[power to the J]

Originally Posted by rai

Let me say I think Tolkien is the king of fantasy authors. I think he laid the groundwork and the credit he gets he is due.

Obviously, there are lots of popular works of fantasy that are obvious Tolkien knock-offs, but lots of fantasy does not, so I don't think he laid down any 'groundwork.' Also, what he wrote was not utterly original, since he took lots of ideas from ancient mythologies.

I'm wondering what makes Tolkien better than the newer authors.

This is obviously your own opinion, and it is something that I strongly disagree with. Tolkien's style was flawed and featured too much BS when if he would've got to the story instead of telling me the history of some family that I never hear about again, I would've enjoyed it much more. I agree with the person who said that Eddings is better than Tolkien, and I will even go so far as to say that Robert Jordan is better as well.

I wonder if it's something different now for example GRRM needs 5000 pages while TLOTR and the Hobbit were about 1500 pages total. I think maybe Jordan's Wheel will be over 10,000 pages.

True, but read chapter one of The Fellowship of the Ring and then chapter one of A Game of Thrones, and see if you can honestly tell me that LOTR moves faster. While reading LOTR, I often find myself skimming and ishing that the story would just get going already. I've never thought that while reading ASoIaF. LOTR would've been way better if 10% of it was cut. There are too many details that aren't needed, and certain elements introduced that end up coming to nothing. Also, LotR is simpler than WoT or ASoIaF. LotR has a simple plot when compared to the other two, and both of the ladder are far more epic and complex.

I'm not saying all fantasy is long, but it seems like there is a lot of long fantasy out now. Tolkien didn't write 20+ books like todays authors. I know Stephen King is a different class but he's got like 40+ books.

Why does that seem to matter to you so much? It isn't like just because a story takes a lot of words to tell it needs to be slow. For all of the shortness you praise LotR for, it is slow moving and something of a chore to read. Also, Stephen King's works, while related, are not all about the same thing, or even telling the same story. He has DT, which is 7 books, and is another example of "modern fantasy" that is of a much higher quality than LotR (for same reasons as mentioned above).

I wonder if it's much more formula or more of a buisness today than it was in the past or if the past times were similar and just some guys like Tolkien stand out.

I don't know how much fantasy you read, because there is lots of it that are not about things from LotR, and just because many of the popular fantasy sagas today are knock offs, (I agree with you on that much, I guess) that doesn't mean that ALL fantasy is.

Maybe it's his books were a landmark like Herbert's Dune or some other books that people relate to and judge other books by.

Books are constantly compared to LotR, but I don't know why. Like I've said, I feel that today's fantasy is far better than Tolkien's, and I think that people just don't think of fantasy as anything but rip-offs.

Anyway, that's my two cents.