There’s always the “Far Kingdoms” books by Chris Bunch. They are The Far Kingdoms, The Warrior’s Tale, Kingdoms Of The Night, and The Warrior Returns.
Thanks for all the input, folks. I think I’ll try the “Dark Materials” stuff first when I get a chance.
Psychoanalyst Robert Lindsner’s book The Fifty-Minute Hour recounts a fascinating case history in the chapter entitled “The Jet-Propelled Couch.” A patient identified by the pseudonym of “Kirk Allen,” a government-employed physicist, was sent to him for treatment during WWII. According to Lindsner’s account, Allen was regarded as necessary for the success of a classified military project; although Lindsner did not know it at the time, he later realized that it must have been the Manhattan Project. However, Allen’s productivity had begun to slacken off, and when confronted by his superiors, he abstractly promised to try spending more time “on this planet.”
During his treatment, Allen revealed that he was living a double life: as a scientist on Earth, and also as the leader of a distant interstellar civilization to which he could project himself telepathically at will. Lindsner eventually traced the origin of this alternate identity to a pulp science fiction series which Allen had read as a child, the hero of which coincidentally happened to share the same name. Allen had an extremely isolated childhood that encouraged the development of an extraordinarily detailed inner fantasy life.
At Lindsner’s prompting, Allen produced thousands of pages of documents-- historical accounts, star maps, essays on xenobiology, starship drive diagrams, alien languages-- all transcriptions he had made from this other civilization’s library archives. Supposedly he had amassed filing cabinets full of this material, as well as accounts of his own various extrasolar adventures. In an attempt to shake Allen’s faith in his experiences, Lindsner started poring through this material, searching for contradictions that he could use to point out its unreality. However, over time, Lindsner became so fascinated by the material that he unconsciously began to collaborate with Allen, seeking out explanations for any inconsistencies in the texts.
During one therapy session, as he discussed the material with Allen, Lindsner sensed that his patient was uncharacteristically subdued. Eventually Allen confessed that he had lost his belief in his fantasy world some weeks previously, but had kept up the pretense because Lindsner was so enthusiastic about it!
The point of this account for Lindsner was its value as a cautionary tale about identifying too strongly with one’s patient. However, I’ve always been deeply frustrated by the account, which paints such a compelling portrait of a vastly intricate science fiction universe that has in all likelihood been totally and irrevocably lost.
(Or perhaps not totally lost-- while searching for details to refresh my memory about this article, I ran acrossthis intriguing article which offers the hypothesis that “Kirk Allen” may have actually been Paul Linebarger, AKA Cordwainer Smith.
We have gamers here who mention RuneQuest, but not “Empire of the Petal Throne”?
I remember buying the RPG back in '76 and was enormously impressed with the detail. I had just read Rings for the first time, and coming across this felt like falling down the rabbit hole.
Robin Hobb’s three trilogies sorta qualify. The action in the nine books take place over a period of about 20 years, and there’s an Elderlings novella in one of the Legends anthologies that goes farther back. I’d like an Elderlings book, but I’ll be satisfied with hints of them here and there.
I’m not certain this is what you’re looking for, but Henry Darger wrote a 15,000+ page novel he Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with hundreds if not thousands of watercolor/collage paintings and a detailed fictional chronology of the warring nations. Darger’s work was discovered by his long-term landlords only shortly before his death in 1973, and documented in the film [url=In the Realms of the Unreal (2004) - IMDb]In the Realms of the Unreal/url].
Stranger
Though he didn’t author a novel (*), Greg Stafford probably qualifies. He began to work on the world of Glorantha ( Glorantha - Wikipedia , for some reason I can’t hyperlink) that he later used as a background for the pen and paper RPG Runequest.
He published an awful lot of material about this world, its history, its cultures, and more importantly its myths. The afficionados of the game, like the fans of Tolkiens, could go on for hours about the subtleties of the Orlanthi culture, the origins of the city of Prax, the cult of the Red Moon or the exact nature of heroic quests (yes, I was an afficionado too, though not to the same extent as many others I knew).
The mythology in particular was extremely intricate. An especially interesting (IMO) element of it was the fact that, like many real mythologies, and contrarily to all the fictionnal ones I know about, it wasn’t clear-cut at all. Besides being very complex, it was often obscure, had different perspectives depending on the point of view, and myths contradicting each other were the norm rather than the exception.
(*) On second thought, if I’m not mistaken, there has been a couple books, similar in nature, though probably not in quality, to Tolkien’s “Unfinished Tales” about some particular events of Glorantha’s history.
For both of you who mentioned Henry Darger, don’t forget that he only finished one book. He wrote a sequel which, I believe, was nearly 10,000 pages as well, but never was finished.
I too would recommand “Earthsea” (I especially liked the third tome, but not so much the second one), though the setting isn’t remotely as developped as in Tolkien.
Huh? Someone else thought about Glorantha? I’m amazed.
I read one of these books and was enthralled (I hope I’m not mistaken about the author/book. It’s in this universe that “demons” [sort of] like to mess up with human beings with grim outcomes, right?). Unfortunately, when I wanted to buy the other books, none were available anymore over here. Dark, grim, but great.
Once again, not nearly as detailled as Middle Earth, though.
I meant : "He began to work on the world of Glorantha ** during the late 60s’ ** "
That really doesn’t sound like any description of Darkover I’ve ever come across (except for one short story set IIRC in the Dry Towns).
Darkover’s about an abandoned planet of far-future colonists on a marginal world who develop amazing psychic powers with the aid of blue glowy stones and a little space-elf-crossbreeding , and chronicles their eventual re-integration into Galactic society.
More or less.
With lesbian warrior women thrown in for good measure.
I would add, I do not recommend reading any MZB, but not because of her writing (which I quite liked as a teen) - I’ve never felt the same about her since finding out about her enablement of her husband Walter Breen’s pederasty.
Different genre, but I’m fond of the level of creation in A.S. Byatt’s Possession. The time and place are real (Victorian and Modern England), but - like Tolkien - she has “invented” and “borrowed” extensively from mythology (namely, the Brittany myth of Melusina) written her own poetry in character to tell the story.
King of Sartar was written by Stafford as an ersatz history of Dragon Pass and the princedom of Sartar – and it’s just as dense and complex as anything of Tolkien’s that I’ve seen. He’s got a bunch of “pre-finished works”, and apparently there are some not-quite-finished novels too (about Siglat’s Dream, Arkat, the Harmastsaga, etc.). Robin Laws is also supposed to be writing a book.
You can see a lot of the background information gathered on line over at glorantha.com
That’d be MAR Baker’s stuff. I mentioned Man of Gold since the OP was interested in books, not games, but I see your wiki link mentions three whole books I wasn’t aware of. Thanks!
You may be thinking of the books by MZB’s brother, Paul Zimmer – the Dark Border novels. They, too, steal names from what most people would recognize as the Cthulu mythos (e.g., Hastur, Lake of Hali, etc.), although the Dark Border has quite a bit more of that “Cthulu vibe” than Darkover ever did.
Does Gene Roddenberry count as an author? Given that he wrote a pretty substantial ‘series bible’ for his tv shows, not to mention wrote the pilot episode(s).
China Mieville’s Bas-Lag trilogy (Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Iron Council, with some related short stories) has some very intriguing world-building. Highly recommended but not for the faint of heart. Mieville could, if he wished, easily write novels in this setting for the rest of his career and not exhaust its possibilities, IMO. And I’d keep reading them.
Psst. Post #31.
Not to mention that he’s borrowed substantial chunks of it from Arthurian legendry, the Christian bible, and Tolkien, IMHO.
You cannot fake the “I’m doing this for myself, we don’t need no stinkin’ marketability” attitude. In JRRT’s case, we get a single built world. Nobody does it better.
There are other authors with the attitude, but not the one-world focus.
I get the some of the same feeling about Lolita, for instance–written damn the torpedoes without much hope for publication not even in a properly prurient way and elitist and artsy to boot. Nabokov refused to change a word of it. He loved it so much it lived.
A lot of the fantasy titles recommended are worthwhile–Gormenghast meets the huge/unpublishable during most of his life/obsessed author criteria too–but JRRT-type lavish care will not be there in most work product written to sell. It may be very good but in a different way.