Yesterday I told somebody about Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, calling it the “Lord of the Rings” of hard science fiction.
I think this is a valid analogy for several reasons:
[ul]
[li]It is a definitive example of the (sub)genre.[/li][li]In scale and influence it surpasses all previous works in the (sub)genre.[/li][li]All subsequent works by Robinson will be judged relative to it.[/li][/ul]
Do I have the right criteria?
And what are the "Lord of the Rings"es for some other literary genres?
I’d argue that Peter Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy has surpassed this one. Not by much though. The suck-ass ending is the only thing that brings it down.
William Gibson’s Neuromancer is probably the LotR of cyberpunk. Other authors might surpass it occasionally, but Gibson himself never has, and it’s the de facto benchmark for anything in the genre.
Voicing a sure to be popular opinion, I can’t understand why Robinson is even published. The writing is fine, but after I finish a book, I can’t understand why anyone bothered writing it. No memorable lines, no memorable plot, no memorable characters.
I’ve quite a few negative things to say about Lord of the Rings, which I’ve read over a dozen times, but what draws me back is the attainments it does have.
First, the Mars trilogy is medium SF, somewhere in the Niven area, not hard SF IMO. You want Hard SF, try Robert Forward or James Hogan (before the brain eater got him) or Stephen Baxter or Hal Clement. KSR’s stuff doesn’t feel like hard SF (for one, he focuses on the characters far more than the science and for another, he tosses in a major plot point that simply wouldn’t work in real life: see the rec.arts.sf.written FAQ for more info. In regular SF, you’re allowed gimmes like that. For Hard SF, you’re not. ) There’s a flavor that the above authors have that Robinson doesn’t. What’s the LotR of Hard SF? I don’t think there is one. Clement is arguably the grandfather of the genre, but none of his novels had the huge public impact that LotR did.
The next question is: Is KSR’s Mars trilogy the LotR of the “Terraform the Planet Novel”?
Lord of the Rings was the first. It invented the genre of modern fantasy. (Or at least affected the public conciousness)
Before LotR, there was light fantasy like Thorne Smith and …um…I dunno what to call stuff like E.R. Eddison or James Branch Cabell. Their stuff isn’t the same as LotR though. LotR was groundbreaking.
Most people will agree that Neuromancer is the LotR of Cyperpunk. Yeah there were trickles of cyberpunk before: Greg Bear’s Bloodmusic (I have no idea why this is considered cyberpunk), some of Rudy Rucker’s early stuff, the movie TRON all touched on similar themese but it was Neuromancer that defined the genre and made the public impact.
Dune is out. It didn’t define and wasn’t groundbreaking. It was certainly important to SF and lots of people love it, but while it covered old ground well, it didn’t break new ground. Maybe…hmmm…wasn’t there a huge chunk of ecological novels after Dune? Lemme reconsider Dune.
I’d say that the critera should be:[ul]
[li]It is an early and groundbreaking work in the (sub)genre, or one that completely revitalizes a defunct genre.[/li]
[li] It spins off tons of imatators trying to cash in on the success of the book. (If it doesn’t, it doesn’t have the public impact that LotR had. After LotR was published in paperback in the US, book publishers actually started fantasy lines of books. )[/li]
[li]It is a definitive example of the (sub)genre, the one that everyone points to when the (sub)genre is discussed. [/li]
[li]All subsequent works by all other authors in the subgenre will be judged relative to it. (“IN THE STUNNING TRADITION OF LORD OF THE RINGS!”)[/li][/ul]
Actually that last bit (“IN THE STUNNING TRADITION…”) may be the key. Unless you see lots of imatator books with that tagline, you haven’t achieved the public awareness that a LotR did.
By that critera, Guns of the South by Turtledove is the LotR of Alternate history. While the occasional alternate history was published here and there, it wasn’t a disctinct subgenre until Turtledove. Now, you can’t turn around in a bookstore without bumping into an alternate history novel and while now you get books “IN THE STUNNING TRADITION OF HARRY TURTLEDOVE”, for quite a while, before Turtledove surpassed himself it was “IN THE STUNNING TRADITION OF GUNS OF THE SOUTH” on all the spin-off novels that cropped up afterwards.
Neuromancer is the LotR of Cyberpunk. “IN THE STUNNING TRADITION OF NEUROMANCER (or GIBSON)” was everywhere in the mid-80s.
Mars didn’t spin off imitators or radically revitalize the “terraform a planet” genre which had been around at least back to the '50s with Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky and I believe it goes back further. I haven’t seen tons of “terraform the planet” novels (Bova had one, but I think it came out concurrently with Red Mars).
I think that people can easily overuse the “LotR of…” phrase. Frankly, outside of LotR, Neuromancer and Guns of the South, I can’t think of any other SF examples.
Mysteries- Especially the recurrent character mystery/social commentary where the location is a key element in itself.
If you have never read one of these novels go for it.
Most influence of the Mystery genre since Hammet, Chandler and Ross McDonald, moved it to completely new places and types of mysteries. Dick Francis would be another one to add in as well.
I say, absolutely not. Those are great movies, but there certainly were cheesy monster movies WAY before those three came out. You might be able to say they were the LOTR of cheesy monster spoof movies.
I don’t usually like to disagree with Fenris, but I think he’s confusing true influence with marketing copy.
Alternate history has a long and glorious tradition in sf, long before Turtledove ever came along. The greatest of all alternate history books is certainly Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and that came out in 1961.
Yes, Turtledove has built a career on alternate history, but there is no way the genre belongs to him.
I’m taking the LOTR example stated in the OP to mean the definitive, the highest point, the best example of the genre; rather than the absolute first to do so. As the OP says:
IMHO, Raimi and Campbell’s collective works do all three. But perhaps “cheesy” is a good qualifier - I don’t know if I’d find, say, Lon Cheney’s Phantom or other monster movies less cheesy than the Evil Dead trilogy, but others might, and you’re right, these other movies were in all probability meant seriously, whereas the Evil Deads most definitely weren’t. My bad.
Therefore…I nominate the Evil Dead trilogy as the LOTR of cheesy monster movies.
[sub]I’d meant to jump all over this, but damn, it’s such a valid point. Nutz.[/sub]
Snicks
No, it doesn’t belong to him, but he’s the one who brought it to the mainstream public’s conciousness and created the seperate sub-genere. Varley did a “man’s mind inside a computer” story long before Neuromancer, but cyberpunk didn’t get “genre” status until him. Same with AH.
And Man in the High Castle isn’t the best, Lest Darkness Fall is.
You’re wrong, but at least you didn’t mention the detestable Bring the Jubilee as all too many do. [insert smiley here]
We’re fighting over competing versions of what makes LotR LotR. It wasn’t the first such fantasy and it sure isn’t the best fantasy ever written. But it does define the genre.
So Turtledove similarly isn’t first and by your own admission isn’t the best. Does he define the genre? Not for me, but he’s popular as all get out. Never won any big award though, if that means anything, and I think it should.
I’ve gotta go with Exapno on this one. There are many, many alternate history books and stories that pre-date Turtledove, some of which became bona-fide classics (Man in the High Castle), some of which became best-sellers (Fatherland by Robert Harris), some of which are just plain fun (A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! by Harry Harrison) and some of which are just plain weird (For the Want of a Nail by Robert Sobel, which is written as a dry “non-fiction” history book).
So Turtledove did not write the first or best or even biggest-selling alternate history book. What he did do is show the publishing world that alternate history could be a marketable sub-genre unto itself. He’s not the Tolkien of alternate history–he’s the Terry Brooks.
Exactly the sort of hopeless answer that I’d expect from someone who’d pick Man in the High Castle over Lest Darkness Fall. Turtledove has won the Sidewise Award like a billion times. Maybe a billion and one. (Well, at least twice.)
So there.
And his Household Gods (co-written with Judith Tarr) is stunningly good.
Isn’t Douglas Adams’ HHGTTG the LotR of science fiction humour/spoofs? Personally I enjoy Pratchett’s DiscWorld more, but it does seem like Adams is known by EVERYONE.
