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Discuss this New Article by @Thande here.
I like how you and Harry Turtledove appear to have a surprisingly similar backstory (his Videssos series began as a teenage fanfiction of a Roman legion appearing in Fourth Age Gondor, then changed the setting to a fantasy world heavily inspired by the Byzantines, i.e. the unspoken irony is that the Romans are seeing a version of their own future yet think it alien).I have done that myself, especially as a teenager where I did a Byzantine storyline that had a few twists derived from 'The Lord of the Rings'. The siege of Constantinople in 1453 rewritten as a homage to Tolkien's siege of Minas Tirith in LOR, with the Ottomans in the attacking role of Mordor and 'Aragorn' and 'Theoden' figures with relief armies coming to the rescue then a restoration of the Empire like the end of LOR and Aragorn/ Elessar's reign. But to succeed you have to do it subtly, so that it takes time for readers to notice the link; it's when it's obvious that it starts to jar, for me anyway.
There are two separate problems there to my mind; I disliked Merlin yet I could tolerate the very similar Atlantis (again, rather ephemeral connections to Greek mythology) and part of it was a problem I sometimes mention that some writers think simply throwing in vague references to Arthurian mythology is somehow inherently profound or elevates their work (as opposed to writing a work that's explicitly about Arthurian mythology). In fact I mention it in this article as it appears in "The Wheel of Time" but another good example if Jack Campbell's "Lost Stars" series - seems to show up more often from American writers, maybe because the Arthurian setting seems more distant and grand to them. Even Stephen King does it in his Dark Tower series.One of the biggest disappointments for me in this regard was the 2010s BBC series of 'Merlin', where the characters' 'back-stories' , profiles, and actions seemed to have little to do with past Arthurian fiction and more to do with American super-hero fiction and TV series. Imaginative, maybe, but it felt like an 'alien' intrusion of an entirely different genre and rather spoilt the show for me. A talking dragon with who Our Hero exchanges barbed conversation, not seen in any past Arthurian media, seemed a bit too like Bilbo and Smaug in 'The Hobbit' to be comfortable ...
Is your difference in attitude between those cases perhaps influenced by how I think you've mentioned you're less familiar with Greek mythology so it does seem a bit more obscure and profound to you?There are two separate problems there to my mind; I disliked Merlin yet I could tolerate the very similar Atlantis (again, rather ephemeral connections to Greek mythology) and part of it was a problem I sometimes mention that some writers think simply throwing in vague references to Arthurian mythology is somehow inherently profound or elevates their work (as opposed to writing a work that's explicitly about Arthurian mythology). In fact I mention it in this article as it appears in "The Wheel of Time" but another good example if Jack Campbell's "Lost Stars" series - seems to show up more often from American writers, maybe because the Arthurian setting seems more distant and grand to them. Even Stephen King does it in his Dark Tower series.
This is quite possible, I had a similar reaction to Thor getting Norse mythology wrong (or rather, ultimately, Marvel Comics decades earlier doing it).Is your difference in attitude between those cases perhaps influenced by how I think you've mentioned you're less familiar with Greek mythology so it does seem a bit more obscure and profound to you?
(I never actually watched Atlantis, the only time I can remember it coming up irl was when Dr Greenslade complained in a Further Maths class he'd tried using it as a way of teaching some Maths the Greeks had done to lower school people to be down with the kids only to find none of them had watched it)
This is why, though Brandon Sanderson has his flaws, I'll defend him: someone who sets out from the start to write a ten-book doorstopper fantasy series, and thus far is on book 4 and is writing it faster than I can review it.You mention in the article that you never got to experience the frustration the fans did who bought the books as they came out.
I came in at Book Two (because it was in the library, I actually read that one first, something I seemed to have a habit of doing because Colchester Library had an infuriating habit of only having Book Two in any given series).
I liked it, managed to get hold of Book 1 on an inter-library loan. The too-obvious Lord of the Rings parallels would have made me bounce off Book 1 if I hadn't already read Book 2, but with 1 and 2 together, it was good enough to get me to be willing to buy the concluding volume of the trilogy in paperback when it came out.
Boy, was I naive.
75% of the way through The Dragon Reborn, I was thinking to myself, "He's going to have to get a move on to resolve all these plot lines in this book."
Twenty years later, I was still waiting for the plot lines to be resolved.
In the intervening time, I finished University, joined the RAF, completed a full career in the RAF and retired from it, got married, had children, and sent one of them off to University.
The word "frustration" is possibly a bit light for what he did.
And, of course, George RR Martin took a look and thought "Hey, what a brilliant idea."
I got into his series in 1998. We're probably still a decade short of him finishing.
The one good aspect of Robert Jordan dragging things out was that he inoculated me against buying any other doorstopper series until the author had actually finished.The word "frustration" is possibly a bit light for what he did.
And, of course, George RR Martin took a look and thought "Hey, what a brilliant idea."
I got into his series in 1998. We're probably still a decade short of him finishing.
I've always seen Discworld as something that lacks any sense of comparison to the rest of the fantasy genre, partly for that reason.Is Pratchett the only fantasy author with a series in the 80s/90s who didn't go for forever-serialised doorstoppers?
Is your difference in attitude between those cases perhaps influenced by how I think you've mentioned you're less familiar with Greek mythology so it does seem a bit more obscure and profound to you?
Like I've told you before - in the UK "you support teaching Greek and Roman mythology in school" = "you must like old-fashioned education and thus be really really right wing". Heck, Boris Johnson's first shadow cabinet position basically revived that argument.You have no idea how annoyed I am when I'm talking to Max and I mention Roman history or Greek mythology in an offhand manner and then I find myself having to explain for half an hour. To prevent Max being all apologetic about it, this is mostly annoyance at myself for assuming this is taught as a matter of course at multiple times in a school curriculum, and a bit at Sweden's system for considering the Greek and Roman antiquity do not have the same relevance to them as they did parts of Europe actually under the Empire.
Roman & Greek mythology being "This Is Right Wing" is weird for me to hear because we did that in primary school when I was in Years 2 to 4, so I know it just as That Topic That Wasn't Dinosaurs Or Egyptians.
You have no idea how annoyed I am when I'm talking to Max and I mention Roman history or Greek mythology in an offhand manner and then I find myself having to explain for half an hour. To prevent Max being all apologetic about it, this is mostly annoyance at myself for assuming this is taught as a matter of course at multiple times in a school curriculum, and a bit at Sweden's system for considering the Greek and Roman antiquity do not have the same relevance to them as they did parts of Europe actually under the Empire.
I remember being called gay in elementary school by classmates because I was reading a book about ancient Greece with aforementioned nude statues.I had to take the dust cover off my mum's old book of Greek myths I took to school because of the nude statue on it.
Not that the teachers had any issues you understand.
I've mentioned before that my secondary school managed to feel like the left-wing stereotype, while actually insisting you could only do French and never teaching Islam in RE (we did Hinduism twice, Buddhism and Sikhism as well as Christianity - I think this was caused by the curriculum changing while I was doing it so Islam moved around and we never did it).I mean my dad learned latin and he very much did not go to a posh school.
The stereotype of right wing views on education is what we taught in 1910 is correct and can't be changed whereas the left are the ones going but isn't mandarin more useful than latin and islam more useful than Greek mythology?