Media disgracing itself with A Game of Thrones coverage

When the network ventures away from its instincts for real-world sociology, as it has with the vampire saga “True Blood,” things start to feel cheap, and we feel as though we have been placed in the hands of cheaters. “Game of Thrones” serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no larger or really relevant idea beyond sketchily fleshed-out notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot. If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.

-- From “A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms,” Ginia Bellafante, New York Times

I’m probably not the best candidate to come to the defense of A Game of Thrones. Despite the praise heaped on it in some quarters I don’t place George R.R. Martin’s series at the level of The Lord of the Rings, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Once and Future King, The Broken Sword, or any of Robert E. Howard’s best short fiction. I do like it well enough. It’s gripping, unpredictable, gritty fantasy, and pulls together complex plotlines and multiple point of view characters in an impressive feat of sustained storytelling. I give author George R.R. Martin plenty of props for doing something different with the genre and for spinning a well-told tale. But I’ve read better.

But you know what? Martin doesn’t deserve the level of abuse he’s getting in some quarters. If you’re a fan of the fantasy genre you ought to feel insulted by what’s going on. I’m frankly appalled at the “open minded” media outlets that have savaged the series and/or fantasy by association at every turn. I’ve already mentioned one review from The LA Times, riddled with snark and anti-fantasy bias.

The next, courtesy of Slate (hat tip to Dweomera Lagomorpha), ups the vitriol. The title of the article says it all: “Quasi-Medieval, Dragon-Ridden Fantasy Crap.” This particular piece (of shite) is probably the worst of I’ve read (or I should say tried to read—it’s scarcely readable). A rambling, self-referential, near-incoherent opening morphs to a cliché-laden rant about fantasy as a whole. Its quite difficult to even determine the subject of the reviewer's scorn. Overall it’s an all-around poor job by Slate.

This piece from The Atlantic means well, but I think it reveals a problem with traditional media outlets whose reporters are expected to be jack of all trades (but wind up being master of none). When they attempt a deep analysis of a subject they know only on the periphery, it shows. Alyssa Rosenberg posits that fantasy always has a happy ending; this is typical of someone who doesn’t really get the ending of The Lord of the Rings, and hasn’t heard of works like The Broken Sword or Eric Brighteyes. And WTF is up with calling Tolkien “a religious skeptic?” (Having been a former writer for a newspaper, the safe bet in these instances is to just report the facts, and stop trying to pass yourself off as an expert).

Next is The Guardian, which engages in yet more patronizing. It’s not as terrible as the others, but it condemns most fantasy released prior to ASOIAF as for children. Someone better tell Tom Shippey he’s been wasting his time on a children’s book. Here's a cringeworthy statement from this piece:

Fantasy is not a genre you would ever expect to describe as having "grown up", but let's at least say it's moved on since Tolkien's day. If The Lord Of The Rings is like the gateway drug of high fantasy, then today's fans crave something harder.

The latest is from the New York Times, supposedly a bastion of open-minded thought. “A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms” by Ginia Bellafante contains all the standard anti-fantasy bias (escapist, for children, etc.), but ups the criticism by introducing misogyny into the discussion: A Game of Thrones is “boys adventure” with gratuitous sex scenes added in solely to attract a female readership, Bellafante says. Huh?

The Times piece prompted an angry response from Amy Ratcliffe over on Tor.com, who comes to the defense on behalf of female fantasy fans everywhere. Says Ratcliffe: How dare anyone say that Game of Thrones is “boy fiction.” What a crude and useless phrase. I am proof that it is not the case, and I am not alone. Also? I love The Hobbit.

Amen, Amy.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Despite its immense readership and passionate fan base, fantasy continues to be treated like a turd in the punchbowl by most mainstream media. They don’t get it, great swathes of them actively hate it, and many of our “enlightened” 21st century media outlets refuse to treat it as a serious form of art. Martin must be wondering how he’s ever going to get an honest review under these circumstances.

On a side note, is anyone else tired of the ironic, cynical tone of these reviews? I guess this is what passes for hip, young, journalism these days.

A Review of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

Warning: Some spoilers ahead

Advancing a claim that something is the “first” anything is daring a slippery slope, but saying a book is the “first fantasy” is rather like taking a leap onto a Slip and Slide greased with the gelatin exudate of Cthulhu. George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women (1858) could be the first fantasy story … but then, what about Shakespeare’s The Tempest, or Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queene, or the Epic of Gilgamesh, or … you get the picture. I happen to agree with Black Gate's Matthew David Surridge that Phantastes is likely not the first pure fantasy novel, for the fact that, although it involves another world, it “never quite [leaves] the real world behind.” It’s the stuff of dreams, with a clear path back to earth.

Regardless, Phantastes is without question one of the cornerstones of the genre, and stands poised at the cusp of early works containing fantastic elements, to those that feature fully developed, independent secondary worlds.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Sale offers proof that J.R.R. Tolkien likely read Robert E. Howard

L. Sprague de Camp is not exactly known as a bastion of credibility among readers of Robert E. Howard. In his 1983 biography Dark Valley Destiny, de Camp combines research and first-person interviews with exaggeration and embellishment, speculation and psychological conjecture, and at times outright fancy to paint what is at best a suspect portrait of the man who brought us Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane and others.

Unfortunately de Camp is the only source (that I know of, at least) linking Howard with J.R.R. Tolkien. This comes via a recount of de Camp hanging out with JRRT in a memorably described encounter, as detailed in his non-fiction review Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy:

"We sat in the garage for a couple of hours, smoking pipes, drinking beer, and talking about a variety of things. Practically anything in English literature, from Beowulf down, Tolkien had read and could talk intelligently about. He indicated that he 'rather liked' Howard's Conan stories."

In J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment by Michael Drout, de Camp adds the following explanation/equivocation of the above quote:

"During our conversation, I said something casual to Tolkien about my involvement with Howard's Conan stories, and he said he 'rather liked them'. That was all: we went on to other subjects. I know he had read Swords and Sorcery because I had sent him a copy. I don't know if he had read any other Conan besides 'Shadows in the Moonlight', but I rather doubt it."

I know I’ve always been hopeful but rather skeptical of the claim that Tolkien actually said he “rather liked” the Conan stories, given that the quote’s source is, well, de Camp.

But this sale which I recently found during a web search seems to provide proof that Tolkien at least read “Shadows in the Moonlight,” aka., “Iron Shadows in the Moon.” At the very least it provides concrete evidence that he owned the book, and that de Camp sent him the copy. Cool stuff. I can't help but wonder what Tolkien thought of this bit:

With a gusty laugh he lifted her to his fierce lips.

"I'll make you Queen of the Blue Sea! Cast off there, dogs! We'll scorch King Yildiz's pantaloons yet, by Crom!"

LA Times brings the snark to A Game of Thrones preview

Every time I think I’ve moved on from the fantasy/realism debate, someone drops the gauntlet and I find myself back in the thick of the fray, giving and receiving hard blows in turn. The latest exchange stems from this preview of the upcoming HBO miniseries A Game of Thrones, courtesy of the LA Times:

Based on George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels, the 10-episode saga is a high-stakes move for HBO — an expensive leap into spectacular fantasy for a network whose reputation was built on nuanced, character-driven dramas geared toward adults.

So … ASOIAF is a risky move for HBO because it’s fantasy, and therefore cannot be possibly be nuanced, or character-driven, or geared toward adults. Good to know.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website .

Steve Tompkins, still missed

Today marks the second anniversary of the death of Steve Tompkins.

Every so often I catch myself wondering "what would Steve have thought of X?" With X being, The Hobbit filming finally begun, A Dance with Dragons publication date finally announced, the latest ridiculous essay criticizing REH on the web ... and on and on.

His voluminous and always interesting and enlightening essays are missed. And so is he. As always though you can find a treasure-trove of his work here.

“Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!”

--J.R.R. Tolkien

Falling for the allegory trap: Why J.R.R. Tolkien was not a technophobe

It’s a curious but real phenomenon that the very mention of J.R.R. Tolkien causes the Black Gate to open and the critics to issue forth, wielding blunt instruments against a black and white facsimile of The Lord of the Rings that must exist in some alternative universe from the one I inhabit. Scenting a whiff of something they don’t like, these axe-grinders turn the waters of measured Tolkien criticism into a bloody feeding frenzy where the victim, sadly, is nuance.

A few examples of these blunt criticisms include:

• Aragorn on the throne: Tolkien is a monarchist!
  
• Orcs are evil: Tolkien is a racist!

Here’s the latest: Tolkien criticized the factories of Saruman and Sauron? He’s a technophobe, and an enemy of progress!

Tolkien is often accused of having a black and white view of the world in his fiction. The irony is that his critics are quite often screamingly guilty of the real McCoy, taking up the argument that you have to be either “for” unbridled progress or “against” it. This line of reasoning was crystallized by David Brin in his 2002 essay “J.R.R Tolkien: Enemy of Progress” and recently given second life in a poorly-written fan fiction treatment: Kirill Yeskov’s The Last Ringbearer. Because Tolkien is not 100% behind modernism—that he actually dared to evince an equivocal view of “progress”— in the minds of Brin and Yeskov he’s a full-blown Luddite worthy of dismissal by the adult reader.

There’s a grain of truth here, of course. But like much of the other Tolkien criticism you encounter on the web it’s a grossly allegorized reading and a rather despicable simplification of the truth of the matter. By truth, I mean the facts of Tolkien’s life, and, more apropos to the discussion, the text of Tolkien’s fictions.

Tolkien was not anti-industry. He didn’t particularly like it, he thought industrialization and urbanization wrought as much harm as good, but he did not advocate that the world remain in some quasi-medieval stasis. He recognized progress as inevitable, but he thought it was as much cause for weeping as joy (see pollution, and urban decay, and global warming). He evinced nostalgia for his home and its mill by a steam, swept aside by progress. He expressed a calm, mature, adult dislike of some forms of progress, but not a blanket reactionary dismissal of it. That certainly does not make him an enemy of progress, like Brin famously and wrong-headedly declared.

There are plenty of examples of Tolkien’s nuanced, lukewarm views of technology. For example, he actually welcomed the idea of a movie made out of LOTR (imagine that—he liked moving pictures on a screen as a medium for stories, not just ancient scrolls read by the light of a candle!) He wanted to see his books published and distributed (not locked up in monasteries and preserved by monks for a privileged minority ruling class—wow! I didn’t know that! He saw the value of publishing companies and publishing and distribution technology! Shocking!) He was in many ways an enlightened thinker: a college professor whose prime years were spent as a philologist, seeking out the objective truths of words, their derivations and meanings, in a hard, lonely search for truth and objective meaning that the great figures of the enlightenment (perhaps even Brin) would have appreciated.

This viewpoint is also to be found in the books. The Rings of Power, if you consider them a form of “technology,” had their good and useful purposes--until corrupted by the One Ring, which you might call absolute power/unbridled technology (whose altars right-thinkers like Brin and Yeskov prostrate themselves before). The creations of the Noldor Elves in The Silmarillion were wonderful and beautiful, an elevation of civilization. Tolkien himself believed that sub-creation was an exalted right of mankind. But his beliefs were tempered with the apparently audacious notion that innovation should be coupled with restraint.

At the end of The Lord of the Rings the Third Age draws to an end. A time of magic and wonder passes from the world, and the Fourth Age is heralded in. Middle-earth passes to a time of men, and systematized education, and modern conveniences, and beneficial science. Tolkien, even in his fantasy world of Middle-Earth, knew that life went on, and must go on, for better or worse. But just like life, he also believed that change is not always for the better. In Tolkien’s time mechanized warfare, industrial pollution, and the threat of atomic annihilation offered compelling proof.

But apparently this nuanced view is not enough for some of his critics. A sad glance over his shoulder at the receding past? Reactionary! His mates and best friends mowed down by machine guns and choking on mustard gas and blown up by high explosive and shrapnel? That’s reality, deal with it! A dislike for mechanized warfare and the minds and factories that think up and churn out infernal weapons? How dare he! A preference for horses instead of the belching smoke and noise and stink of motor cars? Technophobe!

I’d like to ask Brin and Yeskov: Is this viewpoint really so hard to understand? Is nuanced discussion dead? Must we throw wide our arms and unequivocally embrace every aspect of technology and urbanization? Must we kneel before the altar of progress instead of expressing a simple preference for fields instead of parking lots, or trees instead of skyscrapers? Do we have to “pick a side,” or can a middle ground exist, like we find in Tolkien?

Apparently not. History is “written by the victors” (what a tired, galling cliché) says Laura Miller in her fawning "review" of The Last Ringbearer on Salon.com, and so Tolkien’s mistaken views apparently require “correction” for a modern audience.

The Desert of Souls, a review

“We should talk more, you and I,” he said, “about storytelling.”

–Howard Andrew Jones, The Desert of Souls

The Desert of Souls is the debut novel of Black Gate magazine managing editor Howard Andrew Jones. About ¼ of the way into it, I thought aloud: You’ve got to be kidding me. A debut novel? Jones’ Arabian Nights-style adventure has the polish of a cut diamond, and the finish of a veteran author.

The Desert of Souls is a proper fantasy, albeit placed in a historical setting, so there’s magic, undead monsters, god-like snakes, and more. I haven’t encountered a djinn on the printed page since my old AD&D days, and was pleasantly flooded with memories of Oasis of the White Palm as I read. The Desert of Souls features two heroes, Dabir and Asim, who spend large part of the book in near-death situations in pursuit of the wizard Fifouz, who plots to visit an ancient curse on a modern city.

Jones has an excellent sense of pace and an affinity for a tale properly told. Not rushed, but told as a story should be told, as though novelist and the reader were drawn up around a campfire with the whole night ahead for stories. A lot happens in The Desert of Souls but it’s not told breathlessly; the pace is languid at times, quick at others in Asim’s first person narrative. It’s also unabashedly optimistic, a welcome relief in these often dark times of current fantasy offerings.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.