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Was GRRM influenced by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series?


MorgulisMaximus

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16 hours ago, Gronzag said:

There are quite a few very similar characters in Dune and ASOIAF.

I think that Leto and Jessica have a lot in common with Ned and Catelyn, while Paul has characteristics in common with both Robb and Daenerys.

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Another influence on ASOIAF is Les Rois Maudits.

Philip the Fair and his daughter Isabella have much in common with Tywin and Cersei.  Robert d'Artois (Druon's favourite character) has much in common with both Robert Baratheon and Littlefinger.

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5 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

IIRC, the issue with McKiernan is that he wanted to write a sequel to LOTR, was told "no", so changed the names and published anyway.

Didn't he come up with a pair of characters called Brodo and Flam?

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14 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think that Leto and Jessica have a lot in common with Ned and Catelyn, while Paul has characteristics in common with both Robb and Daenerys.

Jon too has some characteristics of Paul.

Also:

Vladimir - Tywin

Glossu - Gregor and Ramsay

Alia - Arya

Freemen - Wildlings

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39 minutes ago, Gronzag said:

Freemen - Wildlings

I don't think this is a good comparison. The Fremen are badass warriors that defeat technologically superior enemies. The wildlings, while ferocious in their own right, easily get swept by a much smaller army. There are also the religious and societal aspects. The wildlings are only about "to each their own". The Aiel are a much better comparison with the Fremen than the wildlings ever will be.

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1 hour ago, Corvinus said:

I don't think this is a good comparison. The Fremen are badass warriors that defeat technologically superior enemies. The wildlings, while ferocious in their own right, easily get swept by a much smaller army. There are also the religious and societal aspects. The wildlings are only about "to each their own". The Aiel are a much better comparison with the Fremen than the wildlings ever will be.

I agree about Aiel, they are really a blatant ripoff, but there is also a similarity between Fremen and wildlings in the sense that they are both there for a good guy to win them over to fight for him, install him to into power position, and teach him something about "the way of the land".

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I've just finished a nostalgic re-read of Feist's Magician, and I still find it difficult to believe that GRRM has, as he claims, never read that book. Not only does it start subverting, more gently, some of the sort of fantasy cliches that GRRM later goes more hardcore on- and it's an early example of a more political fantasy, but the Starks are really, really similar to the ConDoins and Westeros bears a strong resemblance to The Kingdom flipped on its side.

Maybe he was indirectly influenced, I dunno, but for real, there's some definite DNA transfer in there.

 

5 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

 GRRM, thanks in part to HBO, has far wider audience appeal than "traditional" tolkien-esqe fantasy.


GoT and aSoIaF are popular, sure, but they're nowhere close to having as wide an audience as Lord of the Rings.

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5 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

Agreed, the structure is very similar. But it feels like Robert Jordan did not envision the magnitude of his full story while writing book #1. It seems like he adds "fudge factors" to later books in order to make it possible to expand the scope of his story.

That said, I feel that Robert Jordan became a lot more creative after Eye of the World. He actually ended up building his own world in enormous detail and that world had very little resemblance to Middle-Earth.

I seem to remember reading an interview with Jordan once where he said that he deliberately chose to make the Two Rivers an echo of The Shire at the beginning of Eye of the World to make it more accessible for readers.

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27 minutes ago, stonebender said:

Maybe I should give Brooks a try.  :P

 

Terry Brooks is actually a great writer! The only problem is he has trouble coming up with his own plot lines.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was a great movie, but it seemed to steal many of it's ideas from a LucasArts video game called The Secret of Monkey Island. In turn, The Secret of Monkey Island was undoubtedly influenced by the Walt Disney ride which opened in 1967.

 

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54 minutes ago, David Selig said:

There are similarities, but calling it "borderline plagiarism" is a massive stretch.

Well, I wouldn't say it's that a massive stretch at all.

It's just a matter of how many similarities you're willing to chalk up to "well, every fantasy book has some similarities" excuse.

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5 minutes ago, baxus said:

Well, I wouldn't say it's that a massive stretch at all.

It's just a matter of how many similarities you're willing to chalk up to "well, every fantasy book has some similarities" excuse.

Oh, I believe it was done deliberately so I don't even know if calling them similarities is even correct.

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52 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I've just finished a nostalgic re-read of Feist's Magician, and I still find it difficult to believe that GRRM has, as he claims, never read that book. Not only does it start subverting, more gently, some of the sort of fantasy cliches that GRRM later goes more hardcore on- and it's an early example of a more political fantasy, but the Starks are really, really similar to the ConDoins and Westeros bears a strong resemblance to The Kingdom flipped on its side.

Maybe he was indirectly influenced, I dunno, but for real, there's some definite DNA transfer in there.

 


GoT and aSoIaF are popular, sure, but they're nowhere close to having as wide an audience as Lord of the Rings.

Eh, don't think the sales of asoiaf have even come close to WoT. *summon wert*

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20 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

True, I can imagine Loial as an Ent. But notice how GRRM and Jordan both have overwhelmingly human-centric worlds. Tolkien has many different beings: Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, etc...

The Hobbits were Tolkein's humans, really.

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55 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Oh, I believe it was done deliberately so I don't even know if calling them similarities is even correct.

I don't think anyone believes he wrote the whole book as a vaguely disguised LotR by accident. ;)

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Quote

Saying The Eye of the World "had Tolkien qualities" is THE biggest understatement I've seen on the Literature board.

It was as much, if not more, of a LotR rip-off as The Sword of Shannara.

That's pretty hyperbolic and not really true. The Sword of Shannara is a horrible Tolkien rip-off and The Eye of the World employs some similar tropes, but to a very different end. The rest of the Wheel of Time is nothing really like Tolkien. Brooks takes a bit longer to move away from the style (the second and third books are structurally similar to the first) but eventually does so as well.

WoT was supposed to stat off as a bit of a Vietnam allegory, with Tam as the main character who finds, relatively late in life, that he's been tapped as the chosen one. Jordan's publisher convinced him to make it more LotR-like, with a semi-fellowship, the cursed dagger being a bit like the ring and so on. Jordan wasn't keen but decided it might be more accessible. He then rejected the idea very firmly and pulled the story away from that direction, hence the introduction of parallel universes, alternate timelines, the Ways, the Children of the Light and other elements with no direct analogue in LotR (and of course, unlike Shannara, WoT has no elves, dwarves, orcs, demigods etc).

Quote

Eh, don't think the sales of asoiaf have even come close to WoT. *summon wert*

ASoIaF has sold about 75 to 80 million copies (maybe more, by now). WoT has sold about 90 million copies. ASoIaF is very close to overtaking in terms of outright sales. However, as that's 80 million sales of just 5 books versus 90 million of 14, ASoIaF has far more actual readers than WoT does. It overtook it a few years ago.

Lord of the Rings has sold about 350 million copies, maybe 400 million, with an estimated 50 million+ sales as a result of the films, so that's way ahead (but it had a 40-year head start). Game of Thrones (the TV show) has actually pushed sales of its books a lot more.

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16 hours ago, stonebender said:

Eye of the World was my favorite because of the Tolkien similarities.  Maybe I should give Brooks a try.  :P

Also, can anyone expand on Martin citing Cook as an influence?  Couldn't find anything.  Not that I doubt, just interested to hear more. 

I'm pretty sure I read it, but can't remember where.  I should think it's to do with having somewhat sympathetic protagonists who still do bad things.

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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

The rest of the Wheel of Time is nothing really like Tolkien.

I wasn't talking about the rest of WoT. I was talking about The Eye of the World. And yes, whatever someone may think, it WAS a LotR rip-off and no, the rest of the series has absolutely no effect on that. I stopped reading WoT after Dragon Reborn so I can't and don't comment on the series as a whole. My only comment on it is to say that I lost all interest in it rather quickly.

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