6 ms·

I've always felt similarly about Lord of the Rings. It feels so authentic and real. Every other similar fantasy novel just reads as if everything in the story w

I've always felt similarly about Lord of the Rings. It feels so authentic and real. Every other similar fantasy novel just reads as if everything in the story was made up for the purpose of telling the story, which of course it was. In LOTR it feels like historical fiction, like Tolkien designed everything about the world down to the finest detail then wrote a story in it without making anything new up.

gallerdude 9y ago
Yeah there's some fiction where it seems the world only serves the plot, but LotR feels like it's taking one of infinite potential paths through the world created.
- macintux 9y ago
  What really struck me, upon reading (ok, scanning) the Silmarillion, was the brevity of the mention of everything that happened in LoTR. It drove home the scope of the fictional world that Tolkien created.
ianamartin 9y ago
You feel that way because that's exactly how it happened. Tolkien was a linguist first and foremost, and he created the languages used in the books for fun. Then he created the worlds and the lore for those places to exist. And only after all of that did he actually write stories set in these worlds and the languages in them. It's genuinely magic to read. And I really don't feel like anyone has matched his authenticity in the fantasy genre. I love C.S. Lewis, but the Chronicles feels very artificial. A new venue to preach his religious motives. Fun, and well done for sure. But not the same. I also love the Steven R. Donaldson series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It's a moral journey just as LoTR and Narnia are, but it's a deeply personal struggle for a guy trying to manage his own mix of character successes and failures, rather than epic characters who each represent one idealized version of a human trait. But as much as I love that series as well, I feel very much like the world was created for the story, and not at all that the world was created simply to create a world, and the story was created for it. Tolkien really did it perfectly. I don't know that he ever intended to do what he did. It could be argued that it's not really correct to call him a master at his (or any) craft because he wasn't trying to do anything like what he did. There's a certain accidental quality to it. Which is perhaps what makes it so compelling.

gallerdude 9y ago

Yeah there's some fiction where it seems the world only serves the plot, but LotR feels like it's taking one of infinite potential paths through the world created.

macintux 9y ago
What really struck me, upon reading (ok, scanning) the Silmarillion, was the brevity of the mention of everything that happened in LoTR. It drove home the scope of the fictional world that Tolkien created.

ianamartin 9y ago

You feel that way because that's exactly how it happened. Tolkien was a linguist first and foremost, and he created the languages used in the books for fun. Then he created the worlds and the lore for those places to exist. And only after all of that did he actually write stories set in these worlds and the languages in them. It's genuinely magic to read. And I really don't feel like anyone has matched his authenticity in the fantasy genre. I love C.S. Lewis, but the Chronicles feels very artificial. A new venue to preach his religious motives. Fun, and well done for sure. But not the same. I also love the Steven R. Donaldson series The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It's a moral journey just as LoTR and Narnia are, but it's a deeply personal struggle for a guy trying to manage his own mix of character successes and failures, rather than epic characters who each represent one idealized version of a human trait. But as much as I love that series as well, I feel very much like the world was created for the story, and not at all that the world was created simply to create a world, and the story was created for it. Tolkien really did it perfectly. I don't know that he ever intended to do what he did. It could be argued that it's not really correct to call him a master at his (or any) craft because he wasn't trying to do anything like what he did. There's a certain accidental quality to it. Which is perhaps what makes it so compelling.