains, there's no in-story reason they have to be something as odd as cacti, which suggests that the only purpose in making them cactus men is to make them different, original, cool; yet cactus men are deeply associated in my mind, and likely the minds of many others, with _Final Fantasy_.  The closest thing I've seen anywhere else is the needlemen (or, in 3e, needlefolk) of D&D.  They get more detail in the book than in the CRPG, where they just pop up in desert regions, are very difficult to kill, and can dish out lots of damage.  Mieville's versions live in a city, use weapons, and so on.  But they're still cactus men; and while I strongly doubt he took them from the games, they still come off as an attempt at originality that misfired.  The fact that he's thrown in airships and railroads, unusual in "standard" fantasy but very prominent in the _Final Fantasy_ series, doesn't help him there, either.  



> Posted by Pielorinho:
> *The history of fantasy fiction is one of stealing liberally from other sources, whether from classic mythology or from other authors. PSS is firmly in this tradition, and indeed steals a lot less from other sources than do many works.*




It's not the re-use of ideas that bothers me on its own; as you say, that happens all the time.  But when the ideas seem to be put in for no story-related reason, for no apparent reason at all other than to seem original and different, to defy typical fantasy expectations, and yet they still resemble other ideas that have been knocked around in fantasy gaming, animation, or whatever for years, it just doesn't look good for the author.  



> Posted by Pielorinho:
> *Instead of feeling that it was disorganized, I got the feeling that it was a developed world in which many other stories were happening at the same time.*




Perhaps, but too much of the time they were dropped in and then dwelt on to no real point.  I could have done without most of kephra-lady's reminiscing on her and her peoples' history, for example.  Arguably worse is when you start to consider that some little loose-end background detail is cool enough that it might be spun into a better story than the main storyline - there were a few of those moments for me with the book, as well, most notably the excellent potential of the mercenary "adventurers" the main characters hire at one point.  I've compared the magic-and-tech mix to _Final Fantasy_, but that group also had a strong _Shadowrun_ vibe to me.



> Posted by Pielorinho:
> *The last novel I read by him, the one that won the World Fantasy Award, was downright disappointing: I found none of the characters interesting, and the overall theme of the book was unpleasantly creepy.*




Do you mean _Declare_?  I thought _Declare_ was brilliant, but then I have always been a fan of the "secret history"-type stuff and "wilderness of mirrors" espionage yarns. Your description of _Last Call_ does sound inspiring, though; I'll have to look into finding a copy of it.

Hope this leaves my thoughts a bit clearer to you...


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## Desdichado (Nov 11, 2003)

Celtavian said:
			
		

> I do not believe Tolkien sat down with the intent of sending a message. Tolkien seemed to enjoy writing tales. It was a break from the world for him. He had been doing it for years privately without really thinking that he was going to publish the work. I'm sure you read how _The Hobbit_ came to be when Tolkien wrote down one sentence that came to mind while he was correcting papers. He had a wandering imagination.



I think I understand what you're saying, and at this point I'm at about 95% agreement with you.

Where I'd still disagree with you, I guess, is that I believe many of the elements of Middle-earth society, particularly amongst the hobbits, are more than just story-telling conventions, I believe that that was Tolkien's idealized society.  But, all in all, that's a relatively minor issue.


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## Desdichado (Nov 11, 2003)

Tratyn: I think a lot of this could have been avoided had Mieville not been a very vocal (and quite possibly somewhat arrogant) self-styled literary revolutionary.

It's quite possible that he's not familiar with _Final Fantasy_ -- I am not, for instance, although many of the elements of the setting sound interesting to me, little else about the game series does.  To say he "stole" cactus men, airships and railroads from a genre like anime is unsupportable.

Of course, if you _are_ familiar with genres that include elements like that, and you feel that their presence is distracting (which is what you claim) then I can see where you're coming from.  But, like I said, it's Mieville's own loud trumpetting of his originality that makes that particularly grating, I think, rather than the fact that he did in fact include such elements.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> I do think there's a lot of stuff in there that distracts from the story rather than advances it, I think it's in there just for the purpose of being both "cool", and different from standard fantasy ideas, and I think the "coolness" is lessened by the fact that a lot of this stuff really isn't all that original.



I'm not sure I can argue with this; I just didn't think it detracted from the story, but rather fleshed out the world more fully.  But this seems to be a matter of personal preference.  As I said before, the book completely blew me away when I read it, and is one of the few fantasy novels that I'll proselytize about.  Maybe it helps that I've never played Final Fantasy .

Daniel


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

Oh, and Joshua, if you've not read _PSS _because of Mieville's grating personality, I encourage you to hold your nose and check him out anyway.  He shoulda let someone else trumpet his originality instead of doing it himself, but his originality is definitely trumpetable.

Daniel


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## mmu1 (Nov 11, 2003)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> Tratyn: I think a lot of this could have been avoided had Mieville not been a very vocal (and quite possibly somewhat arrogant) self-styled literary revolutionary.
> 
> It's quite possible that he's not familiar with _Final Fantasy_ -- I am not, for instance, although many of the elements of the setting sound interesting to me, little else about the game series does.  To say he "stole" cactus men, airships and railroads from a genre like anime is unsupportable.
> 
> Of course, if you _are_ familiar with genres that include elements like that, and you feel that their presence is distracting (which is what you claim) then I can see where you're coming from.  But, like I said, it's Mieville's own loud trumpetting of his originality that makes that particularly grating, I think, rather than the fact that he did in fact include such elements.




Like it's been said, Mieville's claim to originality is largely based on making things "weird" for the sake of being weird. As a result, he's a failure (IMO) at creating a belieavable world with a sense of structure and history.

For example, why do the characters of PSS use flintlocks? Why do constructs powered by steam and electricity exist at the same time? Why does he change the spelling of every scientifc discipline by inserting y's in place of e's. (chymistry, etc.) Why are computers gear-driven and programmed with punch-cards in a world that uses electricity and understands the possibility of nuclear fission?

Most of these things are there for no reason other than he's got a fetish for baroque and decaying machinery, and none of it is particularly creative, because it's all style and no substance.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

Heresy, *mmu1*!  

Actually, I'd answer all your questions with, why not?  His world has a different physics than ours; there's no reason to expect that scientific principles which hold true in our world would hold true in his.  I didn't find the book remotely implausible; judging from the many great reviews it's gotten, I'm not alone.

De gustibus, don'tcha know

Daniel


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## Umbran (Nov 11, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> This is what I'm saying when I make statements like "learning biographical information can be interesting." That probably sounds like a dismissal, but it isn't.




No, actually the statement, "I am not interested in Tolkien's intentions -- his intentions have nothing to do with the interpretation of his book," sounds like dismissal.  



> My point is that we cannot evaluate interpretations according to how well they correspond to any particular statements attributed to the writer. We can only evaluate them according to a) how well-supported they are by the text, and b) how interesting they are.




And this is a point I don't agree with.  We can evaluate interpretations according to how well they correspond to author's statements, we just have to keep our brains in gear while doing so.  

We must keep in mind how much we trust the author.  By description, I wouldn't trust what China says about his own work, as he seems to be trying very hard to hype himself.  I'd trust Tolkien more, but only to a point.  From what I've read, Tolkien was a very private man, uncomfortable with the spotlight his work focused upon him.  I'd expect some of his statements to be colored by his modesty and wish to remain off center stage.

The other thing we must remember is that the artist does not see and know everything there is to be seen and known about a work.  The author knows quite a few things, but is also very close tot he work, and has ego wrapped up in the mess.  That can tend to put blinders on.  In addition, the author is not the only participant in the reading.  Art is about both the artist and the audience.

So, the author is not paramount, but neither are they irrelevant.  Heck, I'd say that among the hallmarks of a good author is the ability to engage the reader fully, and still get the intended messages across.  And you cannot tell if that's happening if you ignore whatthe author intended.



> Wrangling, that's what it's all about....




Yea and verily, it is so


----------



## Dimwhit (Nov 11, 2003)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> Heresy, *mmu1*!
> 
> Actually, I'd answer all your questions with, why not? His world has a different physics than ours; there's no reason to expect that scientific principles which hold true in our world would hold true in his. I didn't find the book remotely implausible; judging from the many great reviews it's gotten, I'm not alone.
> 
> ...



Actually, I think mmu1 has a point. If an author is going to create technologies and base them on our perceived physics, then odd discrepancies like that need to be explained using the new physics of that world. If there's a legitimate reason for such an odd mixture of technologies to exist in a world, it needs to be explained. Otherwise, some readers are going to use the laws and physics of their own physical world and conclude that it's just not plausible.

But then, I suppose that's where you get two different kinds of readers. I think all readers will look at a story, even fantasy and scifi, through their own reality. One type of reader, however, will accept a new or skewed reality (common in fantasy/scifi) without question as to the mechanics behind that reality. The second type of reader would like to know why the physical world of a story operates differently than our own. Failure to do so would be considered a serious flaw.

I tend to lean toward the second type of reader. I don't like vastly different realities without an explanation. For example, I'm always bugged by stories that contain a world with a green sky. How did that happen? The only way I can think of to have a green sky is to have a completely different color spectrum than we have in our world. Doesn't seem possible, even for fantasy.

Dang, I'm rambling, and I don't think I even made sense. Is it Friday yet?


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## mmu1 (Nov 11, 2003)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> Heresy, *mmu1*!
> 
> Actually, I'd answer all your questions with, why not?  His world has a different physics than ours; there's no reason to expect that scientific principles which hold true in our world would hold true in his.  I didn't find the book remotely implausible; judging from the many great reviews it's gotten, I'm not alone.
> 
> ...




I'm not saying it's a realism issue, or that I have a problem with fantasy worlds that work by different rules than our own.

I don't like Mieville's writing because his world doesn't really convey the sense of having _any_ rules, other than "what could I think of to make this feel more like _The City of Lost Children_" leavened with a healthy does of politics I won't comment on. 

It's the difference between being a pretentious ass of an "artist" and a true fantasy writer who creates a living, breathing world with a sense of history like Tolkien, Brust or Martin. (Or even Mieville's hero Pullman, as much as I despise him for peddling something as obviuosly ideological and manipulative as the _Amber Spyglass_ series as children's literature.)


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## Dimwhit (Nov 11, 2003)

mmu1 said:
			
		

> I'm not saying it's a realism issue, or that I have a problem with fantasy worlds that work by different rules than our own.
> 
> I don't like Mieville's writing because his world doesn't really convey the sense of having _any_ rules, other than "what could I think of to make this feel more like _The City of Lost Children_" leavened with a helathy does of politics I won't comment on.
> 
> It's the difference between being a pretentious ass of an "artist" and a true fantasy writer who creates a living, breathing world with a sense of history like Tolkien, Brust or Martin. (Or even Mieville's hero Pullman, as much as I despise him for peddling something as obviuosly ideological and manipulative as the _Amber Spyglass_ series as children's literature.)



I agree. I guess that's what was in my head as I wrote my last post, just didn't make it out. If a writer is going to create some new world, I'd like that author to somehow lay out the rules and explain it. I don't have a problem with breaking the rules and creating new ones. I just want it explained. From my last post, I don't mind if a world has a green sky and blue trees, as long as the author tells me why they're like that. If they just want to create a cool world, sense and logic be damned, then that's where they lose me.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

mmu1 said:
			
		

> I'm not saying it's a realism issue, or that I have a problem with fantasy worlds that work by different rules than our own.
> 
> I don't like Mieville's writing because his world doesn't really convey the sense of having _any_ rules, other than "what could I think of to make this feel more like _The City of Lost Children_" leavened with a healthy does of politics I won't comment on.
> 
> It's the difference between being a pretentious ass of an "artist" and a true fantasy writer who creates a living, breathing world with a sense of history like Tolkien, Brust or Martin. (Or even Mieville's hero Pullman, as much as I despise him for peddling something as obviuosly ideological and manipulative as the _Amber Spyglass_ series as children's literature.)



Okay, I think I see the problem: _City of Lost Children_ and _The Amber Spyglass_ are other favorite works of mine. I don't care much about whether the physics of a world are internally consistent, or explained; I don't read fiction for lessons in physics, even in weird physics.

Your comment about the difference between a pretentious ass of an "artist" and a true fantasy writer frankly says more about you than it does about the folks you're talking about. _Ad hominems_ are no way to argue a point.

Daniel


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## mmu1 (Nov 11, 2003)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> Okay, I think I see the problem: _City of Lost Children_ and _The Amber Spyglass_ are other favorite works of mine. I don't care much about whether the physics of a world are internally consistent, or explained; I don't read fiction for lessons in physics, even in weird physics.
> 
> Your comment about the difference between a pretentious ass of an "artist" and a true fantasy writer frankly says more about you than it does about the folks you're talking about. _Ad hominems_ are no way to argue a point.
> 
> Daniel




So why are you resorting to it?

I have no problems with _City of Lost Children_ whatsover, I'm simply saying Mieville is unoriginal in his writing... And anyone who feels the need to promote himself by referring to the work of a veteran writer as a "boil on the ass of fantasy that needs to be lanced" most certainly is a pompous , among other things. It's a statement of fact, not an _Ad Hominem_ attack.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

I didn't resort to _ad hominems, _friend.  Don't say otherwise.

I honestly don't know how anyone who's read Mieville can accuse him of unoriginality.  Of not explaining his world sufficiently, of having a crowded messy novel, sure -- I disagree with those assessments, but I can understand them.  But unoriginal?  He's one of the most original voices out there right now.

And I don't see his criticism of Tolkien as self-promotion at all:  I see it as a passionately-held viewpoint with which I disagree.

Finally, calling someone a line of smiley-faces is the definition of an ad hominem.  But if you're going to play games, I can just ignore you; lemme know if that's your intent.

Daniel


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## Celtavian (Nov 11, 2003)

*re*



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I think I understand what you're saying, and at this point I'm at about 95% agreement with you.




I'm happy I was finally able to convey myself clearly. I really didn't mean to make it seem like _Lord of the Rings_ was some trival work that Tolkien didn't put his heart into.



> Where I'd still disagree with you, I guess, is that I believe many of the elements of Middle-earth society, particularly amongst the hobbits, are more than just story-telling conventions, I believe that that was Tolkien's idealized society.  But, all in all, that's a relatively minor issue.




Tolkien did have a love of the rustic life and a healthy respect for nature. I always felt he modeled the hobbits off an English farming community.


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## Desdichado (Nov 11, 2003)

Dimwhit said:
			
		

> I tend to lean toward the second type of reader. I don't like vastly different realities without an explanation. For example, I'm always bugged by stories that contain a world with a green sky. How did that happen? The only way I can think of to have a green sky is to have a completely different color spectrum than we have in our world. Doesn't seem possible, even for fantasy.



That's actually a fairly easy one.  Mars, for example, has an orangish/reddish sky because of orangish/reddish dust microparticles suspended in the air.  It's not hard to imagine a greenish dust, or even micro-organism with a chlorophyll base occupying the same role.  It might even be a higher level of the atmosphere where they are suspended.


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## mmu1 (Nov 11, 2003)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> I don't care much about whether the physics of a world are internally consistent, or explained; I don't read fiction for lessons in physics, even in weird physics.




Are you being intentionally obtuse? I didn't say _physics_, I said rules. Structure. A logical framework. A sense of cause and effect. It's cheap and easy to fill your work with contradictions to make it _appear_ exotic and complex, but without some sort of background (and there's no reason it can't be a subtle one, I don't read novels for fantasy physics either) it's no more meaningful than having a character behave in bizzare and illogical ways for the sake of style with no explanation of his thought process or motivation.

Without those things, what you've got is a "weird" fairy-tale, something Mieville likes to accuse others of writing.

As for his originality... Creatures that feed on dreams, bird-men, plant-men, cyborgs, people with bug-parts, body-snatchers, a penchant for clockwork - hardly anything special, there. Aside from crisis energy, maybe (although that makes me think of Pratchett, for some reason...), but that gets lost under hundreds of pages of Mieville jerking off on the subjects of rust and oil stains on facotry buildings, seeping down like metaphorical tears shed by the workers trapped there by the evil authoritarian capitalists.


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## mmu1 (Nov 11, 2003)

...


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

mmu1 said:
			
		

> Are you being intentionally obtuse?



Thanks for clarifying your intentions.  Where's that ignore button again?  

Daniel


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

Alright, now I'm digging in my heels.

A number of ya'll are continuing to insist this authorial intention jag. So here goes, one last kick at the can.

I'm arguing that we evaluate interpretations of artistic works according to how well they are supported by the work and how interesting they are.

But let me back up a bit.

Every sensory act we perform involves interpretation. I walk down the street and interpret the pattern of light on my retina to guide my course. Appreciation of an artistic work, therefore necessarily involves interpretation.

Even reading a story for no purpose other than entertainment involves interpretation. Interpreting a story as "pure entertainment" is as much an interpretation as writing an essay on how it reflects the moral struggle of all people. So whenever we read, we create an interpretation (possibly more than one) of the work.

Now we will from time to time encounter differing interpretations of the same work. They may be our own (perhaps created at different times -- say you read LotR at age 12 and then again at age 40 -- you'd probably interpret it differently) or they may be interpretations created by others. Some of these interpretations may contradict each other, and so we will need a way to choose between them if we want to have a consistent interpretation of the work (although certainly a work can contain inconsistent ideas within it -- but IF we want to present a consistent view, we'll have to find a way to choose between interpretations) (let's not get TOO post-modern, here).

How do we do this? I am suggesting that because an interpretation corresponds to a statement by the author is no reason to prefer it over other interpretations. The only meaningful way to determine which interpretations are better than others is by comparing them to the text, and comparing their intellectual content. Better supported ideas, more intelligent and interesting ideas, these are hallmarks of better interpretations.

We can most certainly use statements by the author to GENERATE interpretations. But to use them in choosing between interpretations is faulty logic, because such statements may or may not accurately reflect the text, and correspondence to the text is in all cases more important than correspondence to statements by the author. We may find that some authors are more reliable reporters on their own work, and therefore sometimes shortcut the process by listening to them. But if we were to find a contradiction between an author's statement and the text itself, we would of course prefer the text as a source of authority on itself. So we may as well start with the text, since in all cases we have to go back to it.

Now, if you're interested in unravelling some message the author has incorporated into the work, then sure, you'll probably want to start with the author's statements as to what message they included. This becomes one interpretation -- which may not be the best one. But to study art from the point of view of "how successfully did the author transmit a message" is to study essay-writing.

If _Animal Farm_ is nothing more than a furry version of the creation of Communist Russia, then it's just history. Or, more to the point, if we read it as such, then we're treating it as history and would almost certainly gain more from reading a good history book on the issue, where the names were correct and we weren't getting all caught up animal husbandry or whatnot. If we read it as a work of art, one that instead of having "a message", admits to a myriad of interpretations, ideas about tyranny and privilege and so on, then what we need to do is determine which of those interpretations (assuming some contradict each other) are better -- which, one more time, we do by comparing them to the text and by comparing their intellectual content.

And frankly, an interpretation of _Animal Farm_ to the effect that it is the story of the Russian Revolution doesn't carry a lot of intellectual content. It's not a very interesting thing to say. Even when said by George Orwell.

Now, you may say you're interested in the intention of the author, and that's FINE. In that case, by all means, you'll want to read the author's statements, compare them with the work (just to be sure, of course, or to see HOW they went about trying to do what they wanted to do), maybe read statements by people who knew the author, and so on. This is a fine and noble profession, and it's called biography. It can be fascinating and enlightening and worth spending time on indeed.

I have spent too much time going through the letters and journals of Lord Byron to consider it a worthless pasttime.  

One of the upshots of all this is that statements about a work do not necessarily imply anything about the author. And when Mieville said what he said about Tolkien, I very much took him to mean the work, not the man. He considers LotR to glorify war, to celebrate class injustice and so on. 

Now, I agree that his statements could have been read in either fashion. And as statements on Tolkien's actual beliefs, we of course turn to Tolkien's statements on the subjects at hand. But as interpretations of the book, we can only refute them by offering reasons within the text. Pointing to statements made by Tolkien about the text cannot refute interpretations that are based on the text itself. And frankly, I don't think it's necessary. I think the suggestion that LotR glorifies war is facile and demonstrates a lack of familiarity with the text.

Or possibly, a lack of familiarity with the terms "glorify" and "war".

Whew. Tired now.


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## mmu1 (Nov 11, 2003)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> Thanks for clarifying your intentions.  Where's that ignore button again?
> 
> Daniel




Someone give the man a hand, he might get confused again and put me on his Buddy List...


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## Viking Bastard (Nov 11, 2003)

* Wonders if he's on someone's ignore list *


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> One of the upshots of all this is that statements about a work do not necessarily imply anything about the author. And when Mieville said what he said about Tolkien, I very much took him to mean the work, not the man. He considers LotR to glorify war, to celebrate class injustice and so on.



I only somewhat agree with you, *barsoomcore*, on your overall position, inasmuch as I understand it; I think that the line between biography and litcrit is a little fuzzier than you're making it out to be.  A book is as much a part of the author's life as the author's life is part of the book, and understanding either the life or the book requires interpretation.  While it's possible to look at a book without looking at the rest of the author's life, you'll inevitably get a poorer understanding of the book by doing so.  And while it's possible to look at the rest of an author's life without reading her books, again, you'll get a poorer understanding by doing so.

Sometimes, that poorer understanding is perfectly acceptable.  But that doesn't mean you can sever the one from the other:  the author's book, the author's statement about the book, and the author's other acts in her life are all related.  It's terribly pomo to deny that .  Certainly the position you're taking is one developed in the twentieth century and far from a universal position amongst litcrit folks.

That said, I do agree with you that the author's stated intentions are only part of a full analysis of a book and its context.  An author can create a work that contains themes he's unaware of, can be built on assumptions he didn't realize he was making, can end up being read completely differently from how he intended it to be read.  And that's neither correct nor incorrect; it is, as you suggest, one of a set of interpretations.

Mieville, I agree, was probably operating from that standpoint.  He's a pomo kid himself, and he's probably more interested in the underlying assumptions of Tolkien's world than in Tolkien's letters.  His comments should be evaluated in that light:  rather than looking at the less-interesting question of how Tolkien felt about war, why not look at how war comes across in the books?  Look at how class comes across?  And so forth.

Daniel


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

Not really trying to sever stuff from each other. I've been responding to the notion that Tolkien's statements on intention offer a reasonable refutation of interpretations of his work.

Which is more than enough Latinized verbs for any sentence, even one from such a pomo poser as myself. 

But yeah, of course they're all related. Like I say, biographical info can help us create interpretations. It's often a rich source of interesting and well-supported interpretations.

It's also often a source of vapid and poorly-supported interpretations, which is why we always come back to the text as our only real authority on itself.

Of course in our thinking we're always looping around, dipping into biographical info, reading the text carefully, talking with other people, arguing semi-coherently about things we only vaguely understand (who, me?) and hopefully, managing to keep things clear enough in our head that we can come to some sort of conclusion.

Now we all got a little confused as to what we were actually doing -- some of us were trying to defend Tolkien himself from what we saw as statements about HIM, and others of us (me, anyway) were trying to define, as it were, rules of engagement for discussing statements about HIS WORK.

Are we all friends now?


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

I think we probably agree with each other, *barsoomcore*, and are just using different words to ephasize different parts of the same point.  And natch we're friends ; even if we bitterly disagreed on the point, as long as we do so respectfully there's no reason to get upset over it.

(And I had a pretty thoroughly pomo education myself; given my own leanings, I don't use the term as an insult, any more than I use "geek" as an insult)
Daniel


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

I was deeply traumatized by Jacques Derrida in fourth year. I don't think I'll ever really forgive the French for him.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

darn double post.

I'll just mention that if by "post-modern" we can include Steven Brust's notion of the "Pre-Joycean Fellowship" (which is about the idea that Real Literature and Popular Literature used to be the same thing, until Joyce started writing books you had to be trained how to read, so why don't we start writing books that entertain and can be read by anybody but are still real literary works that deserve to be treated seriously?), then it's a badge I'll happily bear.

And I guess if I were REALLY po-mo I'd just define "po-mo" to mean whatever I wanted it to mean.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 11, 2003)

Oh, Derrida's insane, no doubt about it.  I'd never stoop so low as to call you a poststructuralist, or worse yet, a deconstructionist.  Just pomo.
Daniel


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## barsoomcore (Nov 11, 2003)

Excellent. Then all is forgiven.

Except for the French. I'm still mad at them.


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## Desdichado (Nov 12, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Excellent. Then all is forgiven.
> 
> Except for the French. I'm still mad at them.



Ahh, 'core.  Aren't we all.


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## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 12, 2003)

Hello, 



> Posted by Joshua Dyal:
> *I think a lot of this could have been avoided had Mieville not been a very vocal (and quite possibly somewhat arrogant) self-styled literary revolutionary.*




A lot of this thread could have been avoided, maybe.  I don't know that it would have made his book seem any better to me; I hadn't heard his opinions before I read it, and he isn't ragging on other authors there, beyond the sense of trying to be different for the sake of being different, with its implication that being different from "traditional" fantasy authors is somehow an improvement in and of itself.  



> Posted by Joshua Dyal:
> *To say he "stole" cactus men, airships and railroads from a genre like anime is unsupportable.*




Er, I did say I "strongly doubted" he stole even the cactus men.  And the likes of railroads and airships are downright common in fantastic fiction compared to them.  I suspect it's just an unfortunate coincidence that he chose elements that are prominent in the most popular console RPG series ever produced.  He did seem to be trying for originality, and I suspect he'd have avoided a combination so prominent in something so popular like the plague, if he'd known of it.  



> Posted by Pielorinho:
> *I'm not sure I can argue with this; I just didn't think it detracted from the story, but rather fleshed out the world more fully.*




I don't mind meandering slice-of-life-in-the-setting stuff in general - heck, I'm fine with Douglas Adams and Robert Jordan, where that kind of thing seems like half the books or more, at times.    But when it's stuck in what seems as though it should be a relatively fast-paced mystery/adventure story, I prefer for it to be either relevant to the story at some point, or to be really interesting in its own right.  Too much of the stuff in _Perdido Street Station_ struck me as neither.  



> Potsed by mmu1:
> *I don't like Mieville's writing because his world doesn't really convey the sense of having any rules, other than "what could I think of to make this feel more like The City of Lost Children" leavened with a healthy does of politics I won't comment on.
> 
> It's the difference between being a pretentious ass of an "artist" and a true fantasy writer who creates a living, breathing world with a sense of history like Tolkien, Brust or Martin.*




This "living, breathing world" stuff touches on what I was talking about.  It's a sense that the stuff in the book is interconnected, is there for a reason other than "the author thought it was cool", even if we are not outright told the reason.  The inability to discern _any_ reason for a thing's presence leads to the question, "so what is this even doing in here?", which is not what you want to be thinking in the middle of a story.  And the farther some idea strays from the genre norms, the more likely it is that questions like this will spring to mind - a harsh fact for Mr. Mieville, who is battering at the norms and boundaries at every opportunity, so often that it would be a nigh-impossible task to make _every_ divergence cool enough for us to give it a pass.  



> Posted by Dimwhit:
> *If a writer is going to create some new world, I'd like that author to somehow lay out the rules and explain it.*




Sometimes this is true for me, and sometimes it isn't; it depends on the material.  Little things that are different but not impossible in the real world (say, an extra moon) don't really need much explaining, to me.  Magic can do with a lot of explaining or a little, depending on what styles of it the author has chosen - scientific-like magic tends to need more explanation.  And some things outright shouldn't be explained, like Lovecraftian horror, which loses a lot of power the more knowledge you have of it.  

And of course, explanation doesn't need to be outright exposition.  It's sufficient, and often the better choice, to simply lay out the story elements and let the reader see how the questionable items fit in.  



> Posted by mmu1:
> *It's a statement of fact, not an Ad Hominem attack.*




Well, a statement of opinion, anyway.  Your location says "New York City", so perhaps your patience with pretentious _artistes_ is low for a reason - they're reputedly pretty thick on the ground in your area...  



> Posted by barsoomcore:
> *I'll just mention that if by "post-modern" we can include Steven Brust's notion of the "Pre-Joycean Fellowship" (which is about the idea that Real Literature and Popular Literature used to be the same thing, until Joyce started writing books you had to be trained how to read, so why don't we start writing books that entertain and can be read by anybody but are still real literary works that deserve to be treated seriously?), then it's a badge I'll happily bear.*




I haven't really been following your discussion with Umbran and Celtavian in this thread, but this bit intrigued me.  I haven't read any Brust, either his novels or his criticism, but I have to wonder about the idea of placing the divide between "real literature" and "popular literature" at someplace as specific as a single author.  Hasn't there always been literature, and works in other entertainment forms, put together for artistic reasons in ways that can only fully be appreciated by persons with particular educational backgrounds?  Or does he mean that's when people started getting snooty and superior about it, considering works that can entertain only the educated "better" than those that can entertain anyone?  

The argument can even be made the other way around, with the divide created by the "popular literature" publishers, noting that even people of modest education used to read "real" literature much more commonly than they do now, often with the explicit goal of self-improvement, until low-brow publishers started flooding the market with paid-by-the-word "penny dreadfuls" and their sucessors.

This discussion also brings _The Difference Engine_ to mind again; there's a scene there in which the main character tells T. H. Huxley that his sister is a fan of a particular novelist, and Huxley gives him a glance that says, essentially, no female of the Huxley clan would be caught dead with a popular novel.  Maybe I just have Gibson on the brain - odd, since I haven't been re-reading him lately...


----------



## barsoomcore (Nov 12, 2003)

Tratyn Runewind said:
			
		

> I haven't really been following your discussion with Umbran and Celtavian in this thread, but this bit intrigued me.  I haven't read any Brust, either his novels or his criticism, but I have to wonder about the idea of placing the divide between "real literature" and "popular literature" at someplace as specific as a single author.



Well, if you were going to choose one person, Joyce wouldn't be a bad choice.

That's not to claim one person is responsible for it all, or to say that there's a instant change at a particular moment. And in any event, it's not my statement, it's his -- I just think it's an idea worth considering. Or funny, at any rate.


> _Hasn't there always been literature, and works in other entertainment forms, put together for artistic reasons in ways that can only fully be appreciated by persons with particular educational backgrounds?  Or does he mean that's when people started getting snooty and superior about it, considering works that can entertain only the educated "better" than those that can entertain anyone?_



It's the old "Beethoven and Shakespeare were stars" argument. You can make a pretty good case that popular culture and "high" culture used to at least be closer than they are now. Goethe was considered the most famous man in Europe. Shakespeare was massively popular.

One of the things, in literature at any rate, is that the audience for literature used to have a much, much higher level of average training. That is, at one point, virtually everyone who could read English could read iambic pentameter. Now, there's so many more people who can read, but most of them have never been trained to read complicated structures like, say, sonnets.

And it sure helps to get some training to read that stuff.


> _The argument can even be made the other way around, with the divide created by the "popular literature" publishers, noting that even people of modest education used to read "real" literature much more commonly than they do now, often with the explicit goal of self-improvement, until low-brow publishers started flooding the market with paid-by-the-word "penny dreadfuls" and their sucessors._



Ah, there's quite a little trench war being fought over this very turf. Some research suggests that in the late 1800's lower-class people were overwhelming reading "classic" literature, as you say, with the express purpose of self-improvement, but something seems to happen at the turn of the century.

Is it the flooding of the market with crap? Or is it the refinement of "literature" to a point where nobody can be expected to teach themselves how to read it?

In any event, the idea of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship is meant (by me, at least, but then I'm neither a member nor even friends with one) to evoke the idea that literature can be created to please a broad range of people -- even people without much literary training. That's an idea I support, whether it's Joyce's fault or not.

But blaming things on Joyce is nearly as much fun as blaming them on the French.


----------



## Tratyn Runewind (Nov 12, 2003)

Hello, 

Thanks, barsoomcore.  I'm not at all an English-major sort, and my curiosity about literary trends and such is pretty limited, but this subject did get me wondering.  



> Posted by barsoomcore:
> *Now, there's so many more people who can read, but most of them have never been trained to read complicated structures like, say, sonnets.*




Sonnets are considered complicated now?  Heck, back when I was taking English Lit, the kids loved them just because they were so darned short.    "Ozymandias" is my favorite among those I've run across. 



> Posted by barsoomcore:
> *Ah, there's quite a little trench war being fought over this very turf.*




Interesting.  I wouldn't have thought I'd anticipate an actual ongoing literary debate with an offhand musing over a topic that piqued my curiosity on a gaming message board.  Strange and mysterious are the ways of scholars...  



> Posted by barsoomcore:
> *In any event, the idea of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship is meant (by me, at least, but then I'm neither a member nor even friends with one) to evoke the idea that literature can be created to please a broad range of people -- even people without much literary training. That's an idea I support, whether it's Joyce's fault or not.*




Sounds good to me, too.  One nice benefit of this is that as your own knowledge grows, you can return to items you liked before, enjoying them again for the reasons you liked them originally, and discovering new things in them that you didn't discern earlier, that let you enjoy them even more.  It's happened to me before with many things, ranging from Tolkien to Warner Brothers cartoons.

Thanks again!


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## shilsen (Nov 12, 2003)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> It's the old "Beethoven and Shakespeare were stars" argument. You can make a pretty good case that popular culture and "high" culture used to at least be closer than they are now. Goethe was considered the most famous man in Europe. Shakespeare was massively popular.




Funny you should say that. I was just commenting yesterday to a friend that this is one of the biggest differences between 20th century (continuing into the 21st so far) literature and almost all forms of creative art, and that produced earlier. There's a pretty substantial divide between art created to entertain and art created for "higher" purposes now. Someone like Shakespeare, for example, was writing the same play to be seen by both Elizabeth and the 16 year old apprentice from the cordwainer's guild. Not any more, and I think that's an unfotunate turn of events. 

I think part of it also lies with our definition of culture in hindsight (after all, Shakespeare's plays would not have been considered anywhere close to "high" literature in his period), but that's another story.



> One of the things, in literature at any rate, is that the audience for literature used to have a much, much higher level of average training. That is, at one point, virtually everyone who could read English could read iambic pentameter. Now, there's so many more people who can read, but most of them have never been trained to read complicated structures like, say, sonnets.




Mostly true, but I think that depends more on the audience for specific types of literature, than literature in general. People reading Spenser and Milton probably knew their iambic pentameter (and often Greek and Latin) fairly well. People reading _Tarlton's Jests_ probably did not.



> Ah, there's quite a little trench war being fought over this very turf. Some research suggests that in the late 1800's lower-class people were overwhelming reading "classic" literature, as you say, with the express purpose of self-improvement, but something seems to happen at the turn of the century.
> 
> Is it the flooding of the market with crap? Or is it the refinement of "literature" to a point where nobody can be expected to teach themselves how to read it?




Ivory-tower syndrome. And everyone forgot what Horace said about instruction and entertainment.



> In any event, the idea of the Pre-Joycean Fellowship is meant (by me, at least, but then I'm neither a member nor even friends with one) to evoke the idea that literature can be created to please a broad range of people -- even people without much literary training. That's an idea I support, whether it's Joyce's fault or not.




Join the club.



> But blaming things on Joyce is nearly as much fun as blaming them on the French.




Amen!


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## Pielorinho (Nov 12, 2003)

I just wanted to correct *Dimwhit's *misperception in this thread about Mieville's point.  *Dimwhit *says:



> I didn't agree with him that fantasy and scifi were fundamentally different, but that's ok.



Reread the first two sentences of Mieville's article in the OP:



> Two untrue things are commonly claimed about fantasy. The first is that fantasy and science fiction are fundamentally different genres.



Mieville isn't saying they're different genres; he's saying that's a commonly-claimed untruth about them.  In other words, he agrees with you.

That's all. 
Daniel


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## Dimwhit (Nov 12, 2003)

Pielorinho said:
			
		

> I just wanted to correct *Dimwhit's *misperception in this thread about Mieville's point. *Dimwhit *says:
> 
> 
> Reread the first two sentences of Mieville's article in the OP:
> ...



Well whaddaya know! I read it too fast, I guess. Thanks for the correction!


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## Pielorinho (Nov 12, 2003)

No problem -- I had to read it a couple times myself to make sure I was understanding what he was saying.

Daniel


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## Salthanas (Nov 12, 2003)

For those who might be interested China Melville is hosting a chat on BBC Radio 3 9.30pm tonight  (UK time) on the fantasy/scifi genre. Those who miss it might be able to listen to it later via the BBC website later.

regards Salthanas


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## Desdichado (Nov 12, 2003)

I'll just go on record as saying that I _disagree_ that there isn't a difference between sci-fi and fantasy.  While, certainly, it's not hard to find works that defy easy classification between the two, there are certainly recognizable conventions unique to each, as well as fans of one but not the other.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 12, 2003)

*Joshua*, I'd say there's something of a continuum, with _The Hobbit_ at one end and _Foundation _at the other end.  If my continuum theory is right, Mieville's working smack dab in the murky middle.

Daniel


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## Dimwhit (Nov 12, 2003)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I'll just go on record as saying that I _disagree_ that there isn't a difference between sci-fi and fantasy. While, certainly, it's not hard to find works that defy easy classification between the two, there are certainly recognizable conventions unique to each, as well as fans of one but not the other.



There are absolutely differences. But the question is: are they fundamentally different genres? I don't think they're fundamentally different. They have too much in common. However, like you said, there are also enough differences that it's not difficult to discern between the two.


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## Celtavian (Nov 12, 2003)

*re*



			
				Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I'll just go on record as saying that I _disagree_ that there isn't a difference between sci-fi and fantasy.  While, certainly, it's not hard to find works that defy easy classification between the two, there are certainly recognizable conventions unique to each, as well as fans of one but not the other.




I tend to agree that there are polarized extremes for each that definitely fall into one or the other category. However, in the modern day there is definitely  alot of stories that defy categorization and could just as easily fit in either genre. I have even read some stories that are classified as fantasy, but seem like horror. A recent story in _Realms of Fantasy_ was some strange post-apocalyptic, world destroyed by magic, demons seduced mortal thing. Made me think of a Lovecraft horror story rather than a fantasy story.


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## Pielorinho (Nov 12, 2003)

There's also a lot of room in the middle of the spectrum for wildly dissimilar works.  Perdido Street Station has probably got more in common with punk science fiction than with fantasy, despite having magic in it.  Dragonflight has much more in common with fantasy, despite having no magic in it at all.  And where do we put Lords of Light, or Fred Saberhagan's post-apocalyptic worlds?

Daniel


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## Desdichado (Nov 12, 2003)

A continuum is exactly what I percieve too.

I have to wonder, though -- why is it that fantasy and sci fi are wanted to be lumped together?  Lots of stories (of both genres) share more with action/adventure or horror or some other genre entirely than they do with each other, yet nobody talks of the continuum between sci fi and action/adventure, or horror and fantasy.


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## barsoomcore (Nov 13, 2003)

Joshua Dyal said:
			
		

> I have to wonder, though -- why is it that fantasy and sci fi are wanted to be lumped together?  Lots of stories (of both genres) share more with action/adventure or horror or some other genre entirely than they do with each other, yet nobody talks of the continuum between sci fi and action/adventure, or horror and fantasy.



 Created worlds. Or, more importantly, worlds with place names we don't recognize.

Seriously, it's all about unfamiliar place names. You can write the exact same story twice, set once in Detroit and once in Lankhmar, and the one will be an action/adventure and the other will be fantasy. Set it in a place called something like Betegeuse IV and it will be called science fiction.

I can't think of any other reliable genre indicator, but then I find genre taxonomy an incredibly tedious sort of semantic debate (like semantic debates aren't tedious enough).


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## Desdichado (Nov 13, 2003)

I, on the other hand, am fascinated by taxonomy, both biological and otherwise!  

I think the problem, though, is that people tend to want to neatly compartmentalize things, and with a lot of literature, that just ain't gonna happen unless you're a never-ending genre splitter.

But that's really my point -- sci fi and fantasy exist as genres that are relatively recognizable.  Despite the fact that a lot of stuff defies easy categorization into one of the two genres doesn't invalidate the utility of having the genres named and their conventions relatively well understood.


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