Tolkien is definitely a good source of inspiration on fantasy but no one will say that it’s underutilized. I’m curious about what other sources have contributed or could contribute to the fantasy genre.
Please mention how they would be different from Tolkien.
Bonus round: In Tolkien or any other source, what is the appeal of orks and elves? Why are they so often used? What do they represent?
Please convince us that this isn’t a homework assignment.
Earlier to him: George MacDonald, William Morris and Lord Dunsany. They were more archaic and mannered than Tolkien.
E. R. R. Eddison was contemporary; and I’ll give another shout-out to A Voyage To Arcturus by David Lindsay, one of my favourite books: usually misclassified as sci-fi.
James Branch Cabell.
Robert E. Howard. Far more brutal and violent world than Tolkein’s, where magic is essentially only used for evil.
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**James Branch Cabell. **
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Well, he’s my favourite author of all time, but I think the OP was more looking for Sword & Sorcery type stuff.
And nude girls with weapons on the cover.
Mythology of course is one of the best influences.
Elves fit roughly with most fairy tales, legends and myths. They are other but similar. They are inspired from both Norse and Celtic myths and give a glimpse to an older world removed from the human world.
Orcs, orcs are just a near human monster race. They can stand in for whatever the author wants them to. It is nicer to fight a clearly evil race rather than humans. But yet they are still similar to humans. For more modern fantasy and games the Orcs can be humanized and given more complexity.
Look through my threads and ask yourself if a 32 year old who passed the Bar in 2011 is likely to have a homework assignment.
Homer’s Illiad and Geoffrey Of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Great Britain are suitable for homework, but I like Stan Lee.
Cannot stand most of his books, but I gotta mention Piers Anthony. As much as Xanth turned gross and awful by book 3 or 4 (depending on your opinion). However, funny/humorous fantasy had largely faded away in the '50s. Anthony (or Del Rey, Anthony’s publisher) saw the missing niche and a lot of humorous/light fantasy was published afterwards.
Well, maybe you’re taking a different state bar exam.
Maybe he recently move to the Shire.
Moorcock?
Fritz Leiber (who apparently coined the term “sword and sorcery”), and had a long career writing both heroic fantasy and contemporary horror, among other things. His “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” series established a lot of the familiar tropes of the “wandering heroes seeking adventure” sub-genre. Toklien’s characters go on quests with reluctance, because the fate of Middle Earth hangs in the balance and the threat of Sauron must be opposed. Fafhrd and the Mouser go on quests because they enjoy that sort of thing, and can often earn some nice coin for doing it.
Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions. As far as I can remember, it was the first place I saw the Law vs. Chaos (as opposed to Good vs Evil) trope that so influenced D&D and Moorcock.
Also an early example of the “modern man thrust inexplicably into fantasy world” plot, and featured one of the first dwarves with thickly-accented speech.
A foundational novel for modern fantasy.
The obvious other strain is the “Sword and Sorcery” branch. Conan, Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, Elric, and so on. The protagonists are amoral ruthless tough guys who may have their own code, but they make their own rules and don’t give a shit what those pencil pushers back at headquarters say. They may save the world from the Big Bad, but they do it because the world is where they keep all their stuff.
As for the appeal of Orcs, it depends. They can be used as faceless mooks that the hero can slaughter without worrying a bit about the morality of killing them. They are used to literally dehumanize the enemy. Instead of human soldiers with their own lives, they are literal monsters who deserve nothing but death.
Or Orcs can be the proud warrior race guys. Klingons are this kind of Orc, IN SPACE. This type of Orc just represents an uncomplicated attitude toward the world, free of the social niceties that hu-mons have to put up with. But of course this is a fantasy, the real-life consequences of everyone being a proud warrior who doesn’t take any shit are never explored. It’s fun to imagine being an Orc who punches his boss in the face when the boss disrespects him. In real life your boss would also be an Orc who would kick your ass. And of course he can kick your ass, that’s what makes him the boss. So your proud and free Orcs in real life would be slaves of the tougher and more organized Orcs.
Elves are the opposite. Just as Klingons are space orcs, Vulcans are space elves. Tolkien style elves are like humans, only without mortality. They don’t age or change. But this dooms them to loss, because they live forever but the things around them don’t. The main use of elves seems to me to show what humans would be without original sin. Elves are humans without the need to struggle for survival, without the fear of death.
And there are plenty of flavors of Elves. You’ve got your Tolkien style high elves. Then you’ve got your more earthy woodland elves, who are all in-tune with nature and shit. But folklore is full of Keebler style elves, who bake cookies, or make toys all day every day.
Going to the classics, The Ring of the Nibelung has swords, sorcery, treasure, dwarfs, giants, a dragon - just about anything you could want.
Mythology, fairy tales, and music. A crapload of fantasy falls into the “young doofus on a quest to win the princess’ hand” archetype. Elves already existed long before Tolkien, e.g., the Sidhe in Ireland, or the fairies in Shakespeare. In fiction, they show up in “The King of Elfland’s Daughter”, for example. They also appear in songs like “Tam Lin” and “Thomas the Rhymer” and poetry (“La Belle Dame Sans Merci”). Tolkien kept the elves glamorous, but made them wiser and maybe a hair less prone to stealing human babies and wreaking mischief on the world. I think he generally tweaked their alignment to lawful good sometime between the Hobbit and TLOTR trilogy.
As for predecessor or contemporary fantasy that shaped fiction, CS Lewis probably popularized the “fall through a door into a parallel world” type of fantasy, although certainly Lewis Carroll and L Frank Baum got there first.
Really? Because I’m not seeing that at all in the OP. The only reference he makes is to Tolkein, who hardly belongs to the Boris Vallejo crowd.
Well, Tolkien’s quite major on warfare, whilst the greater author was more into ironism and comparative religion.
It would be impossible to cheapen Cabell, despite his writing of love and sex; whereas any good American inexpensive paperback publisher of the '70s was capable of shoving ---- through what was essentially a much-needed pre-internet source of soft-core — beautifully drawn fit girls barely dressed clutching swords or laser pistols onto Tolkien or MacDonald.
They called it cognitive dissonance.