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“Your roof leaks.”
“My roof was finished before I let other people rent out my house.”
Damn! Shots fired.
I looked it up. the “plot holes” in question are that Tolkien didnt mention anything about Aragorns tax policy and what happened to all the orks after saurons fall. Im not sure if Martin actually said “plot holes” or if its just clickbaity articles putting words in his mouth. In any case, whats his point? that tolkien didnt flesh out his world enough? Not everything needs to be said and named. The nameless things gnawing on the roots of the earth under moria are cool because they are nameless things and not because we know their names, age, occupation and sexuality.
I havent read the books in a while but just from what I remember I can guess that aragorns tax policy would be whatever the reader wants it to be as long as it benefits his people (not that anyone cares about taxes in some fantasy world anyways lol).
And about the orks. Again who the fuck cares? Dont we have some dialogue in the third book about some of them wanting to go live somewhere quiet? So I guess those who cant change from being enslaved under sauron would eventually be killed of while others might survive and even thrive somewhere in peaceful isolation.
I think it mentions them being scattered after the fall of sauron. They would be slaughtered in droves. If anyone wants to critique the Lengendarium they should probably start with treatment of the bad guys. Orcs are 100%, irredeemably evil. I think most of the races of men that helped sauron in the third age are described as not white. There is a discussion to be had about tolkien and race. Fuck tax policy.
Tolkien probably would have agreed with you, he talks a lot about this in his letters and this debate is so notable (and central to a lot of modern fantasy) that it, apparently, qualifies for it’s own Wikipedia Page.
It’s really not his point at all. GRRM is a huge fan of Tolkien’s work. He knows Lord of the Rings would be worse for bothering about Aragorn’s tax policy. His point was really just to show how his books were going in a different direction by focusing on politics over heroism.
Lord of the Rings stands alone because it isn’t really a fantasy novel. Fantasy novels are defined by their conformance to tropes first used in Tolkien’s works: orcs and elves, wizards and dwarves. That’s what fantasy novels are all about! Lord of the Rings isn’t about any of that stuff!
Lord of the Rings is about the modern hero: the ordinary person who has duty thrust upon them and struggles against all odds to destroy power, the ultimate source of temptation and corruption. This is a stark difference from typical fantasy which is about escapism and wish fulfillment: a fantasy about obtaining power, not destroying it.
That’s what levelling up is all about: to get stronger. That’s what slaying the dragon is all about: to loot the massive hoard of treasure. These are childish adventures that derive from the first part of The Hobbit (a children’s novel). Tolkien had harsh words for all of this stuff!
Of course Lord of the Rings is a fantasy novel. Fantasy is a setting, not a story structure or hero archetype. And just because LotR first modeled many modern fantasy elements doesn’t mean it isn’t fantasy, either.
Also, I don’t know what kind of fantasy stories you read or know, but from your description I assume it’s mostly Young Adult Fantasy becauae that particular subgenre plays a lot with elements of escapism and wish fulfillment. There is a whole lot of other stories out there, too, though and reducing fantasy to just one subgenre you also misunderstand is just… wrong.
And while I certainly have not read about everything Tolkien commented, I doubt he had harsh words for many things, though you can of course show me what exactly you’re talking about.I don’t know, maybe you consider GRRM’s books to be part of the YA genre? I’ve read the first 5 Song of Ice and Fire books and they’re basically a soap opera plus politics in a fantasy setting. Pure escapism. Junk food reading (and an unhealthy obsession with the description of food). Lots of fun to read though!
As for what you call fantasy (just a setting), that’s not what Tolkien had in mind when he wrote Lord of the Rings. Read his essay On fairy stories and realize that his ideas were so much bigger than what fantasy as a genre became. Recognize that he was a deeply religious man and his stories were firmly grounded in morality. No, he was not against escapism and in fact he did make it a feature of his works. However, the genre went way overboard on the escapism angle and largely forgot what Tolkien thought was most important: the human condition.
Structurally, the modern fiction I’d say that most resembles Tolkien’s work is Star Trek. That’s another franchise where many of the best episodes use aliens and other sci-fi elements to put humanity under the microscope. Now, I’d be happy to be proven wrong. Can you suggest a fantasy novel with a moral character and emotional relevance to the human condition as some of the best episodes of Trek? Some examples:
- The City on the Edge of Forever
- The Measure of a Man
- The Inner Light
- It’s Only a Paper Moon
I don’t know, maybe you consider GRRM’s books to be part of the YA genre? I’ve read the first 5 Song of Ice and Fire books and they’re basically a soap opera plus politics in a fantasy setting. Pure escapism. Junk food reading (and an unhealthy obsession with the description of food). Lots of fun to read though!
I neither consider ASOIAF YA fantasy nor “junk food reading” or pure escapism (though there may be escapist elements and what those are my vary depending on the individuum reading the stories). It’s a political drama about how power is achieved, stories about how humans react to certain (often traumatic) experiences like loss, imprisonment and different threats.
To pull from your own Star Trek comparison: it’s the Deep Space 9 of medieval fantasy.As for what you call fantasy (just a setting), that’s not what Tolkien had in mind when he wrote Lord of the Rings. Read his essay On fairy stories and realize that his ideas were so much bigger than what fantasy as a genre became. Recognize that he was a deeply religious man and his stories were firmly grounded in morality. No, he was not against escapism and in fact he did make it a feature of his works. However, the genre went way overboard on the escapism angle and largely forgot what Tolkien thought was most important: the human condition.
So what? Tolkien did not write the Lord of the Rings intending to create or redefine a (new) literary genre where every story had to express certain characteristics or be deemed “lesser”.
Also, you seem to reduce Tolkien’s writing down to a single aspect (“the human condition”), which has two simultanous effects: lessening the impact of Tolkien’s other themes (environmentalism for example) and lessen the value of other themes often seen in fantasy (societal criticism for example).Can you suggest a fantasy novel with a moral character and emotional relevance to the human condition as some of the best episodes of Trek?
Why would I do that? Besides LotR not coming close to neither Measure of a Man nor Paper Moon, I already stated that reducing Tolkien or fantasy to that single theme is restricting and doing a disservice. What about Sapkowski’s Witcher Saga and its discussion of what cosntitutes humanity or LeGuin’s Earthsea cycle about racial diversity and her “Left Hand of Darkness” dealing with gender norms and identity? What about Pratchett’s various themes in his Diskworld books? The list goes on and I don’t understand why you’d dismiss them because they’re not dealing with what Tolkien wanted to deal with (and again, Tolkien never ever said anything about what other’s should write or what fantasy stories should and should not be about).
I can suggest 41 of them: The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett.
I have read a bunch of them. I love them. They’re very funny and entertaining. They have good social commentary. I wouldn’t say they’re on the level of those Trek episodes I named, as far as emotional impact and meaning go.
They’re also not on Tolkien’s level. They say things that are relevant now. Tolkien is relevant now, it would’ve been relevant 10,000 years ago, and it will still be relevant 10,000 years from now.
Thank you! This plot hole business is always taken out of context, too. GRRM was in an interview talking about how Lord of the Rings inspired him to write A Song of Ice and Fire - and part of that inspiration was from these gaps he noticed. And that’s fucking rad!
People always talk like if you love something you should never criticize it, but being critical about something is most often a sign of passion - about the property, the genre, the medium, whatever. And inspiration blooms at the intersection of criticism and passion.
I just find it odd how many times Martin has admitted to taking influence from history, adapting real world events for depth — and here is fixated on Aragorn’s tax code.
Perhaps I should have listened more to what the man said, maybe I could have saved myself some time.
Me in 2014: “Oh boy, I bet ASOIAF will be completed soon!”
Oh sweet summer child.
I loved ASOIAF. It was everything I wanted out of fantasy before I even knew it existed, picking it up by chance in a bookstore on the way back from the hospital in 2010. I wanted a down-low, brutal, feudal look at a constructed world, and it was immensely affirming to my own tastes to read and learn that it was wildly popular.
Now? If the entire series was finished tomorrow, I don’t think I would care enough to even pirate the final books.
RIP.
I’d read a summary on wikipedia, to see if it ended up being different from the show.
Used to think he’d at least finish the next one, even if he didn’t finish the series. Don’t think that’s in the cards anymore
In retrospect, he should have kept the time jump. Or just done some bullshit somewhere in the story to move it along or kill off half the PoVs
I mean, it’s not a competition.
But if it were, GRRM lost.
I’m 100% convinced that they’ve been completed for years, probably even edited, and that they’re just sitting on them to be released on their death, because they’ve got enough money and simply don’t want to deal with the fallout of actually releasing them.
I think they saw what D&D did in the last few seasons and the fan reactions and said “Naw… fuck all that shit. I don’t need this”
I like this theory. My personal guess is that he never wrote a single word after he saw what D&D had done
Hey now, y’all can just let up a little on the poor bastard. 😅
Try to imagine yourself in Georgie’s straining boots while you try to “finish” a series you’ve mostly cobbled together from history and pasted it all together with the grainy, starchy, tepid soup of your own pool of pseudo-“writer” skills.
I mean, if you’re cribbing hard and lack the ability, much less the imagination, to tie the onslaught of plagiarisms together in a believable, cohesive, and “totally unique” work, well… you might’ve not been much of a writer in the first place.
Maybe, just let him find out. 🤢
