{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4252", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 4252, "subject": "tolkien's successors", "messages": 10, "voices": 8, "first": "2004-11-30T12:46:38+00:00", "last": "2004-12-02T13:59:18+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<20041130204636.5373A37CED@sitemail.everyone.net>", "from": { "name": "turin", "address": "turin at hell.com" }, "date": "2004-11-30T12:46:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with Dan'l in that Tolkien and Wolfe are very different from other fantasy and constitute something outside of the easy categories of science fiction and fantasy we use today. Tolkien and Wolfe are both primarily philosophical authors. I think Wolfe succeeds in some places where Tolkien failed, but Tolkien is not exactly a novelist. He has one true novel, and it is debatably a romance. He was more interested in the construction of artificial languages and prose narratives to explain their cultural evolution. In that he is unique. Wolfe and Tolkien share the idea of imaginary history, Tolkien used this term, because besides thinking of Ea as a possible world he also thought of the the histories of Middle-earth as a possible and this is important, cultural and linguistic, history of this world, specifically a possible narrative and linguistic root of Indo-european culture as I mentioned before. For Tolkien it is an imaginary past and for Wolfe a future. Tolkien in some ways is trying to write about real events which have been mythologized over time. Morgoth did steal the Silmarils but it was communicated to humans through poetry and the imperfections of language. Wolfe seems to be starting with Christians myths and transforming them into future events. Tolkien is making analogues to Christian events. I think the Catholic narrative is stronger in Wolfe, and so it is to a certain degree more allegorical, but it uses more science. What are we to make of techno-myth? I think Wolfe is a better novelist than Tolkien, but as I said Tolkien is not exactly a novelist, but they both do the same work. I do think Wolfe is Tolkien's successor, perhaps, and not his rival, they use similar subject material as well as the same philosophical questions, and I think medieval Catholicism has a lot to do with it. \n\nHowever, and this may seem strange, but I think a lot of *science fiction* is in the category with Wolfe and Tolkien than most *fantasy*, specifically Arthur C Clarke, and anything that has Tielhard de Chardin, Omega Point, Hegelian history, which is a move to a deChristianized godhead, and there is a lot of it. Tolkien did not like to talk about the divine for fear of blasphemy and so direct speculation on Christ is conspicuously absent from his work, even if there is a god. But they both a feeling of cosmic otherness, and an reality which is realer, and more complex than the one we know. Even the heirodoles are the product of evolution. C S Lewis loved Childhood's End. I don't know if Tolkien ever read it, though. When they gave him the grandmaster's Nebula he thanked them but said he had never written any science fiction. Other work includes Dune and The Left Hand of Darkness, these aren't omega point or next step in human evolution novels, they are about world building, which I think is also at the forefront of Tolkien's work. This is a rule Clarke forgot to make about science fiction. Any complex worldbuilding author after 1955, has read The Lord of the Rings.\n\nBesides Clarke, I think a lot of cyberpunk is in the same as Tolkien. What Neal Stephenson is doing in Cryptonomicon and the Baroque Cycle is a kind of imaginary history, he even talks about Lord of the Rings in Cyptonomicon, not that mentioning Tolkien is enough, but he seems to be trying to practice the same restraint Tolkien used. I am less sure about William Gibson's work, but we is a world builder and an omega pointer. The difference between Tolkien and other scifi writers is the difference their ideas of entropy and is that where in Ea there was a glorious past and elves, in the future there will be things like elves, though it may not be all that glorious or good, for humans there is a level of increasing order and complexity even as the universe at large winds down. However, Ea is not alwys winding down at all levels from its creation, but only after Morgoth ruins the spring of Arda, and destroys the lamps. The peak of complexity has been attained and now the world is in decline. \n\nId like people's ideas about who they think is working in the same vein as Tolkien. \n\nEOT;" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f761737041130144145839297@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2004-11-30T14:41:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": "<20041130204636.5373A37CED@sitemail.everyone.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Turin -\n\nWhat a fascinating discussion!\n\nI'd say that Tolkien actually wrote two novels, _tLotR_ and _The Hobbit_,\nthough the latter is in its original intent a novel for children. (I exclude\n_Mr. Bliss_ and _Roverandom_, like \"Farmer Giles\" and \"Smith\" and all,\nfor reasons of length.)\n\nI'm also fascinated by the idea of Wolfe as the heir to Tolkien - certainly \nthere is a lot of JRRT \"influence,\" though well mulched rather than in\novert homage and reference, in GW's work. And certainly they have \nsome themes in common - in particular, they both put a lot of energy into \nthe question of what it means to live a virtuous life in a radically Fallen \nworld. \n\nRegarding Clarke et al - you might like the Panshins' book _World \nBeyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence_,\nwhich is a fairly intensive (but quite readable) study of the mystical\nimpulse in SF. \n\nYes, the Catholic narrative is ... I won't say \"stronger,\" but \"more\novert\" in Wolfe than in Tolkien. The latter hides a lot of crypto-\nCatholicism in his work; for example, the day he chooses as the\nNew Year for the Fourth Age is the Feast of the Annunciation -\nwhich was long celebrated in Britain as the start of the New Year, \nprobably as a survival of the equinoctial festival of Beltane. And\nElbereth seems to be intended as an \"image\" of the BVM.\n\nI don't know whether JRRT read _Childhood's End_ either, but I\nrecall in one of the late _Letters_ he mentions that he'd been\nreading a lot of \"American science fiction\" and I _believe_ he\nmentions a particular fondness for Asimov ... a writer who doesn't\nreally figure into the \"transcendence\" thematic the way Clarke,\nHerbert, and Heinlein do. (I exclude Le Guin, though I love her\nwork dearly, from this because her mysticism - if it even _is_ \nmysticism - is of another tradition entirely.)\n\nPerhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think the hierodules are \"the product\nof evolution,\" at least as a purely \"natural\" process - don't we learn \nthat they were (to use David Brin's term) \"uplifted\" by humans?\n\nI'd love to know how you see cyberpunk as \"in the same [vein?] as\nTolkien.\" If there is transcendence in most cp work, it is purely a\nmachine transcendence, a Godel-Turing transcendence. (Perhaps \nthe most important exception is Sterling's little chiller \"Swarm,\"\nabout a species that -- but that's a serious spoiler.) \n\nRegarding Ea and entropy, I don't think JRRT would think of \n\"entropy\" or \"winding down\" at all. Rather, he would speak in\nterms of Ea as having experienced the Fall; in a Fallen world,\nall things come in time to ruin unless the Creator intervenes (in\nthe form of the Savior)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Id like people's ideas about who they think is working in the\nsame vein as Tolkien." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Strangely, the first name that comes to my mind is Tim Powers.\nTim builds complex historical models and sets novels in and around \nthem. His method is fascinating: he reads a lot of history and finds \nthings that puzzle him, then tries to find an explanation for them. \nFor example, his novel _Declare_ is rooted in a detailed study of \nthe British and Soviet secret services in WW2 and after, but to make \nsense of their behavior (and especially of Kim Philby and his even \nstranger father), he winds up invoking something mysterious and \ndeadly on Mount Ararat. Similarly, _Last Call_ asks why Bugsy \nSiegel built his palace in the desert; change the word \"desert\" \nto \"wasteland\" and you find yourself involved with the Fisher-king, \nwhich brings in the Tarot, and thus the mystical game of poker... \nThe point being, most of Tim's novels are ... not even \"alternate\" \nhistories, so much as _secret_ histories, quite rich with meaning.\n\nDan Simmons, at least in his \"Hyperion Cantos,\" mines a future \nquite as rich as that of Wolfe's Briah cycle. I've only read the\nset of four books once and don't feel qualified to say much more,\nbut I think that he's operating in Tolkien-ish territory here - and\nin Tim Powers territory in _Carrion Comfort_. (Simmons is not as \ngood a writer as Tolkien, Wolfe, or Powers, though; I was turned \noff by one of his novels in just a few pages, because the narrator \nkept telling us that he could tell how bad a place Calcutta was the \nminute he set foot there, thus reducing the book to an idiot plot - \n\"If you know it's so bad, schmendrick, why don't you just hop the \nnext flight out?\")\n\nLe Guin does not (to my mind) usually run to the level of \nhistorical worldbuildilng of Tolkien et al, but there are one\nand a half exceptions. \n\nThe one clear exception is _Always Coming Home_, which I once \ndescribed this way: \"Imagine if, instead of _The Lord of the Rings_, \nTolkien had published a hugely expanded set of appendices, \nwith the text of _The Hobbit_ interspersed among them in several \nparts, and then summed up the War of the Ring in a memo near \nthe end.\" There is absolutely no narrative reason why _ACH_ \nshould work, but it does.\n\nThe half-exception is the Earthsea cycle, whose history \ndeveloped long after the world itself was fairly solid in its \ncreator's mind; part of the _Tales of Earthsea_ is devoted to \nstories explaining how various aspects of Archipelagan culture \ngot to be the way it was at the beginning of the original trilogy.\n\nCheers,\n\n--Dan'l" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\n\"Saddam would still be in power if he were the President\nof the United States, and the world would be a lot better off.\"\n -- The Forty-Third President, 10/8/04" } ] }, { "message_id": "<20041201023233.36311.qmail@web14721.mail.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Maru", "address": "marudubshinki at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2004-11-30T18:32:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": "<1f761737041130144145839297@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He was mining Kevin Kelly's book 'Out of Control'. It's a bit\ndated, but still well-worth the read. So he is not completely\noriginating all this, but his job of integrating and warping it\nall is still marvelous. It is a shame that his Hyperion universe\nis so small- aside from the 'Amoiete Helix' it contains his best\nshort stories (the short story in 'Prayers to broken stones' is\non par with Wolfe, IMHO) and books. None of his other stuff\nmatches up.\nIt seems to be a common tragedy to SF that some of its best\nauthors produce one, and only one, really good work.\nAnyone know why?\n~Maru\nI'd put Wolfe in the above category too. I haven't noticed the\nrichness of tBotNS in the long sun, short sun, wizard-knight or\ncerberus novels at all." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nDan Simmons, at least in his \"Hyperion Cantos,\" mines a future \nquite as rich as that of Wolfe's Briah cycle. I've only read\nthe\nset of four books once and don't feel qualified to say much\nmore,\nbut I think that he's operating in Tolkien-ish territory here -\nand\nin Tim Powers territory in _Carrion Comfort_. (Simmons is not\nas \ngood a writer as Tolkien, Wolfe, or Powers, though; I was\nturned \noff by one of his novels in just a few pages, because the\nnarrator \nkept telling us that he could tell how bad a place Calcutta was\nthe \nminute he set foot there, thus reducing the book to an idiot\nplot - \n\"If you know it's so bad, schmendrick, why don't you just hop\nthe \nnext flight out?\")" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Eric Mattingly", "address": "eric_mattingly at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2004-11-30T20:51:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Wolfe and Catholicism", "in_reply_to": "<20041130204636.5373A37CED@sitemail.everyone.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not to switch subjects too quickly, but I think that an interesting line of \ndiscussion has been broached. But on the whole successor thing-- I think \nthat we have to see Wolfe as building on Tolkien's work rather than \nmirroring it precisely. Both are indeed philosophical writers, but I \nhonestly find more philosophical depth and-- even more importantly-- \nquestioning in Wolfe. And here is one major reason I see that. Whereas \nTolkien is interested in establishing a history, Wolfe is interested in \nestablishing a path of evolution (as has been said already in our \ndiscussion). Where the former wants to establish a mythology, the latter \nwants to move beyond mythology into blessedness. Wolfe's use of mythology \nthen (especially in the Book of the New Sun and Urth of the. . .) has some \nuncanny (and conscious I would argue) parallels with the ascent to bliss in \ngnostic mythology (this element in the New Sun series deserves a thread of \nits own). The dynamic at the heart of the New Sun, then, is one of \nevolution at the core-- the universe is being conformed slowly and with \nepochal carefulness into an eventual direct communication with the \nPancreator (Ein Sof?).\n\nThis leads directly to the question of Wolfe's religious heritage in his own \nwork. Textually speaking, I believe that trying to apply the term \n\"christian\" to something is moot and bound to fail. Rather, we cannot truly \ndefine Christianity unless it is a kind of mysticism that is beyond language \nor a kind of experience at the root of action (a la Kierkegaard) and which \nalso resists definition. Rather, we get a mixture of acceptance and \nreaction to certain ideas that arise from Christianity and which are \npatterned in certain ways. The end result of all my babble is to say that I \nbelieve we can call Wolfe more readily a \"Catholic\" writer than we can a \n\"Christian writer.\" My own beliefs lead me to question whether or not \n\"christianity\" even exists, but certainly I can't see how it becomes \nembodied textually. As a \"Catholic\", then, I think it is clear that he is \nneither doctrinaire or even orthodox. At the base of the Book of the New \nSun is an idea of evolution that (as I have already said) is gnostic-- but \nit is also a variety of a famous almost-heresy called the \"apocatastasis\" \n(restoration) wherein all souls must eventually through the suffering \ninherent in their own actions be restored to grace. All will eventually \nchoose the \"good\" once the \"good\" is known. That includes the damned and \nsatan.\n\nAnyway, I apologize for that mess. That's what you get for thinking as you \nwrite :). I hope that it isn't total tripe.\n\neric\n\n\n\nA heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.\n\n-- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f76173704120109513c1f06d9@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2004-12-01T09:51:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Wolfe and Catholicism", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Eric -\n\nas one of the list's token Catholics I tend to agree with you that\n\"Christianity doesn't exist.\" More accurately (and I think this is\npretty close to what Kierkegaard was gatting at) you can't, in\nthis life, \"be a Christian,\" you can only \"be in the process of\nbecoming a Christian\" - but then that makes the referent of the\nword \"Christian\" an ideal rather than a real object, and so the\nword \"Christian\" in the context of the \"real\" world (or the \"world\nthat is the case\") becomes someone who \"is in the process of \nbecoming\" a Christian-in-the-ideal-sense.\n\nGiven how many blatant references (analogies, allegories,\nwhatever) to the Christ-story Wolfe packs into his stories, and\nespecially the Solar stories, it's difficult, not to say somewhat\nobtuse, _not_ to read them as in-some-sense \"Christian\" \nstories. The difficulty arises when someone tries to define just\n_how_, especially when one tries to make too simple of a call\n-- Wolfe himself has repeatedly denied that any of his heroes\nare \"Christ figures,\" by which he appears to mean nothing more\nthan that he would not want anyone to confuse them with the\nunique historical Messianic Person; I think that it's reasonable\nto call Severian, Silk, and the Narrator \"Christ figures\" in the\nsame sense that Moses, Samuel, and Samson all \"figure\"\nChrist in traditional (Catholic) readings of the Old Testament.\n\n--Dan'l" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\n\"Saddam would still be in power if he were the President\nof the United States, and the world would be a lot better off.\"\n -- The Forty-Third President, 10/8/04" } ] }, { "message_id": "<02e301c4d817$05a8c310$4c1e4b0a@vcorp.ad.vrsn.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "thewynns at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2004-12-01T18:31:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": "<20041130204636.5373A37CED@sitemail.everyone.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'd like people's ideas about who they think is\nworking in the same vein as Tolkien." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Isn't this a bit like asking of the mystery genre, \"who is working in the\nsame vein as Arthur Conan Doyle?\"\n\nIt seems to me that the only current fantasy writers not furthering the\nschool of Tolkien are placed in the Horror genre.\n\nSurely all fantasy writers today must say -with apologies to Nixon- \"We're\nall Tolkienites now\".\n\n~ Crush" } ] }, { "message_id": "<20041202031334.31572.qmail@web50306.mail.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Nathan Spears", "address": "spearofsolomon at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2004-12-01T19:13:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": "<02e301c4d817$05a8c310$4c1e4b0a@vcorp.ad.vrsn.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think what he was getting at was that Tolkien had broken some fundamentally new\nfantastic ground, in a unique way. He created a world from scratch; even though it\nwas informed and influenced from many sources, it's still infused with its own life.\n I think the question was more along the lines of, \"Who is being earth-shatteringly\nand uncompromisingly original?\"\n\nOne of the things I love about Tolkien is that he doesn't have an agenda; I don't\nthink he's even as interested in searching for truth in some grand sense as Wolfe\nis. You can try to read that into his work, but I think that he tries to tell a\npowerful story, and that a side-effect of a powerful story is that it has to be\ntrue, or have enough truth to resonate with us.\n\nLet me clarify a little bit: Tolkien deliberately includes \"true\" things like\nlinguistic evolution in LotR and the history of Middle Earth, but I don't feel the\nsame applies to larger themes like his beliefs about God and salvation, or the\nbeauty of creation, or the bittersweet nature of life for men on earth. I feel that\nthese themes infuse his work because he believes them so deeply that they can't help\nbut surface in his writing; this differs from the tone of many modern writers of\nfantasy who seem to be aiming to entertain and teach us, rather than to tell us a\nstory that happens to resonate with what they believe.\n\nI don't know if anyone is trying to do that anymore. I get a sense of that from\nLeGuin, but she definitely picks her topics deliberately. I don't mind it because\nshe is so intelligent and such a wonderful storyteller." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "--- James Wynn wrote:\nI'd like people's ideas about who they think is\nworking in the same vein as Tolkien." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Isn't this a bit like asking of the mystery genre, \"who is working in the\nsame vein as Arthur Conan Doyle?\"\n\nIt seems to me that the only current fantasy writers not furthering the\nschool of Tolkien are placed in the Horror genre.\n\nSurely all fantasy writers today must say -with apologies to Nixon- \"We're\nall Tolkienites now\".\n\n~ Crush\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f76173704120209171a00393f@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2004-12-02T09:17:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": "<20041202031334.31572.qmail@web50306.mail.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 19:13:34 -0800 (PST), Nathan Spears\n wrote:\n[... T]his differs from the tone of many modern writers of fantasy\nwho seem to be aiming to entertain and teach us, rather than to tell \nus a story that happens to resonate with what they believe.\n\nI don't know if anyone is trying to do that anymore. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, you mentioned Le Guin, and I agree - she is not as consciously\nmanipulating her material as it at some times seems. Yes, there is\nsome of that, but (for example) she discovered only in retrospect how\nimportant the images of trees and walls were to her.\n\nI think that this is true even of the most \"deliberate\" fantasists. For\nexample, Delany certainly deliberately inserts his political, sexual,\nand postmodern-philosophical-linguistic concerns into his work. \nBut I doubt very much that he realized until at least the novel\n_Neveryona_ how important the image of cities was to him; he\nclearly loves cities, and his best novels are full of stuff about how\nto get along in and enjoy cities.\n\nStephen King, at the top of his game (which is all too rare), is \nfull of a kind of faith in the basic goodness of the universe - no, \n_really_ - that I don't believe he puts there consciously. Hell, half\nof the problem with King is that he doesn't do enough consciously;\nhe sits down at the typer and is as surprised at what comes out as\nthe readers are, then doesn't revise or cut it anywhere near enough,\nthree quarters of the time. He launches into a novel not knowing\nwhere he will come out, and when he gets to the far side he's\nunwilling to change the course he's followed, thus resulting in\nnovels with some of the most unsatisfying endings imaginable,\ndammit.\n\nH'mmm. In general, though, you're right. Most of the major\nfantasists running around loose today are extremely self\nconscious about what forms and informs the meaning-structure\nof their work..." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\nFreedom has no barcode.\n --J.G. Ballard" } ] }, { "message_id": "<5.2.1.1.0.20041202211734.02c8ae30@pop.ntlworld.com>", "from": { "name": "Matthew Malthouse", "address": "matthew.malthouse at ntlworld.com" }, "date": "2004-12-02T13:24:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": "<02e301c4d817$05a8c310$4c1e4b0a@vcorp.ad.vrsn.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 02:31 02/12/2004, Crush wrote:\nSurely all fantasy writers today must say -with apologies to Nixon- \"We're\nall Tolkienites now\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "To my mind the \"Like Tolkien\" tag is a bad reviewers tag.\n\nThere aren't any writers like Tolkien. Oh, there are some who on their own \nmerits are just as good or perhaps better if one is prepared to compare \napples and oranges. But no one is doing precisely what Tolkein did and it's \npossible that because he did it already no one will.\n\nI don't think it's to be disputed that Tolkien is an irradicable influence \non contemporary writers and to that degree they might all be Tolkienites.\n\nMatthew " } ] }, { "message_id": "<01C4D890.4DD03F00.blindenmuth@jkharris.com>", "from": { "name": "Brian Lindenmuth", "address": "blindenmuth at jkharris.com" }, "date": "2004-12-02T13:59:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) tolkien's successors", "in_reply_to": "<5.2.1.1.0.20041202211734.02c8ae30@pop.ntlworld.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have been a lurking for a long time now and would like to contribute more \nbut I just cant seem to make the time. Any way, I think that you can \ncompare Tolkien's influence: good, bad, intended, unintended, forced on him \nby critics and fans and detractors alike to someone else in a diffrent \nentertainment field altogether. Bob Dylan.\n\nWhen Dylan came on the scene his impact was so tremendous that he himself \nalmost was crushed under the weight of it.\n\nBut more importantly, because Dylan's shadow loomed so large over the music \nlandscape everyone from that point forward had to react to him in some way \nto him, whether in a positive or a negitave way. He became the base line. \n\nCritics for years after would say things like \"The next Dylan...\" or \n\"Dylanesque...\" or \"Wanna-be Dylan...\" and invariably musicians were \ncrushed under this weight. But there were some artists who persevered and \nwent on to claim there own legitimate place in the rock canon and make \nthere own music and create their own vision. Springsteen might just be the \nbest example of this.\n\nI apologize for my first post ever not metioning Wolfe (well I guess I just \ndid), but I did see some comparisons and just wanted to share.\n\n\n\n-----Original Message-----\nFrom:\tMatthew Malthouse [SMTP:matthew.malthouse at ntlworld.com]\nSent:\tThursday, December 02, 2004 4:24 PM\nTo:\tJames Wynn; The Urth Mailing List\nSubject:\tRe: (urth) tolkien's successors" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 02:31 02/12/2004, Crush wrote:\nSurely all fantasy writers today must say -with apologies to Nixon- \"We're\nall Tolkienites now\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "To my mind the \"Like Tolkien\" tag is a bad reviewers tag.\n\nThere aren't any writers like Tolkien. Oh, there are some who on their own \nmerits are just as good or perhaps better if one is prepared to compare\napples and oranges. But no one is doing precisely what Tolkein did and it's \npossible that because he did it already no one will.\n\nI don't think it's to be disputed that Tolkien is an irradicable influence\non contemporary writers and to that degree they might all be Tolkienites.\n\nMatthew" } ] } ] }