This holiday I've spent clearing out my parents' old house. Part of this process has involved me appraising my old books (of which there are hundreds and hundreds) and trying to decide which can be thrown out and which can go to the local library or charity shop or whatever. I came across Leiber's Ill Met at Lankhmar, a collection from the early 2000s which brings together, I think, "Swords and Deviltry" and "Swords Against Death".
Re-reading these old stories, it occurs to me that you may as well not read any high fantasy series published in the last 30 years or so if you've read Leiber. I use the words "high fantasy" advisedly, because although the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories are more sword & sorcery than high fantasy, almost all high fantasy stuff that was published in the 80s, 90s and 00s was a footnote on what Leiber was writing in the 70s - from the back-story to both men (every main character in every epic fantasy series has a tragic origin story like Grey Mouser) to the sassy, just-as-good-as-you female leads who are just dim reflections of Vlana, to the innocent-girl-turned-unlikely-heroine female leads who are just dim reflections of Ivrian, to the strong themes of revenge, to the very un-Tolkienesque prevalence of magic (divided, as so often the case, into 'good magic' and 'bad magic')... It makes the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories seem like old hat, until you remember that no, it's just that most modern fantasy series were old hat before they were even conceived.
A while ago, because I felt like being controversial, I made the statement on some forum or other that I though that the Dragonlance books are probably just as good as most of the things in Appendix N. Although I said that with mischievous intentions, I also think it's true. The Dragonlance books are not great, but for a 13 year old boy they are good entertainment, and that is really the most you can say for most of the Michael Moorcock books, most of Lovecraft's fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Phillip Jose Farmer, etc. People in the D&D blogosphere might not like to admit it, but the best you can say about a lot of the writings of a lot of those writers is that they pass the time and have some interesting ideas in. Admittedly there are a number books/authors on Appendix N that I've never read, but even if those works were all hidden masterpieces it would still place Weis & Hickman somewhere in the middle-to-lower rung. In a weird sort of a way, they probably deserve more credit; I know this doesn't apply universally, but I generally think of great books as being those which have moved me emotionally - and I have to confess that I was very moved emotionally as an adolescent reading about the death of Sturm or Caramon's efforts to stop his mad brother destroying the universe. Much more so, indeed, than I ever was reading about Elric's exploits, fun though they are.
Which fantasy books are really worth reading? Given that you have a finite amount of time in your life and there are so many other books out there? There's a novel by Jonathan Franzen called Strong Motion, which like all of Franzen's books is beautifully and sensitively written, if somewhat appalling at the same time; in it there is fairly extended section which describes the evolution of the music collection of one of the characters, Dr. Reneé Seitchek. She starts off with a large collection of punk music on old cassettes, but as time goes by and she gets older and older and more jaded her collection starts to dwindle and she starts just compiling mix tapes with some of her favourite tracks on...but as time goes by and she gets older still she starts to grow tired even of them, and she ends up just taking segments of single tracks that she likes and running them together, so that she finishes off compressing all of the music in the world that she likes into a single cassette or two. I sometimes feel like that about fantasy fiction. Give me a single 1000 page volume containing the distilled essence of Vance, Wolfe, and Tolkien and that may very well do me for the rest of my days.
May the New Year bring you something that saves you from the tyranny of having to pass the time :)
ReplyDeleteI'm half way through the Demon Princes books by Jack Vance, so that should sort me out for a bit.
DeleteGames of Thrones is worth mentioning (if you somehow haven't read it). It's newer, of course, and focuses less on adventuring. (And by the time it's done it'll be closer to 10k pages than 1k.) But in terms of worldbuilding and magic use, it really scratches that same itch that Tolkien does.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, I've read it. After the third volume it's been getting more of a struggle. I think it's basically the last fantasy series I'll ever read. I have to get to the end because despite everything I MUST know what happens...but I can't imagine devoting this much time to a set of books again.
DeleteKarl Edward Wagners Kane books are out of print but awesome if you can find them.
ReplyDeleteI've only vaguely heard of them, but will see if I can find them. So much stuff is out of print.
DeleteI can't go with you on the Dragonlance thing. While I don't think any of the authors you name are high literature by any means, Farmer, Moorcock, and I think Burroughs and Lovecraft (though they're stilted by modern standards) are better writers of prose and builders of worlds. The Dragonlance books (at least the first one) reads a bit like someone is narrating a movie they're watching to you, and the world is basically names and what you bring to it from D&D. Also, Farmer and Moorcock have written things that are a better than their "Appendix N" works, which I don't think can be said of the Dragonlance authors.
ReplyDeleteYour being emotionally moved is well put, though. It may be I came to Dragonlance too late for that.
Tastes vary obviously, but here are some recent fantasy that I've liked: the gritty, backly humorous historical fantasy novels of Jesse Bullington (starting with The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart), the novels of R. Scott Bakker in the Prince of Nothing and Aspect-Emperor series, The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia, the works of China Mieville, and Finch by Jeff VanderMeer (though that's not a traditional "fantasy" by any means).
I'm with Trey. I read Dragonlance as a hoary 16 year old and, well, it seemed like it was aimed at a younger crowd; 13 seems like it's probably the sweet spot for that series. I specifically remember being underwhelmed by Raistlin's supposed Faustian crisis. It's been decades since I read it, but, as I recall, for all their efforts to portray him as having only a tenuous grasp on his soul, he always came through when the gang needed him. In the final analysis, my impression of him was nothing more than a drama queen overplaying his madness/powerlust/whatever to compensate for his feeble health and tepid interpersonal skills.
DeleteI'll also disagree about Moorcock; it's inconceivable to me that his stuff could ever be described as "good entertainment." Reading the Elric saga, for me, was like listening to a sermon delivered by a pompous, authoritarian minister whose piles are flaring up. And it only occurs to me right this instant that Raistlin was probably supposed to be an Elric ripoff.
I think there may be quite a bit of rose-tinted spectacles when it comes to Burroughs. The Barsoom books rattle along, and are certainly imaginative, but for me there's not really much to choose between them and Dragonlance - good for adolescent boys, a bit painful for adults. Lovecraft is just as, if not more, capable of writing terrible prose than he is the good stuff...I fought my way through his entire collected works last year, and discovered on coming to them as a thirtysomething that many of them were nothing like what I remembered as a teenager. There are good stories in there, and great ideas, but only about 1 in 5...
DeleteMy point is not to denigrate writers on Appendix N, though. What I'm really trying to say is that we all tend to read certain books as adolescents and think they're the bee's knees, but if you come to them outside of their sweet spot you can recognise them for what they are - entertaining, interesting, but not really moving in any sense. Maybe my problem with the Moorcock books is that I came to them first as an adult, having not read them in my teenage years.
To Timrod - Raistlin is, in my memory at least, a bit more complicated than that, especially when you come to the "Legends" series (Time of the Twins, War of the Twins, Test of the Twins). That trilogy is vastly superior to the first one, although I understand that's a relative thing. I picked them up last summer at a secondhand book shop, so I might re-read them at some point and see. Grist for the blog mill, no doubt...
Noisms, you just hit on why I will still defend Eddings against the world. Read the Elenium when I was about 14 or fifteen, at the insistence of one of the few friends I had at that age. Blitzed through the first book in a day. Now, whenever I read Eddings prose it feels like I'm putting on old pajamas: maybe they haven't held up well in an objective sense, but they're familiar and comfortable. Reread Dragonlance last spring and felt the same feeling.
DeleteThen again, I'm only 20, so I have plenty of time to get as jaded as you.
I can think of good sentences in both Moorcock and Lovecraft.
ReplyDeleteOne good sentence is worth more than all moving 13 year old boys emotionally put together because a good sentence will move you or at least make you think at every age.
If about nothing else, then at least about sentences.
I bet I could find some good sentences in the Dragonlance books. I bet you.
DeleteYOU'RE ON.
DeleteFree Yoon-Suin illustration if you succeed.
DEAL.
DeleteNothing written after the Book of the New Sun is worth reading, and not a great deal before. The Dragonlance books are emotionally childish and crammed with cliche. It is an error to class Lovecraft with the DL writers, he was much more ambitious and original and has been influential. Moorcock I would class with the DL writers emotionally and as a writer of fiction but I like to point out Moorcock was a brilliant editor and opinion shaper.
ReplyDeleteYou don't mention Howard who is terribly underrated. No one, except Eddison, could describe fights as thrillingly as he, whether Conan is fighting man, dragon or evil blob as god (Xuthal of the Dusk).
Haven't you read CA Smith's Zothique stories. Reading those listening to soundscapes and implementing such a mood in your game will have you heading for the loony bin. Powerful stuff.
I think you have to consider a fantasy writer's imagination and writing skill separately. Several fantasy writers are unsurpassed in the former but don't achieve any great heights in the latter. Still they remain essential reading.
You make a good point. that a fantasy or science fiction writer must be considered using a different set of criteria than a standard author. You can forgive a great deal when an author is original and plays to the genre.
DeleteI pretty much agree with you on the broader point about the Book of the New Sun, and on genre/originality. That's why I forgive Lovecraft. Lovecraft was not a good writer - he had a tin ear for dialogue, was overly wordy, and constantly shot himself in the foot with silly melodramatic endings. But his ideas win out.
DeleteYou make an interesting point about Moorcock as an editor, too. There are a couple of people who have influenced the genre as editors more than any writer ever could: Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, Lin Carter, Dorothy McIlwraith, etc...
Have you read CA Smith?
DeleteYes, I have a couple of his short story collections that I picked up a while back at a book market. I've dipped into them. He's certainly an interesting writer.
DeleteHmm, I'm with you on Farmer (ok as pass-time) and you're probably right about Leiber (though I have skipped most of the 80s onward fantasy) but I think Moorcock has his moments -- the Corum books (at least the first trilogy) were a lot better than Elric. The really great stuff in Appendix N is Dunsany, Anderson, Vance, Leiber, and Pratt. I could take or leave most of the rest as writers. Never got into Wolfe but keep hearing his praises. Bellairs' The Face in the frost is worth checking out too.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Dragonlance is an abomination unto the lord.
Deletei'll pick this spot as "Dragonlance is an abomination unto the lord" quite sums up my opinion of the entire series. I admit I've read a lot of poor fantasy and on the five point scale dragonlance struggles to make a three. Let's say Tolkien and Leiber is a five, and I'd put Martin at four point five, as he's read the same Medieval history books as I have. I simply can't consider dragonlance as an Anderson, Moorcock, or Zelazny, who are all solid fours. Howard might be a crazy old racist ,but he could make an image and write a good fight scene. Quite frankly, Dragonlance isn't even a Feist, if we're exploring the D &D heavy authors. It's a bit like the "Big bang theory" where you're just happy that the jokes understand D&D, rather than getting the whole thing wrong.
DeleteOh and it is unfair to compare people to Leiber. His The Big Time remains one of the definitive novels about time travel. He is one of the overlooked authors along with Poul Anderson.
I can see I'm going to have to do a series of posts on how Dragonlance is misunderstood.
DeleteI am an unrepentant partisan of the main Dragonlance novels (well, at least the Legends trilogy; the Chronicles is not nearly as good, though it's sort of necessary for getting the most out of the Legends).
ReplyDeleteIt struck me earlier this year that Raistlin/Caramon is a retelling of the Cain/Abel and Loki/Thor archetypal struggle, and I think it does this quite effectively, despite the many other flaws in the storytelling and prose.
Yes - the Raistlin/Caramon thing is what it all hinges on. That's why Legends is a much better trilogy; it focuses on the genuinely interesting characters.
DeleteInteresting thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI agree about the Dragonlance Legends; they are far better than the Chronicles; but these were also my first fantasy novels (I was only into SF before that,) so probably there's a bit of nostalgia into this. However, even to this day as a 41yo man, married and with a son, Dragonlance is my favoured D&D campaign setting. It's the place where I feel like I can run a D&D campaign in which honour, heroism, love, lust, treachery and a whole host of other human emotions and frailties can take a prominent place besides dungeon crawling and monster bashing. Something I haven't been able to reproduce in other D&D settings. The characters described in the Dragonlance novels always seemed to me very, exceedingly "human," quite the contrary of the "heroics" one expects in a D&D game. Looking forward to your Dragonlance posts :)
RE: your "worth reading" comments, I was thinking something along the same lines, but with respect to RPGs. If I had to downsize my collection to just a few pieces, what would I keep? It would probably boil down to very few pieces: AD&D 2e (with Birthright and Dragonlance campaign material,) BECMI (all the boxed sets,) Mechwarrior 2e (and Battletech,) Call of Cthulhu (Chaosium) and Alternity.