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Big Hollywood on Fantasy


Ran

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Wow....this guy is a noted Howard scholar and has won awards and runs s respected Howard web site. What. The. Fuck. I just....fuck. I don't want to live on this planet anymore. Who wants to live with me on the moon?

Which makes it even more strange that he thinks Conan upholds the tradition of good vs. evil, with no gray in between. As others have pointed out, Conan's interests were often wine, women, and treasure. Easily half his life was spent on the wrong side of the law or authority: thief, pirate, mercenary, rebel (remember, he strangled the king of Aquilonia on his throne and seized the kingdom). That was half of what made those books so attractive to me when I was 13. Conan was a badass who would rather see civilization burn. And this dickweed manages to ignore all that to make his point. I guess I'll never understand this breed of conservative.

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Articles like these just seem like a waste of time to me (to get all riled up about). I mean, if I could be a troll and get paid for it, I would absolutely get on board with that. Thing is, he's made a name for himself being nothing more than a wanker. Wouldn't be the first time. :)

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Articles like these just seem like a waste of time to me (to get all riled up about). I mean, if I could be a troll and get paid for it, I would absolutely get on board with that. Thing is, he's made a name for himself being nothing more than a wanker. Wouldn't be the first time. :)

See, that's the scary part, he's already made a name for himself by writing and publishing lots of stuff about the Conan books and is considered a freaking expert on the subject. It boggles the mind.

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Even more strange, John C. Wright just wrote a post praising Fritz Leiber. Also, I saw other commenters on right-wing blogs naming other old authors - from Eddison to Moorcock - as examples of good old fantasy so very different to contemporary "nihilist trash". I don't see how any of those authors is less "nihilist" than Abercrombie or Erikson which makes me suspect the whole kerfuffle is in fact a case of acute nostalgia. What those guys appear to say is "old writers good, new writers bad", no matter what they actually wrote.

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Sorry, truly. I didn't want to be the one to revive this and would gladly see the article consigned to the mists of turbulent internet time [though some of the responses to it were well-considered and interesting.] But someone asked me a question and I neglected to answer:

Grack21 Wrote:

Are those the Lady Penitent books?

Yes. Or rather the six book War of the Spider Queen with The Lady Penitent as an extension. If you haven't read them I implore you not to do so, they are horrible. Everyone must make up their own mind, and books deserve a chance, and all that stuff, but there are exceptions and these are of that special rank. They're bad news.

Sorry it took me a week to notice the question.

As you were.

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Sorry, truly. I didn't want to be the one to revive this and would gladly see the article consigned to the mists of turbulent internet time [though some of the responses to it were well-considered and interesting.] But someone asked me a question and I neglected to answer:

Grack21 Wrote:

Are those the Lady Penitent books?

Yes. Or rather the six book War of the Spider Queen with The Lady Penitent as an extension. If you haven't read them I implore you not to do so, they are horrible. Everyone must make up their own mind, and books deserve a chance, and all that stuff, but there are exceptions and these are of that special rank. They're bad news.

Sorry it took me a week to notice the question.

As you were.

Heh, I've read War of the Spider Queen, and remember very little about it. There was a cool wizard battle in the beginning somewhere I think? It's sad because most of the authors involved can do A LOT better.

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Even more strange, John C. Wright just wrote a post praising Fritz Leiber. Also, I saw other commenters on right-wing blogs naming other old authors - from Eddison to Moorcock - as examples of good old fantasy so very different to contemporary "nihilist trash". I don't see how any of those authors is less "nihilist" than Abercrombie or Erikson which makes me suspect the whole kerfuffle is in fact a case of acute nostalgia. What those guys appear to say is "old writers good, new writers bad", no matter what they actually wrote.

Moorcock praised on right-wing blogs? I think I've seen it all now.

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Moorcock praised on right-wing blogs? I think I've seen it all now.

I only hope someone has posted this on Mike Moorcock's forum.

*Edit*

Reading some of the replies in the blog have done much to cheer me up. Especially the people talking about how great the Gor novels are. (Unapologetically Politically Incorrect! says One.) Some of these people just don't... understand... anything...

Always easier to destroy something than to create something.

But thats how things get changed. In fiction, in storytelling, if we don't break something, we don't know what it can achieve or what it can do. Sure, it's fun to play safe, take all the toys in and out of the box and play the same old games, it's good for a while, but you can't keep playing the same games and we get bored of the same toys, so we build new toys and play new games with new and old toys. I don't know how the analogy even works, but if we can't break genre expectations, we can't reconstruct them to be better. Who knows, maybe it's by doing that that we can learn how to play the old games yet again, but now how to play the games in a new and better way and still mix the sensibilities of all the Tolkien's with the Martin's.

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Especially the people talking about how great the Gor novels are. (Unapologetically Politically Incorrect! says One.) Some of these people just don't... understand... anything...

I thought the rightwingers were supposed to be the sexually repressed ones?

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Part 2 is out. Grin's focusing on Tolkien now. I skimmed through it, seems to be a little less stupid than the first one (though of course he does get in his digs at Martin and Abercrombie).

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2011/02/19/sanity-and-sanctity-the-ennobling-fantasy-of-j-r-r-tolkien-part-1/

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Interesting he mentions Tolkien introducing Lewis to Christianity, which is true, but for some reason (i.e. it doesn't fit his narrative) he fails to mention that Tolkien was furious when Lewis chose Anglicanism rather than Catholicism as his faith, which led to a cooling and distance between them, exasperated by Lewis marrying a divorcee and Tolkien's loathing of the Narnia books (which he - possibly somewhat unfairly - thought were Middle-earth rip-offs).

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Which makes it even more strange that he thinks Conan upholds the tradition of good vs. evil, with no gray in between. As others have pointed out, Conan's interests were often wine, women, and treasure. Easily half his life was spent on the wrong side of the law or authority: thief, pirate, mercenary, rebel (remember, he strangled the king of Aquilonia on his throne and seized the kingdom). That was half of what made those books so attractive to me when I was 13. Conan was a badass who would rather see civilization burn. And this dickweed manages to ignore all that to make his point. I guess I'll never understand this breed of conservative.

I dunno. It makes a kind of thematic sense to me - Men are real men, women really know their place, the strong take what they want and are called heroes for it...what other kind of fine moral civilization deserving of the singing of simplistic songs of glory for can you possibly imagine?

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wierd article. So Christian writer turns to fairy stories and celtic myth (only semi-christianised) to write English version of Finnish national myth (again not very Christian). Writing of Simarillion conflated with the critical reception of LOTR pausing to kick at the Guardian in passing. It not as though torture, sadism and rape don't occur in Tolkien either - it's just off stage, alluded to or tucked away in the appendices.

I don't get from the article a sense of how Tolkien was a great christianised writer other than the author's say so, nor a sense of why Tolkien is a great writer other than he thought deep thoughts and put his heart and soul into his books. I'm sure most writers do, but that doesn't make them great writers.

Presumably the plan is pull it all together and tie it into the title in the second part?

With regard to Tolkien bringing CS Lewis back into the christian fold I heard it was something along the lines of Tolkien saying to Lewis - you like stories don't you, well Christianity is the best story - or words to that effect. Probably was more convincing after a few pints down at the Eagle and Child.

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I thought the rightwingers were supposed to be the sexually repressed ones?

Oh, only in public, or at the very least, either indulge their desires and thoughts in un-safe ways or end up becoming sex-killers. Gor fits into the sexual repression because they read the novels and thrill privately over purple-prose-passages of perversity and power of the penis.

Or they could write it into sections of their novel, like John Ringo and 'Ghost.'

Oh, John Ringo no.

The second article is, in a way more offensive to me than the first. Writers like Abercrombie or Bakker, I've not read them yet and will intend to in future. This one, this has taken something incredibly dear to my heart and twisted it to suit their agendas and ideologies, like the corrupting power of the One Ring, too powerful to be used for good by beings of great wisdom and knowledge like Gandalf or Galadrial for fear that their good would be as evil and twisted as Sauron himself or like the mighty warrior Boromir, noble of heart and longing only the defence of his home and his people, temporarily turned to madness by the Ring's dark power as it's influence turned him against one he called a friend.

Even worse, is that people on the board seem to think that Tolkein is hated by a 'Liberal, Nihlistic Britain', nothing of the sort. There are those who do not enjoy Tolkein's work, but there is not one singular work of creative fiction that does not have one person dislike it. I don't think I have ever met a single person who believes 'Lord of the Rings' or 'The Hobbit' to be some sort of rascist screed, I know they exist, I think they're idiots.

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I wonder how much of the racism stuff in the article is meant as a pre-emptive defense of Howard. Tolkien wasn't a racist but Howard very much was. It's another of those many points where the two are nothing alike.

I haven't read many stories by Howard, but even in that very limited selection I remember a story (it was about Conan killing a monster in a jungle) which had a digression that lamented that the superior white conquerors would in time lose their natural distaste of the inferior black natives and interbreed with them.

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I wonder how much of the racism stuff in the article is meant as a pre-emptive defense of Howard. Tolkien wasn't a racist but Howard very much was. It's another of those many points where the two are nothing alike.

I haven't read many stories by Howard, but even in that very limited selection I remember a story (it was about Conan killing a monster in a jungle) which had a digression that lamented that the superior white conquerors would in time lose their natural distaste of the inferior black natives and interbreed with them.

Howard's racism is pretty apparent to modern eyes (there's a Conan story were the hero fights black cannibals with sharpened teeth), but it is generally tangential to the plot. He's certainly less obsessive about racial issues than, say, H.P. Lovecraft.

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but it is generally tangential to the plot. He's certainly less obsessive about racial issues than, say, H.P. Lovecraft.

HP Lovecraft is kind of fascinating because he's so ridiculously offensive to a modern reader. I have Michel Houellebecq's biography of Lovecraft, which is full of real Lovecraft zingers:

When, long ago, the gods created Earth

In Jove's fair image Man was shaped at birth.

The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;

Yet were they too remote from humankind.

To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,

The Olympian host conceived a clever plan.

A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,

Filled it with vice, and called the thing Nigger.

and

Politically, I am a Tory, patrician, Tsarist, Junker, nationalist and Fascist.
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Howard is, for his time and genré, pretty much average when it comes to racism.

IE: Yeah, obviously racist, but it's not a major point of his or anything. Unlike Lovecraft, who was considered out there even by his contemporaries.

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