China Mieville on Tolkien

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Siberian
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China Mieville on Tolkien

Post by Siberian »

Insightful post from a well-known author: There and Back Again: Five Reasons Tolkien Rocks Mostly on LOTR. Would be interesting to see his take on Silm.
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Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Very interesting, Siberian. Thanks for sharing that.
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Post by axordil »

Mieville is not the world's biggest fan of JRRT, but that's not the same as not being appreciative at all. Praise from someone like him is always interesting to read, since you know it's well-earned and not reflexive.
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Post by Primula Baggins »

It's an odd assortment of points he picks out for praise—some major elements, some minor ones—but I agree with all of them.

I'd like to see him come back to discussing world-building and Tolkien's influence there. The one book of his I've read, Perdido Street Station, was set in a world nothing like Middle-earth, but so vividly described and integral to the plot that I'd almost suspect he thought of it first (except, of course, he's probably brilliant enough to create such a place on the fly).
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Post by axordil »

he's probably brilliant enough to create such a place on the fly
Although anyone good enough to do that would also be good enough to realize it would be easier, in the long run, to do at least some world-building first. :D
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Post by Primula Baggins »

Oh, I'm sure at some point he had to start writing things down and drawing maps. I'm just not sure he began with that.

Overall, I think world-building has been a good thing for SFF. Not everyone manages Tolkien's trick of creating a world so much larger than the story that it seems utterly real; but at least they try, and we get a little farther from the bland and generic "default" worlds with default histories and peasants and warriors and wizards. And, people who think they want to write massive fantasy novels, but mainly want to draw maps and invent histories, may get get happily stuck at the world-building stage.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Post by axordil »

Or using them for D&D, the graveyard of fantasy worlds. :D
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Post by Alatar »

Funny Ax, I'd argue the opposite. Novels are the graveyards of Fantasy Worlds. D&D and their ilk are where invented worlds live, breathe and grow. A novel by its very nature is static, dead if you will. It has no more life once its finished.
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Post by Primula Baggins »

However, the fantasy world in a novel is available for people to discover it, even years later. The fantasy world in a D&D game, which may well be brilliant and interesting and can, as you say, grow over time, is only available to the people in the game. As far as anyone outside the game would know, it doesn't exist at all.

Middle-earth is "dead" in the sense that it can no longer change; because its author is dead, nothing canonical can be added to it. But Middle-earth will be alive in new readers' minds centuries from now.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Post by Alatar »

And how is that different to a D&D world? As far as anyone who hasn't read the novel is concerned, it doesn't exist either.

Are you suggesting that there's less people familiar with say "The Forgotten Realms" or "Krynn" than there are familiar with "Helliconia" or "The Land". I think you'd be very surprised.

Also, new players can come to D&D as easily as new readers to a novel. The difference being that when they do it isn't just an old story thats new to them, the entire world becomes new because of their different choices and actions in that world.
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Post by axordil »

Alatar--
I was thinking mostly of worlds not commercially created, but built by GMs on their own. So many of them would have made great novel settings...and one in a million make the jump. The others become ephemera as soon as the campaign breaks up.
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Post by Primula Baggins »

That's what I was thinking of, too. My kids who played D&D always made up their own worlds. I didn't realize there were pre-established ones out there; my kids didn't use them, so I've never heard of them.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Post by Teremia »

I liked China Miéville's list.

I love China Miéville's books!

AND -- what a great name for a writer, no? I was sure it was a pseudonym, but to the best of my googling abilities, that is really his name. His parents, in that case, deserve a reward!
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Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

He looks like a China Miéville.

Whatever that means!
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Post by Siberian »

I must I couldn't get into Perdido Street Station. Too weird for me and steam punk is not my cup of tea, I guess.
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Post by Lindréd »

Interesting insights from CM, especially the "world first" section. Reading his piece sent me back to JRRT's "On Fairy Stories" to read Tolkien's own thoughts on subcreation and keeping the invented world "true".

I'd like to try one of CM's books. Can someone suggest a good one to start with?

And Siberian, what exactly makes a book "steam punk"?? (just curious)
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Post by solicitr »

Steampunk is a subgenre of sci-fi (or sometimes fantasy) based on the 19th century, so that hi-tech devices tend to involve boilers and lots of rivets. It's a modern take on the atmosphere of Verne or Wells; a well-known example is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The 60's TV show Wild Wild West was perhaps an anticipation of steampunk long before it was 'invented' circa 1990.
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Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

John Rateliff, author of The History of the Hobbit, points out at his blog that these positive comments about Tolkien are a complete reversal for Mieville. Rateliff says:
Perhaps the most notable Tolkien-basher of the last decade has been China Mieville, most famously in the following bit from, I think, 2003:

http://www.panmacmillan.com/displayPage.asp?PageID=3395
And yes, it is pretty darned negative. From that link:
When people dis fantasy - mainstream readers and SF readers alike - they are almost always talking about one sub-genre of fantastic literature. They are talking about Tolkien, and Tolkien's innumerable heirs. Call it 'epic', or 'high', or 'genre' fantasy, this is what fantasy has come to mean. Which is misleading as well as unfortunate.

Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. His oeuvre is massive and contagious - you can't ignore it, so don't even try. The best you can do is consciously try to lance the boil. 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. Tolkien's clichés - elves 'n' dwarfs 'n' magic rings - have spread like viruses. He wrote that the function of fantasy was 'consolation', thereby making it an article of policy that a fantasy writer should mollycoddle the reader.

That is a revolting idea, and one, thankfully, that plenty of fantasists have ignored. From the Surrealists through the pulps - via Mervyn Peake and Mikhael Bulgakov and Stefan Grabinski and Bruno Schulz and Michael Moorcock and M. John Harrison and I could go on - the best writers have used the fantastic aesthetic precisely to challenge, to alienate, to subvert and undermine expectations.
Rateliff adds:
Even more negative, though I can not now find that link to it, is a short bit he contributed to a tribute to Tolkien several years back (circa 2001?) in which he gloried in being the sole negative voice; I remember he was specifically hard on Bombadil.
Interesting that Mieville would reverse himself so completely. I wonder why?

Here's Rateliff's full blog post:

http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2009/07/my ... ville.html[/quote]
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Post by Siberian »

Maybe he's reread it since then and changed his opinion? That can happen. Or maybe he was primarily frustrated with Tolkien clones rather than with the Professor himself.
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Post by Voronwë the Faithful »

Siberian wrote: Or maybe he was primarily frustrated with Tolkien clones rather than with the Professor himself.
Um, "Tolkien is the wen on the arse of fantasy literature. ... 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. "

Does that REALLY sound like he was primarily frustrated with Tolkien clones rather than Tolkien himself?
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
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