I should be finishing this article, but...
...I have another day, and I'm using the excuse of needing to verify some quotations before I go on.
There is delicious Cordwainer Smith online, link courtesy the FreeSFOnline project. pantlessjohnny, I did finish "Mark Elf", and it is indeed the shit. This stuff, in combination with the massive amount of stuff online at Project Gutenberg is making me again seriously consider picking up a Sony Reader. The thought of having all of that amazing stuff on something less than a centimeter thick is unbelievably sexy in ways I can't even describe.
And I am mostly copying this from an email sent to a couple of people, since I thought a few here might be interested: I was at Borders looking for a gift for a friend and noticed this: TALES BEFORE TOLKIEN: THE ROOTS OF MODERN FANTASY. It's a short story collection, all pre-Tolkien fantasy, some of which he listed as specific influences, others that was just in the public consciousness when he was writing.
This is the TOC:
"The Elves", by Ludwig Tieck
"The Golden Key", by George MacDonald
"Puss-cat Mew", by E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen
"The Griffin and the Minor Canon", by Frank R. Stockton
"The Demon Pope", by Richard Garnett
"The Story of Sigurd", retold by Andrew Lang
"The Folk of the Mountain Door", by William Morris
"Black Heart and White Heart: A Zulu Idyll", by H. Rider Haggard
"The Dragon Tamers" by E. Nesbit
"The Far Islands", by John Buchan
"The Drawn Arrow", by Clemence Housman
"The Enchanted Buffalo", by L. Frank Baum
"Chu-bu and Sheemish", by Lord Dunsany
"The Baumoff Explosive", by William Hope Hodgson
"The Regent of the North", by Kenneth Morris
"The Coming of the Terror", by Arthur Machen
"The Elf Trap", by Francis Stevens
"The Thin Queen of Elfhame", by James Branch Cabell
"The Woman of the Wood", by A. Merritt
"Golithos the Ogre", by E. A. Wyke-Smith
"A Christmas Play", by David Lindsay
And this is an excerpt from the introduction by the editor, Douglas A. Anderson:
"Tolkien also drew upon folklore and the folktale traditions, as they were recorded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After this process of the writing down of oral materials there naturally developed the German kunstmarchen, or "literary fairy tales" -- that is, fairy tales artistically composed by a single author rather than stories merely recorded from oral tradition. From these folktales and fairy tales came the further development of fairy tales as children's literature and, in addition, of fantasy as a mode of literature for adults.
"It is from this latter tradition, beginning with the kunstmarchen, that this anthology derives. The stories are arranged in chronological order as to when each item was written. One of the criteria by which I selected stories from this anthology was that each item must have been written before The Hobbit was published in 1937. Another guideline that I have followed in a more general sense is that I have wanted each author to be at least slightly older than Tolkien -- that is, not one of his contemporaries -- so I somewhat arbitrarily restricted myself to writers born at least five years before Tolkien. Some of the stories that I have chose can be seen specifically to have inspired Tolkien, and these connections are detailed in the headnotes to the appropriate stories. I have also selected some stories whose content seems especially Tolkienian, even though there is little or no evidence that Tolkien knew the writers. And I have also chosen other stories that Tolkien almost certainly did not know in order to show some of the diversity of fantasy as it existed before The Hobbit."
and from the end:
"...To better appreciate Tolkien's achievement one needs to better understand Tolkien's own roots and the roots of modern fantasy. This anthology merely represents a first step in doing so, while making a number of fine stories, long unavailable, more easily accessible to readers who will enjoy them."
This apparently originally came out in hardcover in 2003, being compiled in 2002, and is was in mass market paperback reprint in 2005.
You can guess which story I started with (or we aren't friends anymore). It was poignant and evocative, something like a Grimms fairy tale, but with a rawness to it (though the prose is very smooth), more vividness and less abstractly fable-like. The main story is about a church with a massive griffin gargoyle on it, and the last griffin in the world learns that the statue has been made and comes to see it, because he has never seen what he looks like before. It's relatively short, has a fast flow, and he's doing things with the symbolism of the griffin (which as far as I can tell is an incarnation of ancient natural wisdom) that are extremely interesting. eclipsegryph, this is in particular, I suspect, right up your alley.
So I'm very happy with this so far. There is no doubt that much of current fantasy is so heavily influenced by Tolkien and even his descendants that it is refreshing and very enriching to read stories that came before him, but not SO FAR before that they are far away from modern English. This anthology looks at fantasy as it was used pre-Tolkien, but immediately pre-, so it's visible how one could progress TO Tolkien and his advantages (richness of experiential writing, 'live' time instead of long-ago fable) from fairy tale. It also helps to sample from such a variety of authors that I hadn't read before, in the context of others that are more familiar.
In other news, I am on Facebook, so if you're there, hit me up. I was finally dragged in by coworkers who insisted it was teh awesome, and I have to admit it does most of the things I always wondered why MySpace didn't, and doesn't do many of the things that I find aggravating there. Runs quick, the interface is clever, and it takes advantage of many social networking things I suspected would build tight participation, plus tons I hadn't thought of and am impressed by. I don't know that I like the necessity to belong to a network (and it would have been nice if they'd asked me before just sticking me in RPI), but it's inherited from a college connection type thing, and I suppose nothing's perfect.
I'm still way behind on many things internet, including email, and at this point even my publication tracker, which is daunting. Things are going to be painfully busy until September, but then they should get better across the board, I'm hoping.
The second Escapist column is up (it is officially called 'Inside Job'), I will be at Context in October (if anyone's looking to share a hotel room, please let me know), possibly at Montreal in November, and I'm intrigued by this art show at the Toronto Independent Film Festival in early and mid September, so I may see about getting out there, but these months are already looking too travel-crazy for my liking, so we'll see.
I'll be moving around the 8th of September, and after that I want to get all of this blgg stuff sort of straightened out. I think what I want to do is split off a writing-specific Wordpress blog, a second game-specific blog, and have both feed livejournal, which I'll keep for all of that plus personal stuff. I feel strangely stretched as to what should be posted where and what which groups of people want to read, since I know how easily I get blog saturation.
In other news, I bought Happy Feet on DVD today.
There is delicious Cordwainer Smith online, link courtesy the FreeSFOnline project. pantlessjohnny, I did finish "Mark Elf", and it is indeed the shit. This stuff, in combination with the massive amount of stuff online at Project Gutenberg is making me again seriously consider picking up a Sony Reader. The thought of having all of that amazing stuff on something less than a centimeter thick is unbelievably sexy in ways I can't even describe.
And I am mostly copying this from an email sent to a couple of people, since I thought a few here might be interested: I was at Borders looking for a gift for a friend and noticed this: TALES BEFORE TOLKIEN: THE ROOTS OF MODERN FANTASY. It's a short story collection, all pre-Tolkien fantasy, some of which he listed as specific influences, others that was just in the public consciousness when he was writing.
This is the TOC:
"The Elves", by Ludwig Tieck
"The Golden Key", by George MacDonald
"Puss-cat Mew", by E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen
"The Griffin and the Minor Canon", by Frank R. Stockton
"The Demon Pope", by Richard Garnett
"The Story of Sigurd", retold by Andrew Lang
"The Folk of the Mountain Door", by William Morris
"Black Heart and White Heart: A Zulu Idyll", by H. Rider Haggard
"The Dragon Tamers" by E. Nesbit
"The Far Islands", by John Buchan
"The Drawn Arrow", by Clemence Housman
"The Enchanted Buffalo", by L. Frank Baum
"Chu-bu and Sheemish", by Lord Dunsany
"The Baumoff Explosive", by William Hope Hodgson
"The Regent of the North", by Kenneth Morris
"The Coming of the Terror", by Arthur Machen
"The Elf Trap", by Francis Stevens
"The Thin Queen of Elfhame", by James Branch Cabell
"The Woman of the Wood", by A. Merritt
"Golithos the Ogre", by E. A. Wyke-Smith
"A Christmas Play", by David Lindsay
And this is an excerpt from the introduction by the editor, Douglas A. Anderson:
"Tolkien also drew upon folklore and the folktale traditions, as they were recorded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After this process of the writing down of oral materials there naturally developed the German kunstmarchen, or "literary fairy tales" -- that is, fairy tales artistically composed by a single author rather than stories merely recorded from oral tradition. From these folktales and fairy tales came the further development of fairy tales as children's literature and, in addition, of fantasy as a mode of literature for adults.
"It is from this latter tradition, beginning with the kunstmarchen, that this anthology derives. The stories are arranged in chronological order as to when each item was written. One of the criteria by which I selected stories from this anthology was that each item must have been written before The Hobbit was published in 1937. Another guideline that I have followed in a more general sense is that I have wanted each author to be at least slightly older than Tolkien -- that is, not one of his contemporaries -- so I somewhat arbitrarily restricted myself to writers born at least five years before Tolkien. Some of the stories that I have chose can be seen specifically to have inspired Tolkien, and these connections are detailed in the headnotes to the appropriate stories. I have also selected some stories whose content seems especially Tolkienian, even though there is little or no evidence that Tolkien knew the writers. And I have also chosen other stories that Tolkien almost certainly did not know in order to show some of the diversity of fantasy as it existed before The Hobbit."
and from the end:
"...To better appreciate Tolkien's achievement one needs to better understand Tolkien's own roots and the roots of modern fantasy. This anthology merely represents a first step in doing so, while making a number of fine stories, long unavailable, more easily accessible to readers who will enjoy them."
This apparently originally came out in hardcover in 2003, being compiled in 2002, and is was in mass market paperback reprint in 2005.
You can guess which story I started with (or we aren't friends anymore). It was poignant and evocative, something like a Grimms fairy tale, but with a rawness to it (though the prose is very smooth), more vividness and less abstractly fable-like. The main story is about a church with a massive griffin gargoyle on it, and the last griffin in the world learns that the statue has been made and comes to see it, because he has never seen what he looks like before. It's relatively short, has a fast flow, and he's doing things with the symbolism of the griffin (which as far as I can tell is an incarnation of ancient natural wisdom) that are extremely interesting. eclipsegryph, this is in particular, I suspect, right up your alley.
So I'm very happy with this so far. There is no doubt that much of current fantasy is so heavily influenced by Tolkien and even his descendants that it is refreshing and very enriching to read stories that came before him, but not SO FAR before that they are far away from modern English. This anthology looks at fantasy as it was used pre-Tolkien, but immediately pre-, so it's visible how one could progress TO Tolkien and his advantages (richness of experiential writing, 'live' time instead of long-ago fable) from fairy tale. It also helps to sample from such a variety of authors that I hadn't read before, in the context of others that are more familiar.
In other news, I am on Facebook, so if you're there, hit me up. I was finally dragged in by coworkers who insisted it was teh awesome, and I have to admit it does most of the things I always wondered why MySpace didn't, and doesn't do many of the things that I find aggravating there. Runs quick, the interface is clever, and it takes advantage of many social networking things I suspected would build tight participation, plus tons I hadn't thought of and am impressed by. I don't know that I like the necessity to belong to a network (and it would have been nice if they'd asked me before just sticking me in RPI), but it's inherited from a college connection type thing, and I suppose nothing's perfect.
I'm still way behind on many things internet, including email, and at this point even my publication tracker, which is daunting. Things are going to be painfully busy until September, but then they should get better across the board, I'm hoping.
The second Escapist column is up (it is officially called 'Inside Job'), I will be at Context in October (if anyone's looking to share a hotel room, please let me know), possibly at Montreal in November, and I'm intrigued by this art show at the Toronto Independent Film Festival in early and mid September, so I may see about getting out there, but these months are already looking too travel-crazy for my liking, so we'll see.
I'll be moving around the 8th of September, and after that I want to get all of this blgg stuff sort of straightened out. I think what I want to do is split off a writing-specific Wordpress blog, a second game-specific blog, and have both feed livejournal, which I'll keep for all of that plus personal stuff. I feel strangely stretched as to what should be posted where and what which groups of people want to read, since I know how easily I get blog saturation.
In other news, I bought Happy Feet on DVD today.