Subject: (urth) tolkien's successors

From: turin <turin at hell.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 12:46:38 +0000

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.  

However, 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.

Besides 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.  

Id like people's ideas about who they think is working in the same vein as Tolkien.  

EOT;

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:41:41 +0000

Turin -

What a fascinating discussion!

I'd say that Tolkien actually wrote two novels, _tLotR_ and _The Hobbit_,
though the latter is in its original intent a novel for children. (I exclude
_Mr. Bliss_ and _Roverandom_, like "Farmer Giles" and "Smith" and all,
for reasons of length.)

I'm also fascinated by the idea of Wolfe as the heir to Tolkien - certainly 
there is a lot of JRRT "influence," though well mulched rather than in
overt homage and reference, in GW's work. And certainly they have 
some themes in common - in particular, they both put a lot of energy into 
the question of what it means to live a virtuous life in a radically Fallen 
world. 

Regarding Clarke et al - you might like the Panshins' book _World 
Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence_,
which is a fairly intensive (but quite readable) study of the mystical
impulse in SF. 

Yes, the Catholic narrative is ... I won't say "stronger," but "more
overt" in Wolfe than in Tolkien. The latter hides a lot of crypto-
Catholicism in his work; for example, the day he chooses as the
New Year for the Fourth Age is the Feast of the Annunciation -
which was long celebrated in Britain as the start of the New Year, 
probably as a survival of the equinoctial festival of Beltane. And
Elbereth seems to be intended as an "image" of the BVM.

I don't know whether JRRT read _Childhood's End_ either, but I
recall in one of the late _Letters_ he mentions that he'd been
reading a lot of "American science fiction" and I _believe_ he
mentions a particular fondness for Asimov ... a writer who doesn't
really figure into the "transcendence" thematic the way Clarke,
Herbert, and Heinlein do. (I exclude Le Guin, though I love her
work dearly, from this because her mysticism - if it even _is_ 
mysticism - is of another tradition entirely.)

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think the hierodules are "the product
of evolution," at least as a purely "natural" process - don't we learn 
that they were (to use David Brin's term) "uplifted" by humans?

I'd love to know how you see cyberpunk as "in the same [vein?] as
Tolkien." If there is transcendence in most cp work, it is purely a
machine transcendence, a Godel-Turing transcendence. (Perhaps 
the most important exception is Sterling's little chiller "Swarm,"
about a species that -- but that's a serious spoiler.) 

Regarding Ea and entropy, I don't think JRRT would think of 
"entropy" or "winding down" at all. Rather, he would speak in
terms of Ea as having experienced the Fall; in a Fallen world,
all things come in time to ruin unless the Creator intervenes (in
the form of the Savior).

> Id like people's ideas about who they think is working in the

Strangely, the first name that comes to my mind is Tim Powers.
Tim builds complex historical models and sets novels in and around 
them. His method is fascinating: he reads a lot of history and finds 
things that puzzle him, then tries to find an explanation for them. 
For example, his novel _Declare_ is rooted in a detailed study of 
the British and Soviet secret services in WW2 and after, but to make 
sense of their behavior (and especially of Kim Philby and his even 
stranger father), he winds up invoking something mysterious and 
deadly on Mount Ararat. Similarly, _Last Call_  asks why Bugsy 
Siegel built his palace in the desert; change the word "desert" 
to "wasteland" and you find yourself involved with the Fisher-king, 
which brings in the Tarot, and thus the mystical game of poker... 
The point being, most of Tim's novels are ... not even "alternate" 
histories, so much as _secret_ histories, quite rich with meaning.

Dan Simmons, at least in his "Hyperion Cantos," mines a future 
quite as rich as that of Wolfe's Briah cycle. I've only read the
set of four books once and don't feel qualified to say much more,
but I think that he's operating in Tolkien-ish territory here - and
in Tim Powers territory in _Carrion Comfort_. (Simmons is not as 
good a writer as Tolkien, Wolfe, or Powers, though; I was turned 
off by one of his novels in just a few pages, because the narrator 
kept telling us that he could tell how bad a place Calcutta was the 
minute he set foot there, thus reducing the book to an idiot plot - 
"If you know it's so bad, schmendrick, why don't you just hop the 
next flight out?")

Le Guin does not (to my mind) usually run to the level of 
historical worldbuildilng of Tolkien et al, but there are one
and a half exceptions. 

The one clear exception is _Always Coming Home_, which I once 
described this way: "Imagine if, instead of _The Lord of the Rings_, 
Tolkien had published a hugely expanded set of appendices, 
with the text of _The Hobbit_ interspersed among them in several 
parts, and then summed up the War of the Ring in a memo near 
the end." There is absolutely no narrative reason why _ACH_ 
should work, but it does.

The half-exception is the Earthsea cycle, whose history 
developed long after the world itself was fairly solid in its 
creator's mind; part of the _Tales of Earthsea_ is  devoted to 
stories explaining how various aspects of Archipelagan culture 
got to be the way it was at the beginning of the original trilogy.

Cheers,

--Dan'l
-- 
www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
"Saddam would still be in power if he were the President
of the United States, and the world would be a lot better off."
     -- The Forty-Third President, 10/8/04

---

From: Maru <marudubshinki at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 18:32:35 +0000

He was mining Kevin Kelly's book 'Out of Control'. It's a bit
dated, but still well-worth the read.  So he is not completely
originating all this, but his job of integrating and warping it
all is still marvelous.  It is a shame that his Hyperion universe
is so small- aside from the 'Amoiete Helix' it contains his best
short stories (the short story in 'Prayers to broken stones' is
on par with Wolfe, IMHO) and books. None of his other stuff
matches up.
It seems to be a common tragedy to SF that some of its best
authors produce one, and only one, really good work.
Anyone know why?
~Maru
I'd put Wolfe in the above category too. I haven't noticed the
richness of tBotNS in the long sun, short sun, wizard-knight or
cerberus novels at all.

> "If you know it's so bad, schmendrick, why don't you just hop

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From: Eric Mattingly <eric_mattingly at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:51:11 +0000

Not to switch subjects too quickly, but I think that an interesting line of 
discussion has been broached.  But on the whole successor thing-- I think 
that we have to see Wolfe as building on Tolkien's work rather than 
mirroring it precisely.  Both are indeed philosophical writers, but I 
honestly find more philosophical depth and-- even more importantly-- 
questioning in Wolfe.  And here is one major reason I see that.  Whereas 
Tolkien is interested in establishing a history, Wolfe is interested in 
establishing a path of evolution (as has been said already in our 
discussion).  Where the former wants to establish a mythology, the latter 
wants to move beyond mythology into blessedness.  Wolfe's use of mythology 
then (especially in the Book of the New Sun and Urth of the. . .) has some 
uncanny (and conscious I would argue) parallels with the ascent to bliss in 
gnostic mythology (this element in the New Sun series deserves a thread of 
its own).  The dynamic at the heart of the New Sun, then, is one of 
evolution at the core-- the universe is being conformed slowly and with 
epochal carefulness into an eventual direct communication with the 
Pancreator (Ein Sof?).

This leads directly to the question of Wolfe's religious heritage in his own 
work.  Textually speaking, I believe that trying to apply the term 
"christian" to something is moot and bound to fail.  Rather, we cannot truly 
define Christianity unless it is a kind of mysticism that is beyond language 
or a kind of experience at the root of action (a la Kierkegaard) and which 
also resists definition.  Rather, we get a mixture of acceptance and 
reaction to certain ideas that arise from Christianity and which are 
patterned in certain ways.  The end result of all my babble is to say that I 
believe we can call Wolfe more readily a "Catholic" writer than we can a 
"Christian writer."  My own beliefs lead me to question whether or not 
"christianity" even exists, but certainly I can't see how it becomes 
embodied textually.  As a "Catholic", then, I think it is clear that he is 
neither doctrinaire or even orthodox.  At the base of the Book of the New 
Sun is an idea of evolution that (as I have already said) is gnostic-- but 
it is also a variety of a famous almost-heresy called the "apocatastasis" 
(restoration) wherein all souls must eventually through the suffering 
inherent in their own actions be restored to grace.  All will eventually 
choose the "good" once the "good" is known.  That includes the damned and 
satan.

Anyway, I apologize for that mess.  That's what you get for thinking as you 
write :).  I hope that it isn't total tripe.

eric

A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes.

-- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 09:51:28 +0000

Eric -

as one of the list's token Catholics I tend to agree with you that
"Christianity doesn't exist." More accurately (and I think this is
pretty close to what Kierkegaard was gatting at) you can't, in
this life, "be a Christian," you can only "be in the process of
becoming a Christian" - but then that makes the referent of the
word "Christian" an ideal rather than a real object, and so the
word "Christian" in the context of the "real" world (or the "world
that is the case") becomes someone who "is in the process of 
becoming" a Christian-in-the-ideal-sense.

Given how many blatant references (analogies, allegories,
whatever) to the Christ-story Wolfe packs into his stories, and
especially the Solar stories, it's difficult, not to say somewhat
obtuse, _not_ to read them as in-some-sense "Christian" 
stories. The difficulty arises when someone tries to define just
_how_, especially when one tries to make too simple of a call
-- Wolfe himself has repeatedly denied that any of his heroes
are "Christ figures," by which he appears to mean nothing more
than that he would not want anyone to confuse them with the
unique historical Messianic Person; I think that it's reasonable
to call Severian, Silk, and the Narrator "Christ figures" in the
same sense that Moses, Samuel, and Samson all "figure"
Christ in traditional (Catholic) readings of the Old Testament.

--Dan'l

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 18:31:29 +0000

>I'd like people's ideas about who they think is
>working in the same vein as Tolkien.

Isn't this a bit like asking of the mystery genre, "who is working in the
same vein as Arthur Conan Doyle?"

It seems to me that the only current fantasy writers not furthering the
school of Tolkien are placed in the Horror genre.

Surely all fantasy writers today must say -with apologies to Nixon- "We're
all Tolkienites now".

~ Crush

---

From: Nathan Spears <spearofsolomon at yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 01 Dec 2004 19:13:36 +0000

I think what he was getting at was that Tolkien had broken some fundamentally new
fantastic ground, in a unique way.  He created a world from scratch; even though it
was informed and influenced from many sources, it's still infused with its own life.
 I think the question was more along the lines of, "Who is being earth-shatteringly
and uncompromisingly original?"

One of the things I love about Tolkien is that he doesn't have an agenda; I don't
think he's even as interested in searching for truth in some grand sense as Wolfe
is.  You can try to read that into his work, but I think that he tries to tell a
powerful story, and that a side-effect of a powerful story is that it has to be
true, or have enough truth to resonate with us.

Let me clarify a little bit:  Tolkien deliberately includes "true" things like
linguistic evolution in LotR and the history of Middle Earth, but I don't feel the
same applies to larger themes like his beliefs about God and salvation, or the
beauty of creation, or the bittersweet nature of life for men on earth.  I feel that
these themes infuse his work because he believes them so deeply that they can't help
but surface in his writing; this differs from the tone of many modern writers of
fantasy who seem to be aiming to entertain and teach us, rather than to tell us a
story that happens to resonate with what they believe.

I don't know if anyone is trying to do that anymore.  I get a sense of that from
LeGuin, but she definitely picks her topics deliberately.  I don't mind it because
she is so intelligent and such a wonderful storyteller.

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 09:17:36 +0000

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 19:13:34 -0800 (PST), Nathan Spears
<spearofsolomon at yahoo.com> wrote:
> [... T]his differs from the tone of many modern writers of fantasy
> who seem to be aiming to entertain and teach us, rather than to tell 
> us a story that happens to resonate with what they believe.
> 
> I don't know if anyone is trying to do that anymore.  

Well, you mentioned Le Guin, and I agree - she is not as consciously
manipulating her material as it at some times seems. Yes, there is
some of that, but (for example) she discovered only in retrospect how
important the images of trees and walls were to her.

I think that this is true even of the most "deliberate" fantasists. For
example, Delany certainly deliberately inserts his political, sexual,
and postmodern-philosophical-linguistic concerns into his work. 
But I doubt very much that he realized until at least the novel
_Neveryona_ how important the image of cities was to him; he
clearly loves cities, and his best novels are full of stuff about how
to get along in and enjoy cities.

Stephen King, at the top of his game (which is all too rare), is 
full of a kind of faith in the basic goodness of the universe - no, 
_really_ - that I don't believe he puts there consciously. Hell, half
of the problem with King is that he doesn't do enough consciously;
he sits down at the typer and is as surprised at what comes out as
the readers are, then doesn't revise or cut it anywhere near enough,
three quarters of the time. He launches into a novel not knowing
where he will come out, and when he gets to the far side he's
unwilling to change the course he's followed, thus resulting in
novels with some of the most unsatisfying endings imaginable,
dammit.

H'mmm. In general, though, you're right. Most of the major
fantasists running around loose today are extremely self
conscious about what forms and informs the meaning-structure
of their work...

Freedom has no barcode.
     --J.G. Ballard

---

From: Matthew Malthouse <matthew.malthouse at ntlworld.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:24:40 +0000

>Surely all fantasy writers today must say -with apologies to Nixon- "We're

To my mind the "Like Tolkien" tag is a bad reviewers tag.

There aren't any writers like Tolkien.  Oh, there are some who on their own 
merits are just as good or perhaps better if one is prepared to compare 
apples and oranges. But no one is doing precisely what Tolkein did and it's 
possible that because he did it already no one will.

I don't think it's to be disputed that Tolkien is an irradicable influence 
on contemporary writers and to that degree they might all be Tolkienites.

Matthew

---

From: Brian Lindenmuth <blindenmuth at jkharris.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:59:18 +0000

I have been a lurking for a long time now and would like to contribute more 
but I just cant seem to make the time.  Any way, I think that you can 
compare Tolkien's influence: good, bad, intended, unintended, forced on him 
by critics and fans and detractors alike to someone else in a diffrent 
entertainment field altogether.  Bob Dylan.

When Dylan came on the scene his impact was so tremendous that he himself 
almost was crushed under the weight of it.

But more importantly, because Dylan's shadow loomed so large over the music 
landscape everyone from that point forward had to react to him in some way 
to him, whether in a positive or a negitave way.  He became the base line. 

Critics for years after would say things like "The next Dylan..." or 
"Dylanesque..."  or "Wanna-be Dylan..."   and invariably musicians were 
crushed under this weight.  But there were some artists who persevered and 
went on to claim there own legitimate place in the rock canon and make 
there own music and create their own vision.  Springsteen might just be the 
best example of this.

I apologize for my first post ever not metioning Wolfe (well I guess I just 
did), but I did see some comparisons and just wanted to share.

-----Original Message-----
From:	Matthew Malthouse [SMTP:matthew.malthouse at ntlworld.com]
Sent:	Thursday, December 02, 2004 4:24 PM
To:	James Wynn; The Urth Mailing List
Subject:	Re: (urth) tolkien's successors

Matthew