Quote from: Bren;924993Martin is the most popular writer in this style, not the ur-iginator.

Tolkien wasn't the first writer to do secondary world subcreation, either, but he sure as hell defined that writing style and was followed by hordes of imitators.  The analogy is just fine as it stands.

Quote from: daniel_ream;925009Tolkien wasn't the first writer to do secondary world subcreation, either, but he sure as hell defined that writing style and was followed by hordes of imitators.  The analogy is just fine as it stands.

Secondary world subcreation isn't done better before Tolkien. And is mostly done worse after (see anything by Terry Brooks). Martin isn't better than his predecessors nor did he define the style of gritty combat, characters who die, and stuff based on and echoing history. Martin is more popular than the people who did. If you'd said popularizer you'd have been fine. Describing an unsuperior imitator as the "ur" makes a lame analogy.

I found a reddit thread that discusses pre-Tolkien fantasy. Should be a good basis for imagining a parallel universe where hobbits, dwarves, elves, ents, dark lords, orcs, etc never existed. https://reddit.com/r/literature/comments/1x3t07/what_was_pretolkien_fantasy_like/

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;925020I found a reddit thread that discusses pre-Tolkien fantasy. Should be a good basis for imagining a parallel universe where hobbits, dwarves, elves, ents, dark lords, orcs, etc never existed.

But Tolkien didn't invent...oh the hell with it. Never mind. I give up.

Quote from: Bren;925023But Tolkien didn't invent...oh the hell with it. Never mind. I give up.

He invented the specific versions everyone is familiar with. Before Tolkien we only had pygmies, maggot men, christmas elves, dryads, thulsa doom, and gremlins.

Quote from: Bren;925023Never mind. I give up.

Promise?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;925031He invented the specific versions everyone is familiar with. Before Tolkien we only had pygmies, maggot men, christmas elves, dryads, thulsa doom, and gremlins.

And hobs, alfar, dwerrow, goblins, and green men...

Tolkien invented a nomenclature. Calling large goblins "orcs" (based on a creature named in Beowulf). Calling Brownies/Hobgoblins/Hobthrusts, Boggans "hobbits", calling tree men "Ents", but no, he didn't invent any of those creatures or specific forms, he was just better read up on myths/folklore at the time than the general populace.

What Tolkien can be credited for is dragging fairy tales back out the the nursery that the Victorians had confined them to. Mainly because, like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings managed to get caught up in the cultural zeitgeist. But even during the Victorian age we had WB Yeats, Lady Wilde, Lord Dunsany, George MacDonald, William Morris. Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung gave us the prototype of the Ring of Power and the Gandalf wizard archetype.  And as far as an epic fantasy in an invented world with a Dark Lord, featuring epic battles between dwarves, elves, and other fantasy races based on Norse myths, ER Eddison predates Tolkien by 32 years and was acknowledged by the professor as a primary inspiration.

Where exactly are we drawing the line at what is or is not current fantasy?

Quote from: jeff37923;925072Where exactly are we drawing the line at what is or is not current fantasy?

Weird Tales (1923) seems like a good place. Lovecraft, Howard, Leiber, C.A.S. all had their starts there. It gets a bit trickier if one starts to distinguish between "High Fantasy" and "Low Fantasy", not to mention "Boy's Own Adventure Stories" (the genre to which Harry Potter belongs and Narnia takes a lot of cues from), and even then there seems to me like there should be something to distinguish stories like Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, Little, Big, and Lud in the Mist from Epic fantasy such as Eddison, Tolkien, and Alexander.

What throws even more kinks into the gears is that many fantasy authors such as Tolkien and Eddison, draw upon archaic storytelling techniques, so that in many respects they can't even be considered to have written "modern novels" by the academic definition (one of the reason ill-informed literary critics have attacked Tolkien).

Quote from: TristramEvans;925082Weird Tales (1923) seems like a good place. Lovecraft, Howard, Leiber, C.A.S. all had their starts there. It gets a bit trickier if one starts to distinguish between "High Fantasy" and "Low Fantasy", not to mention "Boy's Own Adventure Stories" (the genre to which Harry Potter belongs and Narnia takes a lot of cues from), and even then there seems to me like there should be something to distinguish stories like Johnathan Strange & Mr. Norrel, Little, Big, and Lud in the Mist from Epic fantasy such as Eddison, Tolkien, and Alexander.

What throws even more kinks into the gears is that many fantasy authors such as Tolkien and Eddison, draw upon archaic storytelling techniques, so that in many respects they can't even be considered to have written "modern novels" by the academic definition (one of the reason ill-informed literary critics have attacked Tolkien).

I agree about the kinks. It is like what happens when people start trying to define what "Space Opera" is in science fiction. There is the original space opera with the likes of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials with some E.E. "Doc" Smith thrown in for good measure. Then there is the science heavy "as they understood it" space opera as defined by the early writings of Heinlein, Clarke, Anderson, Piper, Saberhagen, and Asimov. Then there is the science and engineering space opera of Niven, Pournelle, Benford, and Forward which happened at the same time as the wildly speculative fiction of Ellison, Gerrold, and Robinson. Followed by a resurgence of the original space opera thanks to the success of Star Wars. And that just covers us into the 70s and early 80s......

Read Eddison's The Worm Orobouros then come talk to me about how original LotR is, especially if you have read Kalavela and Nibelung.

Quote from: daniel_ream;924698Actually, I could argue that this has already been done: Mouse Guard.  Nothing about the source material or the RPG is recognizably derived from D&D, and the simplified Burning Wheel design is very accessible.

This. Also: Videogames and Animations like Adventure Time and Elder Scrolls and GTA would be big contenders, I think.

Quote from: Itachi;925096This. Also: Videogames and Animations like Adventure Time and Elder Scrolls and GTA would be big contenders, I think.

Adventure Time is another something that wouldn't exist without D&D.

Quote from: DavetheLost;925089Read Eddison's The Worm Orobouros then come talk to me about how original LotR is, especially if you have read Kalavela and Nibelung.

I especially like the different but related invented languages that Eddison made up for the Witches, Demons, Imps, and Goblins, all those maps in the front of the Kalevala, and the way that the author of the Nibelungenlied wove together various folk tales and myths in creating a new setting and story of his own.

Also the originality of Shakespeare's plots is amazing. How he came up with so many places that don't at all resemble anything previously written astonishes me.

Well, Dark Albion is both much more 'current fantasy' and much more 'old fantasy' than anything in Appendix N.  Its main inspirations are Shakespeare, regional English supernatural folklore, and Game of Thrones.