Howard or Tolkien, Which of them Had The Greatest Impact On Modern Fantasy ?

[psikeyhackr]

Conan was not. In the story, I read Conan's wife was kidnapped and he went on a journey to regain her. That is a virtue. Good man, Conan. However along the way he has a one night stand with an old flame. BOO! It made me wonder how much did he really love his wife..

Just means your value system is too narrow.

When I finished Lord of the Rings I asked myself, "Why did I read that whole thing." The only advantage is that I can honestly tell people it is BORING. Conan had and evolved his own value system. Part of it is, "Civilized culture is full of crap!"

Like now. Half-a-century after the Moon landing and millions of people with college degrees can't figure out planned obsolescence in cars!? What is knowledge and intelligence? The Laws of Physics do not change style. PERIOD!

 

[The Big Peat]

Having glanced at the first page, I think my thoughts on this can be easily summarised thus:

Lots of people feel the need to protest how they're not influenced by Tolkien.

Hardly anyone says it about Howard. And if Howard was as big an influence as Tolkien, that would not be the case.

 

[BAYLOR]

Having glanced at the first page, I think my thoughts on this can be easily summarised thus:

Lots of people feel the need to protest how they're not influenced by Tolkien.

Hardly anyone says it about Howard. And if Howard was as big an influence as Tolkien, that would not be the case.

But you’re overlooking one thing, Yes Tolkien LOTR was a sensation when it came out but the vast majority of fantasy being published in the 1950s and 60s were along the line of.What writers like Robert E Howard Wrote it eh 1920s and 1930s. And yes they wer Alonso reprint Howard ,Burroughs and just about everyone else from his era too.This makes the case that Howard did hold a sizable influence on writers of at least that era.


.

 

[Lafayette]

The problem is that what you end up with are Characters that are predicable,fantasy stereotypical and boring. You may not believe this but, an absence of compelling characters will, in the long run, cause readers to stop reading your stories. This is something that you as a writer need to care about.

Oh, but I do know compelling characters are very important. In fact, I believe compelling characters are more important to a story than the plots.

In my story, my main character, Penoit is cynical, narrow-minded, and cowardly. Lafayette is brash, foul mouth, impatient, a womanizer, a bit chauvinistic and bloodthirsty. Vahdoorah is also bloodthirsty and vengeful. Vollmahr is greedy and a liar. This characters also have their pluses.

 

[Graymalkin]

Given Conan's general philosophy towards females I suspect Tolkien had a wider appeal to audience and would be writer alike.
I read somewhere he partly influenced Moorcock's creation of Elric (along with Kenneth Williams?) and you can see both Howard's adult anti hero/blood letting/gore and JRR's mythic influence in GOT.

I used to have them clearly pinned as Sword and Sorcery (Conan) and Fantasy (LOTR)
I also think they're Led Zep versus London Philharmonic Orc-estra

 

[Lafayette]

For the record, I have started reading a collection of Conan stories. Not bad, nonetheless I still prefer Tolkien.

 

[Extollager]

Tolkien has his own thread here at Chrons and there's almost always something going on there. Howard comes up under various threads from time to time.

 

[Lafayette]

Just means your value system is too narrow.

What do you mean my value system is too narrow? Please explain.

Part of it is, "Civilized culture is full of crap!"

I partially agree with you and Howard civilization is full of crap, but without it, it would be worse. There would be more dogs eating dogs along with the lambs and the doves.

PERIOD!

 

[psikeyhackr]

What do you mean my value system is too narrow? Please explain.

Monogamy and the concept of only being able to love one person of the opposite sex is absurd and is promoted as a limited cultural ideal. Exploring other possible cultures is one of the uses of science fiction.

Try: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

 

[Lafayette]

Monogamy and the concept of only being able to love one person of the opposite sex is absurd and is promoted as a limited cultural ideal. Exploring other possible cultures is one of the uses of science fiction.

Try: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

Thanks for responding.

I agree with you one can love more than one more person of the opposite sex, but that doesn't mean you should have sex with them. That is adultery. Besides, just because other cultures participate in these activities that doesn't mean it's right. Exploring other cultures and ideas via science fiction is a good way to understand people, however when it comes to breaking God's law that is very, very bad way.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Waaay off-topic - I think we were discussing the influence of two writers, not social politics.

 

[Lafayette]

You're right it is off topic. I felt like I couldn't ignore the statement. Next time I will PM.

 

[The Big Peat]

But you’re overlooking one thing, Yes Tolkien LOTR was a sensation when it came out but the vast majority of fantasy being published in the 1950s and 60s were along the line of.What writers like Robert E Howard Wrote it eh 1920s and 1930s. And yes they wer Alonso reprint Howard ,Burroughs and just about everyone else from his era too.This makes the case that Howard did hold a sizable influence on writers of at least that era.


.

Was it? I just peeked at the Goodreads lists for those decades and there's plenty of non-Howardian stuff there. I'd also question to what extent Howard rather than Lovecraft or Ashton Smith was the guy influencing the writers of that time - or indeed, non-fantasy sources in general.

In any case, I don't see that as particularly relevant 50-60 years down the line when the genre has grown hugely. Particularly in a thread asking for impact on modern fantasy.

 

[Randy M.]

My impression, which may be wrong, is that Howard and Tolkein both became most influential on fantasy in the 1960s. The S&S resurgence came about from paperback editions of the Conan stories in the mid- to late 1960s. For Tolkein, The Hobbit was a respected children's book, but LOTR was rather less welcome on publication. When resurrected illegally by Ace in the mid-'60s it gained a huge following mainly a ong college kids which was amplified after a legal reissue from Ballantine. This isn't to say they were uninfluential before the '60s, just that the audience for their works was smaller, the s.f. community of the time being smaller.

Note there was no fantasy category when Tolkein published and Howard's work would have been considered horror pulp because it originally appeared in Weird Tales.

Note also that Tolkein was writing out of the Romantic tradition in which heroes were mighty and virtuous although they could be flawed (say, like Lancelot). Howard was a young man of his times and his times were leaning toward the hard-boiled fiction of writers like Hemingway and Dashiell Hammett. I think it's productive to see him and his views in the context of the post-WWI Lost Generation.

Randy M.

 

[psikeyhackr]

On the original topic, are we debating something that cannot be measured?

I confess that I am not enough of a fantasy fan to judge.

The Wizard of Earthsea might be more like LOTR than Conan simply because there is not lots of sword swinging but is that enough to say it is influenced significantly by Tolkien? I would not describe the two fantasy stories I have read by Bujold as similar to either.

 

[Randy M.]

Good point, Psikey. Direct influence can be traced by writers saying they were influenced by ___ (fill in the blank), but only to a degree. Writers are influenced by a lot of things in their lives and tracing it all is hard if not impossible and I tend to think that's true for the writer as well as the reader.

But there's also indirect influence. When I was proofreading/critiquing for a writers' group I read a manuscript I thought was influenced by Fritz Leiber and another I thought influenced by Ray Bradbury. The first writer swore he'd never read Leiber, and the second had read little Bradbury. If so, then I was fulla baloney, or coincidentally at least for the duration of one story that writer tapped into some train of thought or of cause/effect or character or tone of writing that I associate with another writer, or the influence of Leiber and Bradbury is ubiquious enough that through reading writers influenced by Lieber/Bradbury each of these young writers somehow circled around and latched onto something identifiable as Leiber-esque or Bradburyian. Seeing myself as infallible, I tend to the last explanation, but my better judgement suggests either of the others is also possible.

Over time I suppose that kind of influence attenuates, becoming a sort of background flavoring.


Randy M.

 

[Lafayette]

I think the opposite can happen. I think I've read a lot of Tolkien, Donalson, and Terry Brooks, but I doubt very much that anyone on this forum after reading any of my material would say my style (?) resembles any of these writers. Boo hoo. Oh well, maybe that's just as well it will keep me from having to buy a new hat due to inflation.

I remember a while back one of our members told us about a website where you submit a bit of your writing and it would tell you whose writing you were reminiscent of. I went there and it gave me a list of writers that either I was unfamiliar with or never read. It was perplexing. One of the names was Henry James. I downloaded three of his books and lo and behold a resemblance. Personally, I don't if this is something brag about.

 

[BAYLOR]

I think the opposite can happen. I think I've read a lot of Tolkien, Donalson, and Terry Brooks, but I doubt very much that anyone on this forum after reading any of my material would say my style (?) resembles any of these writers. Boo hoo. Oh well, maybe that's just as well it will keep me from having to buy a new hat due to inflation.

I remember a while back one of our members told us about a website where you submit a bit of your writing and it would tell you whose writing you were reminiscent of. I went there and it gave me a list of writers that either I was unfamiliar with or never read. It was perplexing. One of the names was Henry James. I downloaded three of his books and lo and behold a resemblance. Personally, I don't if this is something brag about.

Henry James? And yes I know who he is .Being compared to him is actually kind of cool !

 

[The Big Peat]

On the original topic, are we debating something that cannot be measured?

I confess that I am not enough of a fantasy fan to judge.

The Wizard of Earthsea might be more like LOTR than Conan simply because there is not lots of sword swinging but is that enough to say it is influenced significantly by Tolkien? I would not describe the two fantasy stories I have read by Bujold as similar to either.

There's a bit on Le Guin's wikipedia page which states the Lord of the Rings had an enormous influence on her simply by showing her what was possible in the fantasy genre.

And I think that encapsulates the biggest influence Tolkien had on the genre. The scale on which most fantasy authors build comes from Tolkien. It's not that Tolkien invented long lengthy books and series in which large parties of characters adventure across most of the hugely detailed world, but he made it hugely popular. We may reject his themes of good vs evil, his non-human races, his innocent heroes and quests and on and on, but most of the big names in fantasy are building on Tolkien's scale.

If I had to pick one more concrete trope that I think Tolkien is largely responsible for and that is still hugely popular in the genre, it is the concept of wizards being protagonists/mentors to protagonists, particularly in the mysterious benevolent Odinic mould that Gandalf is from. A lot of the early significant fantasy writers have wizards as sinister enemies or distant patrons.

Any hoo, it's tricky working out what the correct measuring scales are (and trickier to go measure them), but yes I think this is measurable. Look at the various "Top X" books and ask yourself which feels more like which, look at book sales, look at movie profits, look at which author is mentioned more on book covers (if you're really sad), or google references to each author on major fantasy sites/national newspapers (if you're even sadder) and I think you'll start to get a good if rough idea of who's more influential.

Not that I can be bothered to do that as everything I've heard and seen says this is like asking if you want to have a fist fight with a special forces soldier or the unholy splicing of Bruce Lee, Mike Tyson and a Silverback Gorilla.

 

[Randy M.]

I think the opposite can happen. I think I've read a lot of Tolkien, Donalson, and Terry Brooks, but I doubt very much that anyone on this forum after reading any of my material would say my style (?) resembles any of these writers. Boo hoo. Oh well, maybe that's just as well it will keep me from having to buy a new hat due to inflation.

I remember a while back one of our members told us about a website where you submit a bit of your writing and it would tell you whose writing you were reminiscent of. I went there and it gave me a list of writers that either I was unfamiliar with or never read. It was perplexing. One of the names was Henry James. I downloaded three of his books and lo and behold a resemblance. Personally, I don't if this is something brag about.

Yup. I forgot about, for lack of a better descriptive, anti-influence. Almost anything that sparks a big favorable response will also ignite its own opposition. See also, Lovecraft. Or, for that matter, Hemingway.

As for Henry James, it's entirely possible you read writers influenced by James and were thus contaminated.


Randy M.