(urth) tolkien's successors

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

Turin -

What a fascinating discussion!

I'd say that Tolkien actually wrote two novels, _tLotR_ and _The Hobbit_,
though the latter is in its original intent a novel for children. (I exclude
_Mr. Bliss_ and _Roverandom_, like "Farmer Giles" and "Smith" and all,
for reasons of length.)

I'm also fascinated by the idea of Wolfe as the heir to Tolkien - certainly 
there is a lot of JRRT "influence," though well mulched rather than in
overt homage and reference, in GW's work. And certainly they have 
some themes in common - in particular, they both put a lot of energy into 
the question of what it means to live a virtuous life in a radically Fallen 
world. 

Regarding Clarke et al - you might like the Panshins' book _World 
Beyond the Hill: Science Fiction and the Quest for Transcendence_,
which is a fairly intensive (but quite readable) study of the mystical
impulse in SF. 

Yes, the Catholic narrative is ... I won't say "stronger," but "more
overt" in Wolfe than in Tolkien. The latter hides a lot of crypto-
Catholicism in his work; for example, the day he chooses as the
New Year for the Fourth Age is the Feast of the Annunciation -
which was long celebrated in Britain as the start of the New Year, 
probably as a survival of the equinoctial festival of Beltane. And
Elbereth seems to be intended as an "image" of the BVM.

I don't know whether JRRT read _Childhood's End_ either, but I
recall in one of the late _Letters_ he mentions that he'd been
reading a lot of "American science fiction" and I _believe_ he
mentions a particular fondness for Asimov ... a writer who doesn't
really figure into the "transcendence" thematic the way Clarke,
Herbert, and Heinlein do. (I exclude Le Guin, though I love her
work dearly, from this because her mysticism - if it even _is_ 
mysticism - is of another tradition entirely.)

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I don't think the hierodules are "the product
of evolution," at least as a purely "natural" process - don't we learn 
that they were (to use David Brin's term) "uplifted" by humans?

I'd love to know how you see cyberpunk as "in the same [vein?] as
Tolkien." If there is transcendence in most cp work, it is purely a
machine transcendence, a Godel-Turing transcendence. (Perhaps 
the most important exception is Sterling's little chiller "Swarm,"
about a species that -- but that's a serious spoiler.) 

Regarding Ea and entropy, I don't think JRRT would think of 
"entropy" or "winding down" at all. Rather, he would speak in
terms of Ea as having experienced the Fall; in a Fallen world,
all things come in time to ruin unless the Creator intervenes (in
the form of the Savior).

> Id like people's ideas about who they think is working in the
> same vein as Tolkien.

Strangely, the first name that comes to my mind is Tim Powers.
Tim builds complex historical models and sets novels in and around 
them. His method is fascinating: he reads a lot of history and finds 
things that puzzle him, then tries to find an explanation for them. 
For example, his novel _Declare_ is rooted in a detailed study of 
the British and Soviet secret services in WW2 and after, but to make 
sense of their behavior (and especially of Kim Philby and his even 
stranger father), he winds up invoking something mysterious and 
deadly on Mount Ararat. Similarly, _Last Call_  asks why Bugsy 
Siegel built his palace in the desert; change the word "desert" 
to "wasteland" and you find yourself involved with the Fisher-king, 
which brings in the Tarot, and thus the mystical game of poker... 
The point being, most of Tim's novels are ... not even "alternate" 
histories, so much as _secret_ histories, quite rich with meaning.

Dan Simmons, at least in his "Hyperion Cantos," mines a future 
quite as rich as that of Wolfe's Briah cycle. I've only read the
set of four books once and don't feel qualified to say much more,
but I think that he's operating in Tolkien-ish territory here - and
in Tim Powers territory in _Carrion Comfort_. (Simmons is not as 
good a writer as Tolkien, Wolfe, or Powers, though; I was turned 
off by one of his novels in just a few pages, because the narrator 
kept telling us that he could tell how bad a place Calcutta was the 
minute he set foot there, thus reducing the book to an idiot plot - 
"If you know it's so bad, schmendrick, why don't you just hop the 
next flight out?")

Le Guin does not (to my mind) usually run to the level of 
historical worldbuildilng of Tolkien et al, but there are one
and a half exceptions. 

The one clear exception is _Always Coming Home_, which I once 
described this way: "Imagine if, instead of _The Lord of the Rings_, 
Tolkien had published a hugely expanded set of appendices, 
with the text of _The Hobbit_ interspersed among them in several 
parts, and then summed up the War of the Ring in a memo near 
the end." There is absolutely no narrative reason why _ACH_ 
should work, but it does.

The half-exception is the Earthsea cycle, whose history 
developed long after the world itself was fairly solid in its 
creator's mind; part of the _Tales of Earthsea_ is  devoted to 
stories explaining how various aspects of Archipelagan culture 
got to be the way it was at the beginning of the original trilogy.

Cheers,

--Dan'l
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