(urth) Gummed-Up Works or Got Lives?

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

My good friend David Bratman, who is one of the world's leading
experts on Tolkien (he writes the annual review of the JRRT secondary
literature), posits that a primary difference between "high" fantasy
and S/S is that "high" fantasy is "about" the milieu, where S/S is
"about" the character.

I don't know if I accept this distinction, but I notice it in
marketing -- high fantasy series tend to be called by the name of
their world (even crappy high fantasy like "the Shannara series") or
something about it ("the Wheel of Time"), while S/S series tend to be
called by the name of their main character (the Conan series, the
Fafhrd-and-the-Grey-Mouser series, etc.)

At any rate, if real, it suggests that Wolfe's character-centric
science fantasy definitely owes summat to S/S.

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes