Remember that post we put up the other day, the one about a blogger named Bidisha and her entry on The Guardian's Comment Is Free blog about alleged sexism amongst reviewers of fantasy and science fiction ("Speculative Sexism: J.K. Rowling, Scapegoat for a Larger Problem")?

Well, there's a very lively discussion going on over at OF Blog of the Fallen about that very same Guardian article.  Read it here, and don't forget to read the comments.

Christopher Tolkien, the son of J.R.R. Tolkien, long rumored to be at philosophical odds with New Line Cinema and the makers of the Lord of the Rings movie franchise, will ask a Californian judge to stop production on the upcoming Hobbit films on June 6 in an effort to secure profits he claims are owed the Tolkien Estate by the production company:

He claims the Tolkien family is owed £80m by New Line Cinema under a deal for a 7.5% share of profits that was signed in 1969, when his father reluctantly sold film rights to pay a tax bill.
...
[A]t a hearing on June 6 Christopher Tolkien will ask a Californian judge to back his claim that he can "terminate" film rights to The Hobbit. He is said to be furious with the New Line studio, which earned £3 billion from the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's lawyers accuse New Line of "accounting chicanery". Warner Bros, owner of New Line, declined to comment.

One thing I've always wondered was whether Christopher Tolkien ever saw the Rings films and, if so, what he thought of them. It seems now that we have something of an answer:

Tolkien Jr, described by his biographer as "cantankerous", is unlikely to allow thefilm-makers free access to The Silmarillion. He has always been sceptical of Hollywood. Even now relatives are unsure whether he has watched The Lord of the Rings, which won a total of 17 Oscars.

The Silmarillion is relevant to the second planned film in the Hobbit film duology, which is said to chronicle the intervening years between Bilbo Baggins's return home to the Shire and the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring.  Producer Peter Jackson and Director Guillermo del Toro likely plan to draw heavily on the material contained within the final book of The Silmarillion, Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age in order to write and produce the second Hobbit film.

Photo copyright Tolkien Gateway.

Character has almost always finished a distant second in epic fantasy: fantasy authors of the past have typically chosen to prioritize intricate, twisting plots and depth of setting over characterization.  Creating depth of character, therefore, often became a simple question of adapting existing archetypes and of attempting to conceal cliche. 

Joe Abercrombie, on the other hand, chooses character over plot.  The consequent effect is often a bit disconcerting: something in the back of the veteran epic fantasy reader's head is telling him stop, wait, there's something wrong here: things aren't proceeding as planned.  The cliches of epic fantasy are so ingrained in our heads that when an author strays from the formula, it immediately catches our attention.

Not that Joe Abercrombie is a stranger to formula or cliche; rather, he tends to take formulaic elements and give them his own cynical twist, especially when it comes to his characters.  The First Law trilogy has to this point been a veritable commentary on the state of the epic fantasy subgenre.  Combined with his own signature style of gritty realism, this makes reading a Joe Abercrombie book a singularly interesting experience, albeit one that sometimes makes you yearn for things to take a quicker, less examined pace.  That said, we decided it was finally time to review the second book in The First Law, Before They Are Hanged.

Bidisha, of The Guardian's Comment is Free, is angry: she feels that the critical press has slighted female authors of speculative fiction, and that the comfort with which critics have torn down J.K. Rowling is part of the problem:

"[B]ut the issue doesn't stop with her. It extends to all female fantasy writers, world-creators and myth-makers. According to the backlash, Rowling is swell for dim kiddies, along with Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones (but none are as good as CS Lewis or Roald Dahl, of course), while Philip Pullman and Philip Reeve are worthy of adult analysis. Critics ignore the tough heroines created by Tamora Pierce and Trudi Canavan, but acclaim Lewis Carroll's creepily pliable Alice, who obediently consumes whatever cupcakes and potions she finds in Wonderland. Darren Shan and Garth Nix are rising stars thanks to the Potter-fuelled fantasy bandwagon, but there's no casual namedropping of female speculative authors Robin Hobb, Mary Gentle or Malorie Blackman, whose Noughts and Crosses is a modern classic."

If Bidisha is referring to the mainstream literary press, then the fact that female writers have been sidelined probably has more to do with the fact that only the most commercially successful, accessible genre fiction even makes it to the review section of your favorite newspaper.  The names "Robin Hobb" and "Joe Abercrombie" produce no results in a search of the New York Times Books section, for instance. 

Mainstream reviews of fantasy fiction in particular are almost always dull to read and filled with the same dull comparisons: Tolkien, Lewis, Carroll, etc.  This is almost certainly due either to a dearth of serious readers of the genre in the ranks of the literary press or to an inexplicable need to dumb down reviews of genre fiction by going light on comparative analysis.  Either way, all the more reason for the amateur genre critics (the Bard included) to start correcting these problems.

The folks over at the Westeros Forums recently had a forum-wide vote to determine their list of the Top Ten Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors (of All Time, apparently).  Aidan Moher of A Dribble of Ink reposted the list, with a short introduction, in an easily digestible format with brief comments by Werthead on each.

The (unannotated) list is as follows:

10.  Frank Herbert

9.  Joe Abercrombie

8. Stephen R. Donaldson

7.  Steven Erikson

6.  China Mieville

5.  Robin Hobb

4.  Gene Wolfe

3.  R. Scott Bakker

2.  J.R.R. Tolkien

1.  George R. R. Martin

The list is an interesting one, not least because of the presence of Joe Abercrombie and even China Mieville.  China Mieville has only been writing novels for about a decade and Joe Abercrombie's first book was published in 2006.  The inclusion of such relative newcomers in an "all-time best," especially one based on popular vote, is somewhat astounding.  The list also suggests a shift in taste in fantasy and science fiction.  Granted, this is one list compiled from the votes of one online forum.  But of the ten authors listed, only one, Tolkien, could really be characterized as epic fantasy in the classic sense.  That is to say, of all the works listed, only The Lord of the Rings follows the classic Hero's Journey archetype to the letter.  The others make it harder on their characters and generally don't promise happy endings.  China Mieville, for instance, has publicly scorned the genre's reliance on the Tolkien style and predictable epic fantasy in general. 

None of this is a bad thing.  All of these authors write important, original, engaging literature, and it is due to their efforts on the genre's behalf that we even have such alternative reading.  Even ten years ago, such a list would probably have been populated primarily by names like Robert Jordan, David Eddings, and Terry Brooks.  The fact that these authors weren't included doesn't lessen their impact, but it does indicate that fantasy is evolving as a genre.  And evolution is a good thing.

We do, however, mourn the fact that Tad Williams' name didn't make the top ten.

In response to the previous entry, "U. of Auckland Features Seminars on Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Barbarians," CJ discusses Christian history and the influence of bibilical events on the work of these authors and others. 

The date of the Crucifixion has been a subject of speculation and debate among Christians for quite awhile, but not as long as you might think; this obsession with dates, and Biblical archaeology, is actually a Medieval phenomenon.  Jesus' contemporaries understood that the gospels, along with the books of the Hebrew Bible, were allegory--they weren't so much interested in the facts of the stories as in how, and to what extent, they legitimized Jesus' role as savior.  The authors of the gospels very consciously and purposefully call on Jewish theology and mythology, when discussing Jesus.  The most famous example of this is probably in John, chapter 6, which discusses the Eucharist.  John uses a writing technique called "bracketing" to place Jesus' actions within the context of not only the Jewish Passover feast, but also the contemporaneous Pagan harvest festival.  Many modern readers don't realize that this technique would have been obvious to most early Christians--just as the author of John intended it to be.

 

Edward James, Professor of Medieval History at Universty College, Dublin, is presenting two lectures at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

The first of the lectures, and the most interesting for the Bard's purposes, is titled "J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: Friendship, Religion, and Fantasy."  Professor James plans to discuss the shared Christian values of Tolkien and Lewis and how those values found their way into their writing, as well as the marked differences between the authors' work.

James had some interesting things to say about the different, but equally Christian, themes of The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia:

He says Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a more subtle expression of Christianity than Lewis' Narnia series, in which Christian allegory is clearly portrayed through the Christ-like Aslan the Lion.

"Tolkien described The Lord of the Rings as a 'Catholic epic', but the author was more interested in representing Christian values than Christian allegory," says Professor James, who notes Tolkien was instrumental in converting Lewis to Christianity. "Of course, there are Christ-like figures in the trilogy-- most notably, Gandalf and Frodo. And it's no accident that the Ring is destroyed on 25 March, the traditional medieval date for the original crucifixion. But Tolkien and Lewis approached Christianity very differently in their fantasy works," he says.

I had never heard (or noticed, I should say) the bit about the March 25th date and its Christian significance before reading this article.  It's probably not news to CJ, who has a background in medieval history.

The Catholic/Christian symbolism is, superficially, fairly obvious: Frodo sacrifices (or intends to) his life (for all intents and purposes -- he's never the same afterward) on the same date medieval scholars associated with Christ's messianic crucifixion.

The fact that Frodo actually becomes consumed by the Ring's power and is only able to get the job done with Gollum's help makes the interpretation more interesting, of course.  The fact that Tolkien sometimes referred to Middle-Earth as a primeval age of our old world also portends a larger picture -- are such sacrificial events merely history repeating itself? 

Professor James's other lecture concerns the differences in perception of barbarians between the Roman Empire and modern society and is titled "How to Recognize a Barbarian."

I think I can speak for both of us when I say that we wish our own respective colleges had seminars like this.  Go Auckland!