The Beatles
Morgoth's Curse
esteemed Christopher Kruezer provided:
"Some have seen The Beatles' 1965 movie Help! as a good-natured parody
of LotR, in which four friends, one of whom is stuck with a cursed
ring, spend the entire movie trying to escape from the sinister forces
seeking to regain the ring and kill the one who bears it."
Can anybody confirm this? If it is true, then I must add the Beatles
to my already lengthy list of people whom I Must Hate For All Eternity
for daring to mock the revered Professor Tolkien!
^__^
Morgoth's Curse
John W. Kennedy
Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie was
made; few people outside the academic community and the SF ghetto knew
who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of the writers before
I'd believe it.
--
John W. Kennedy
"The blind rulers of Logres
Nourished the land on a fallacy of rational virtue."
-- Charles Williams. "Taliessin through Logres: Prelude"
Larry Swain
> Morgoth's Curse wrote:
>
>> I found this fascinating tidbit while browsing a link that our
>> esteemed Christopher Kruezer provided:
>>
>> "Some have seen The Beatles' 1965 movie Help! as a good-natured parody
>> of LotR, in which four friends, one of whom is stuck with a cursed
>> ring, spend the entire movie trying to escape from the sinister forces
>> seeking to regain the ring and kill the one who bears it."
>>
>> Can anybody confirm this? If it is true, then I must add the Beatles
>> to my already lengthy list of people whom I Must Hate For All Eternity
>> for daring to mock the revered Professor Tolkien!
>
>
> Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie was
> made; few people outside the academic community and the SF ghetto knew
> who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of the writers before
> I'd believe it.
>
hardly relegated to the "SF ghetto", which didn't really exist
then--surprising how at the time SF was in many ways more main stream
than it is now. Anyway, Tolkien was well known for The Hobbit, and it
was of course the popularity of the Hobbit that created a demand for
LoTR. Certainly the Liverpool lads knew who Tolkien was and had likely
read LoTR before the mid to late sixties. Ace Books unauthorized edition
of LoTR appeared in the US in 1965.
But in any case, there may have been elements of Help! that were
inspired by Tolkien, but Help! is more a spoof of the Bond genre. There
was talk about the Beatles' third film being based on LoTR but they
couldn't find a director or writer (they even approached Kubrick who
didn't think the books were adaptable). Anyway, this was 1968 or so, and
Tolkien said no, and then sold the movie rights to UA, who negotiated
with the Beatles, but the project never got off the ground, thankfully.
BaJoRi
"Larry Swain" <thes...@operamail.com> wrote in message
news:FJKdnbfTcaVXxerZ...@rcn.net...
YOu have to admit though that Ringo would have been awesome as Gollum....no
make-up required. And John Lennon as a hobbit is a natural, with, as Saruman
would say, his mind fuddled with the halfling's leaf.
Larry Swain
play Gollum, and George was set to play Gandalf, Paul as Frodo and Ringo
as Sam......and I seem to remember that part of the scuttle butt was
that there was some jealousy about John getting the "leading" role!
Michael O'Neill
>
> Morgoth's Curse wrote:
> > I found this fascinating tidbit while browsing a link that our
> > esteemed Christopher Kruezer provided:
> >
> > "Some have seen The Beatles' 1965 movie Help! as a good-natured parody
> > of LotR, in which four friends, one of whom is stuck with a cursed
> > ring, spend the entire movie trying to escape from the sinister forces
> > seeking to regain the ring and kill the one who bears it."
> >
> > Can anybody confirm this? If it is true, then I must add the Beatles
> > to my already lengthy list of people whom I Must Hate For All Eternity
> > for daring to mock the revered Professor Tolkien!
>
> Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie was
> made; few people outside the academic community and the SF ghetto knew
> who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of the writers before
> I'd believe it.
I would have thought that the LOTR was published earlier than the film,
whatever about being popular, but the SF Ghetto you refer to surely only
really became an item with the growing popularity of New Worlds Magazine
and I think that would have only gained serious popularity after the film
came out.
M.
Michelle J. Haines
>
> Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie was
> made; few people outside the academic community and the SF ghetto knew
> who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of the writers before
> I'd believe it.
I own paperbacks of the books that are older than I am that say
different.
Michelle
Flutist
John W. Kennedy
> Huh? LoTR was published and very popular in Britain in 1954 and 1955,
If that were so, why on Earth would Houghton-Mifflin have published
American-bound British sheets (thus enabling the Ace scandal a decade
later)?
> hardly relegated to the "SF ghetto", which didn't really exist
> then--surprising how at the time SF was in many ways more main stream
> than it is now.
That was certainly not true in the US, and C. S. Lewis, in his
nonfiction, clearly treats it as untrue in the UK, as well.
> Anyway, Tolkien was well known for The Hobbit,
A children's book.
> and it
> was of course the popularity of the Hobbit that created a demand for
> LoTR,
...a "demand" such that every British publisher, including George Allen
& Unwin, rejected it until Raynor Unwin himself reconsidered it.
> Certainly the Liverpool lads knew who Tolkien was
Which one of them told you so?
> and had likely
> read LoTR before the mid to late sixties. Ace Books unauthorized edition
> of LoTR appeared in the US in 1965,
...and "Help" appeared in the summer of 1965.
And no British paperback appeared until 1968, if I recall correctly.
> But in any case, there may have been elements of Help! that were
> inspired by Tolkien, but Help! is more a spoof of the Bond genre.
H. Rider Haggard, actually.
> There
> was talk about the Beatles' third film being based on LoTR but they
> couldn't find a director or writer (they even approached Kubrick who
> didn't think the books were adaptable). Anyway, this was 1968 or so, and
> Tolkien said no, and then sold the movie rights to UA, who negotiated
> with the Beatles, but the project never got off the ground, thankfully.
John W. Kennedy
No you do not, unless, perhaps, they are unauthorized printings from
someplace like Hong Kong.
Christopher Kreuzer
> Michelle J. Haines wrote:
>> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>>
>>> Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie
>>> was made; few people outside the academic community and the SF
>>> ghetto knew who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of
>>> the writers before I'd believe it.
>>
>> I own paperbacks of the books that are older than I am that say
>> different.
>
> No you do not, unless, perhaps, they are unauthorized printings from
> someplace like Hong Kong.
The paperbacks probably include the date of printing of the first
editions. They will also include the date of printing of that particular
paperback edition, which will be a later date.
I also found this website:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~xelag/quenya_tables_editions.html
I can't be certain, but I think it is saying that the 1st editions of
1954-5 were (obviously) hard covers, and ditto for the 1966 edition, but
that the first paperback from Allen and Unwin was the one-volume
paperback in 1968.
Christopher
Burúmë
> Larry Swain wrote:
>
>> Certainly the Liverpool lads knew who Tolkien was
>
> Which one of them told you so?
>
Google it, there are hundreds of references in biographies and the such.
>> and had likely
>> read LoTR before the mid to late sixties. Ace Books unauthorized edition
>> of LoTR appeared in the US in 1965,
>
> ...and "Help" appeared in the summer of 1965.
>
> And no British paperback appeared until 1968, if I recall correctly.
>
It's very likely that the Beatles could afford hardbacks.
>> There
>> was talk about the Beatles' third film being based on LoTR but they
>> couldn't find a director or writer (they even approached Kubrick who
>> didn't think the books were adaptable). Anyway, this was 1968 or so,
incidently the year of Nimoy's "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins"...
>> and
>> Tolkien said no, and then sold the movie rights to UA, who negotiated
>> with the Beatles, but the project never got off the ground, thankfully.
"The long and winding road" (demo recorded around the time the LOTR film
was being floated) seems to have at least thematic similarities to some
hobbit poems...
--
Burúmë
John W. Kennedy
> On Sat, 27 May 2006 22:56:27 -0400, John W. Kennedy wrote:
>
>> Larry Swain wrote:
>>
>>> Certainly the Liverpool lads knew who Tolkien was
>> Which one of them told you so?
>>
>
> Google it, there are hundreds of references in biographies and the such.
No later than the winter of 1964-5? (By the way, how much input did the
Fab Four have in the scripting of "Help!", anyway?)
John W. Kennedy
Yes. I don't know about translations and foreign pirate editions (if
there were any), but the first US paperbacks, both the technically legal
but shady Ace and the authorized Ballantine, were in 1965, and the first
British paperback was the Allen & Unwin one-volume. The great explosion
of popularity followed the paperbacks (partly driven by the controversy
in the US).
BaJoRi
"Burúmë" <"burúmë"@example.com> wrote in message
news:c75phwxpoinc$.1x6tqqvrkta59.dlg@40tude.net...
> On Sat, 27 May 2006 22:56:27 -0400, John W. Kennedy wrote:
>
>> Larry Swain wrote:
>>
>>> Certainly the Liverpool lads knew who Tolkien was
>>
>> Which one of them told you so?
>>
>
> Google it, there are hundreds of references in biographies and the such.
>
>>> and had likely
>>> read LoTR before the mid to late sixties. Ace Books unauthorized edition
>>> of LoTR appeared in the US in 1965,
>>
>> ...and "Help" appeared in the summer of 1965.
>>
>> And no British paperback appeared until 1968, if I recall correctly.
>>
>
> It's very likely that the Beatles could afford hardbacks.
I was wondering who would be the first to point that out.
Paul: "Hey, John. Would you like to base a movie off of LotR?"
John: "We can't. Have to wait for the paperback, man."
Ringo: "You guys can read? Groovy."
>
>>> There
>>> was talk about the Beatles' third film being based on LoTR but they
>>> couldn't find a director or writer (they even approached Kubrick who
>>> didn't think the books were adaptable). Anyway, this was 1968 or so,
I read somewhere that the Beatles had rejected one LotR-based script because
it was too homoerotic. But maybe I am mixing up movie information.
Michelle J. Haines
> Michelle J. Haines wrote:
>
>> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie
>>> was made; few people outside the academic community and the SF ghetto
>>> knew who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of the
>>> writers before I'd believe it.
>>
>>
>> I own paperbacks of the books that are older than I am that say
>> different.
>
>
> No you do not, unless, perhaps, they are unauthorized printings from
> someplace like Hong Kong.
http://www.tolkienbooks.net/html/the_lord_of_the_rings.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_rings#Publication_history
http://ringlord.com/people/walrus/lotr/wilderness-poster.html
I first read the edition that had the cover from that last link.
Published in the mid-60s, some time before I was born...and therefore
some time before Jackson's movies. :p
Michelle
Flutist
Michelle J. Haines
> Michelle J. Haines wrote:
>
>> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie
>>> was made; few people outside the academic community and the SF ghetto
>>> knew who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of the
>>> writers before I'd believe it.
>>
>>
>> I own paperbacks of the books that are older than I am that say
>> different.
>
>
> No you do not, unless, perhaps, they are unauthorized printings from
> someplace like Hong Kong.
>
Whoops, I misunderstood the "movie" reference in your original post.
You were referring to the 1965 movie, not the recent ones. My bad.
Michelle
Flutist
Larry Swain
> Larry Swain wrote:
>
>> Huh? LoTR was published and very popular in Britain in 1954 and 1955,
>
>
> If that were so, why on Earth would Houghton-Mifflin have published
> American-bound British sheets (thus enabling the Ace scandal a decade
> later)?
This is a non-sequitur. HM's use of British sheets in 1964 has nothing
at all to do with the book's popularity in Britian between 1955 and
1964. Further, since A&U and Readers Union were printing new sheets for
a 1964 edition, it was a simple thing to provide sheets for HM as well,
without the danger of having to do a new edition and thus have different
texts on both sides of the Atlantic, no one at HM realizing the
copyright loophole that would be left open. And no the Ace scandal was
less than a year later, the HM hardback appearing in 1964, with the
words "Printed in Great Britain" and the Ace publisher who realized that
this meant that the HM book was not covered under US copyright, and so
the Ace edition came out in 1965. This necessitated Tolkien creating an
"official, authorized" text for the Ballantine paperback edition.
In point of fact, A&W reprinted their run of LoTR in 1957, 59, 61, 62,
63-64 and Readers Union sold out of a 3500 issue run and had another
edition in 1964. Also between those years a BBC radio adaptation was
played and replayed of the LoTR, the LoTR was translated bet 1956 and
1959 into Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish at the very least (those I have
immediate knowledge of, there may have been more), and Tolkien received
several sizeable checks from A&U (see Letter 197 for example). Further,
based on the popularity of LoTR, Puffin reissued a paperback Hobbit,
Tolkien undertood Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wooten Major, his
work on the Jerusalem Bible, and A&U reissued his essays On Fairy
Stories and Tree and Leaf to name a few things. And all these sold
respectfully well and were chatted up by folks like W. H. Auden or
decried in various places like the Times and the Observer. Tolkien was
known to more than a few obscure, SF ghetto readers and fellow Oxford
dons, and the LoTR made money for Tolkien and A&U long before the
mid-60s paperbacks brought Frodo to America and a resurgence of
popularity in Britain.
>
>> hardly relegated to the "SF ghetto", which didn't really exist
>> then--surprising how at the time SF was in many ways more main stream
>> than it is now.
>
>
> That was certainly not true in the US, and C. S. Lewis, in his
> nonfiction, clearly treats it as untrue in the UK, as well.
Ok, I'll bit. In which non-fiction works does Lewis clearly treat
science fiction as a "ghetto"?
As for the US, it was true. But I wonder what it will take to convince
you? Certainly in the 50s and early 60s with the COld War and the Space
Race and the number of television shows set in or about space should
tell you something about how mainstream it was (since there was no cable
TV with special Sci Fi and Games channels). But let's not let facts
cloud your preconceived notions, shall we?
>
>> Anyway, Tolkien was well known for The Hobbit,
>
>
> A children's book.
And? Most of those children who read or had the Hobbit read to them
between 1937 and 1945 would have been teenagers at the time of the
appearance of the LoTR books, much less the number of adults who read
them. And considering the recent popularity of Harry Potter books among
adults as well as children, I fail to see how The Hobbit as a children's
book is anything detrimental to Tolkien's name being known well beyond
some sort of "SFghetto" as you erroneously put it.
>
>> and it was of course the popularity of the Hobbit that created a
>> demand for LoTR,
>
>
> ...a "demand" such that every British publisher, including George Allen
> & Unwin, rejected it until Raynor Unwin himself reconsidered it.
I'm surprised no one else here has jumped on at least this aspect. It
was A&U based on the popularity of The Hobbit that had been pressing
Tolkien for more about hobbits! The problem was the Silmarillion--only
Milt Waldman wanted that before LoTR was published, and the problem with
A&U was that Tolkien kept trying to get them to publish the Silm and
LoTR together. That was what was rejected, not LoTR itself. Collins,
Milt Waldman's firm, also declined both, because of LENGTH of the novel.
Nothing to do with lack of popularity.
>> Certainly the Liverpool lads knew who Tolkien was
>
>
> Which one of them told you so?
Which one of them told you they didn't?
>
>> and had likely read LoTR before the mid to late sixties. Ace Books
>> unauthorized edition of LoTR appeared in the US in 1965,
>
>
> ...and "Help" appeared in the summer of 1965.
Yep, more than a decade after A&U and HM had LoTR in print and the BBC
radio production and talk of an American film.......point is that one
needn't posit the paperbacks to explain possible Beatle interest.
>
> And no British paperback appeared until 1968, if I recall correctly.
And so?
>
>> But in any case, there may have been elements of Help! that were
>> inspired by Tolkien, but Help! is more a spoof of the Bond genre.
>
>
> H. Rider Haggard, actually.
Doubtful, except for the general debt owed to Haggard by all 20th
century adventure stories. The more specific Bond homage in Help!
however comes in several forms: the opening musical theme of the movie
is the Bond theme (and was included on the US release of the soundtrack
though not on the UK version which included only Beatles compositions).
Further, the overall plot complete with all powerful device desired by
power mad world dominating man and/or exploitive religous groups, both
devices used in various Bond movies, as well as beautiful woman who
helps the hero(es) from within the organization all for the sake of
love/lust/a kiss, all characters in the drama being both hunter and
hunted...and the location hopping to where Bond films had taken place,
including a redone ski scene in the Swiss alps. These are not features
of Haggard novels to my knowledge which usually entail lost lands in
Africa, triumph of white civilization over tribal, etc. But it is an
interesting point nonetheless.
John W. Kennedy
> Ok, I'll bit. In which non-fiction works does Lewis clearly treat
> science fiction as a "ghetto"?
"An Experiment in Criticism" makes it clear enough.
> As for the US, it was true. But I wonder what it will take to convince
> you? Certainly in the 50s and early 60s with the COld War and the Space
> Race and the number of television shows set in or about space should
> tell you something about how mainstream it was (since there was no cable
> TV with special Sci Fi and Games channels). But let's not let facts
> cloud your preconceived notions, shall we?
I was /there/.
There were plenty of SF children's shows. "Star Trek", on the other
hand, struggled to survive for a mere three years, while "Men into
Space" barely made one, and is now all but forgotten. "The Twilight
Zone" had a sort of success, but it was made up largely of here-and-now
fantasies. (It was created by Rod Serling, by the way, largely because
of the fact that, as Lewis points out, SF in America was so little
respected that it flew under the radar of the McCarthyites.)
I am no expert in British television, but I observe that just about all
the truly successful British SF TV of the age that I am aware of seems
to have been either children's shows created by the Andersons or "Dr.
Who", also a children's show.
John W. Kennedy
19-bloody-65. About the same time that "Help!" came out in theaters, and
therefore quite some time after the script was written.
Burúmë
> Larry Swain wrote:
>> Ok, I'll bit. In which non-fiction works does Lewis clearly treat
>> science fiction as a "ghetto"?
>
> "An Experiment in Criticism" makes it clear enough.
>
>> As for the US, it was true. But I wonder what it will take to convince
>> you? Certainly in the 50s and early 60s with the COld War and the Space
>> Race and the number of television shows set in or about space should
>> tell you something about how mainstream it was (since there was no cable
>> TV with special Sci Fi and Games channels). But let's not let facts
>> cloud your preconceived notions, shall we?
>
> I was /there/.
>
> There were plenty of SF children's shows. "Star Trek", on the other
> hand, struggled to survive for a mere three years, while "Men into
> Space" barely made one, and is now all but forgotten. "The Twilight
> Zone" had a sort of success, but it was made up largely of here-and-now
> fantasies. (It was created by Rod Serling, by the way, largely because
> of the fact that, as Lewis points out, SF in America was so little
> respected that it flew under the radar of the McCarthyites.)
>
> I am no expert in British television, but I observe that just about all
> the truly successful British SF TV of the age that I am aware of seems
> to have been either children's shows created by the Andersons or "Dr.
> Who", also a children's show.
Quatermass (1953) which was for 'adults' was popular enough to spawn a
movie or 2. John Lennon had his photo taken with a Dalek (one of the aliens
from Dr Who). And (much later) Ringo went on to narrate "Thomas the Tank
Engine", a childrens show about talking trains.
--
Burúmë
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> In point of fact, A&W reprinted their run of LoTR in 1957, 59, 61, 62,
> 63-64 and Readers Union sold out of a 3500 issue run and had another
> edition in 1964.
Thanks for that reprinting history - is there a good place to get
information like that? I mean dates and volumes of reprints rather than
editions?
> Also between those years a BBC radio adaptation was
> played and replayed of the LoTR
Replayed?
I know of the BBC Third Programme (what became BBC Radio 3) radio
adapation of LotR. As far as I can tell, from various sources, this
production aired in two parts. Part 1, in 1955 (only months after 'The
Return of the King' had been published) covered 'The Fellowship of the
Ring' and Part 2 covered both 'The Two Towers' and 'The Return of the
King'. The broadcast dates seem to have been November/December 1955 and
1956 respectively - the dates can be estimated from the letters from
Tolkien on the subject, including correspondence between him and the
producer Terence Tiller.
But I'm not sure what you mean by replayed?
> the LoTR was translated bet 1956 and
> 1959 into Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish at the very least (those I have
> immediate knowledge of, there may have been more)
Now there _must_ be a list of the translations somewhere! :-)
<snip>
> Tolkien was known to more than a few obscure, SF
> ghetto readers and fellow Oxford dons, and the LoTR made money for
> Tolkien and A&U long before the mid-60s paperbacks brought Frodo to
> America and a resurgence of popularity in Britain.
Agreed. But the extent of coverage and the types of readers in each
"wave" could be debated. I saw a reference somewhere that talked about
how the BBC Third Programme radio adaptations may have contributed to
public awareness of LotR because radio was the dominant broadcast medium
in those days, and TV was not the force it is now. Remember that Sam
Gamgee (the real person) wrote to Tolkien because people had told him
about the radio adaptations of a book that had a character with the same
name!
<snip>
> there was no cable TV with special Sci Fi and Games channels
As I mentioned above, the type of radio programmes being broadcast might
give a better sense of what was "mainstream" in the 1950s.
<snip>
Christopher
--
---
Reply clue: Saruman welcomes you to Spamgard
Larry Swain
> Larry Swain wrote:
>
>> Ok, I'll bit. In which non-fiction works does Lewis clearly treat
>> science fiction as a "ghetto"?
>
>
> "An Experiment in Criticism" makes it clear enough.
I disagree. In my edition of the book science ficiton is discussed on
pages 29, 68, 107 and 109. Nowhere does Lewis observe that science
fiction is ghettoized. Nor in his 1946 essay "On Science Fiction" (the
1966 title) does he make such a statement. If anything it is the critic
who is in the ghetto, Lewis observes, for too often the critic critiques
what he does not like and what he does not know and can not know because
he dislikes it and so reduces everything to a common mass, Sci Fi being
a case in point where the critic lumps it all together as if it were
homogenous rather than made up of many different sub genres, with as
many different kinds of readers. I think you have seriously
misunderstood Lewis if you are claiming that he thought Science Fiction
was a "ghetto."
>
>> As for the US, it was true. But I wonder what it will take to convince
>> you? Certainly in the 50s and early 60s with the COld War and the Space
>> Race and the number of television shows set in or about space should
>> tell you something about how mainstream it was (since there was no cable
>> TV with special Sci Fi and Games channels). But let's not let facts
>> cloud your preconceived notions, shall we?
>
>
> I was /there/.
Good for you. So was I. So were several others who frequent this
newsgroup. So what?
>
> There were plenty of SF children's shows. "Star Trek", on the other
> hand, struggled to survive for a mere three years,
Yes, two of those years in a Friday night timeslot, the last Friday at
10---few if any shows in the history of television have survived more
than 3 seasons in that time slot. Again, so what?
while "Men into
> Space" barely made one, and is now all but forgotten. "The Twilight
> Zone" had a sort of success, but it was made up largely of here-and-now
> fantasies. (It was created by Rod Serling, by the way, largely because
> of the fact that, as Lewis points out, SF in America was so little
> respected that it flew under the radar of the McCarthyites.)
Another non-sequitur. The Twilight Zone had nothing to do with
McCarthyism or the McCarthy era, which was over in 1954, and McCarthy
dead in 1957. Twilight Zone began airing in 1959 and ran until 1964.
It was created because a lot of Serling's teleplays that the networks
wanted to produce made controversial points, and advertisers were
unwilling to pay for something that might be deemed negative by the
audience. But Serling found that if the controversial point was made
about a society on distant planet or in a different time then
advertisers would approve. And so Twilight Zone was born (a type of Sci
Fi that Lewis criticized in both of the works mentioned above btw, since
he disliked SciFi stories that merely used a Sci Fi background to tell a
story that could just as well as have been told in ordinary time and
place.).
But there was far more than this! Let's refresh your memory:
Movies:
"Destination Moon" (1950),
"The Day the Earth Stood Still"(1951)
"The Thing from Another World" (1951),
"The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953),
"It Came from Outer Space" (1953),
"The War of the Worlds" (1953),
"Godzilla, King of the Monsters" (1954), and
"Them!" (1954).
"1984" (1954),
"20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" (1955),
"The Time Machine"(1960)
"Quatermass II (Enemy from Space)" (1955) and
"The Quatermass Xperiment (The Creeping Unknown)" (1955).
"Forbidden Planet" (1956
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956),
"The Twilight Zone" (1960)
1960 The Angry Red Planet
1960 The Time Machine
1960 Village of the Damned
1960 X--the Man with the X-Ray Eyes
1961 The Twilight Zone [TV movie]
1963 The Day of the Triffids
1964 From the Earth to the Moon
1964 Dr. Strangelove
1965 The Tenth Victim
1965 Alphaville
1965 Doctor Who and the Daleks [British TV]
1966 Farenheit 451
1966 Seconds
1967 Barbarella
1968 Planet of the Apes
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey
1970 The Andromeda Strain
1970 Colossus: The Forbin Project
Television: (the following is composite for American and British television)
The Adventures of Fu Manchu, Syndicated, 1955-1956
The Adventures of Superman
One Step Beyond
Buck Rogers,
Captain Midnight
Commando Cody: Sky Marshall of the Universe,
The Creature,
Flash Gordon
Johnny Jupiter
The Lost Planet,
Man and the Challenge,
Men Into Space
Operation Neptune
Out of This World,
(not to be confused with Out of This World, ITV (Great Britain), 1962)
The Quatermass Experiment
Quatermass II
Quatermass and the Pit
Return of the Lost Planet,
Rocky Jones, Space Ranger
Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers
Science Fiction Theater
Space Patrol
The Spike Jones Show,
Tales of Tomorrow,
Tom Corbett, Space Cadet
The Twilight Zone,
World of Giants
A for Andromeda,
The Avengers (the '64-'66 seasons had a large number of sf themed
episodes, the latter almost exclusively so)
Batman,(cheesy and campy, but the villains often had "super advanced"
sci fi laser canons and the like thwarted by the equally sci fi equipped
dynamic duo)
Bullwinkle Show,(segemtns of the Moonmen and Mr. Peabody (time travel)
Bugs Bunny (the Martian episodes)
Dr. Who
Great Ghost Tales
The Green Hornet (see above for Batman, though Hornet was less
technological than Batman)
I Dream of Jeannie (combo of fantasy and sci fi)
It's About Time
The Invaders
The Jetsons
Jonny Quest
Journey to the Unknown
Land of the Giants
Lost in Space,
The Man from U.N.C.L.E (often blurred the lines between spy and sci fi)
Mission: Impossible (ditto)
My Favorite Martian
My Living Doll
The Outer Limits,
Out of the Unknown
Out of This World
The Prisoner
The Second Hundred Years
Star Trek,
Thriller
Thunderbirds
Time Tunnel
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Way Out
The Wild Wild West (sci fi Bond meets Western)
The Year of the Sexual Olympics,
UFO,
Books:
1950 Isaac Asimov: "I, Robot"
1950 Isaac Asimov: "Pebble in the Sky"
1950 James Blish: "Earthman, Come Home"
1950 Ray Bradbury: "The Martian Chronicles"
1950 L. Sprague de Camp: "The Hand of Zei"
1950 Edmond Hamilton: "City at World's End"
1950 Robert A. Heinlein: "Farmer in the Sky"
1950 Robert A. Heinlein: "The Man Who Sold the Moon"
1950 Henry Kuttner "Fury"
1950 Fritz Leiber: "Gather, Darkness
1950 Judith Merrill: "Shadow on the Heath"
1950 Theodore Sturgeon: "The Dreaming Jewels"
1950 A. E. Van Vogt: "The Voyage of the Space Beagle"
1950 A. E. Van Vogt: "The Wizard of Linn"
1951 Ray Bradbury: "Farenheit 451"
1951 Ray Bradbury: "The Illustrated Man"
1951 L. Sprague de Camp: "Rogue Queen"
1951 Arthur C. Clarke: "Prelude to Space"
1951 Arthur C. Clarke: "The Sands of Mars"
1951 Hal Clement: "Iceworld"
1951 Philip Jose Farmer: "The Lovers
1951 Austin Hall & Homer Eon Flint: "The Blind Spot
1951 Robert A. Heinlein: "The Green Hills of Earth"
1951 Robert A. Heinlein: "The Puppet Masters"
1951 Clifford Simak: "Time and Again"
That;s just two years of the decade, the number of Sci Fi books over the
rest of the decade that did well on the best seller lists (NOTE)
increases! Here's someone else's list for the 60s decade:
1960 Brian Aldiss: "Galaxies Like Grains of Sand" (New York:
New American Library)
1960 Poul Anderson: "The High Crusade"
Nominee for 1960 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1960 Algis Budrys: "Rogue Moon" (Greenwich CT: Fawcett)
Nominee for 1960 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1960 Mark Clifton: "Eight Keys to Eden" (Garden City NY: Doubleday)
1960 L. Sprague de Camp: "The Glory That Was" (New York: Avalon)
1960 Gordon Dickson: "Dorsai"
1960 Philip Jose Farmer: "Strange Relations" (New York: Ballentine)
1960 Harry Harrison: "Deathworld" (New York: Bantam)
Nominee for 1960 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1960 Walter M. Miller: "A Canticle for Leibowitz" (Philadelphia:
Lippincott)
Hugo Award, required reading in many college courses, an
absolute classic not to be missed. Winner of 1960 Hugo
Award for Best Novel.
1960 Robert P. Mills [editor]: "The Best from Fantasy & Science
Fiction,
Ninth Series" (Garden City NY: Doubleday)
1960 Theodore Sturgeon: "Venus Plus X" (New York: Pyramid Books)
Nominee for 1960 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1961 Kingsley Amis & Robert Conquest [editor]: "Spectrum" (London:
Gollancz)
1961 Arthur C. Clarke: "A Fall of Moondust" (New York: Harcourt
Brace & World)
Nominee for 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1961 Daniel Francis Galouye: "Dark Universe" (New York: Bantam)
Nominee for 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1961 James E. Gunn: "The Joy Makers" (New York: Bantam)
1961 Harry Harrison: "The Stainless Steel Rat" (New York: Pyramid Books)
1961 Harry Harrison: "Sense of Obligation"
Nominee for 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1961 Robert A. Heinlein: "Stranger in a Strange Land" (New York: Putnam)
Winner of 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel. Michael
Valentine Smith is born and brought up on Mars, and brings
Martian culture to Earth, which includes "Grokking",
communal living, ritual cannibalism, and unfortunately
became a bible to madman Charles Manson and his murderous
gang. Robert Heinlein became a cult success among
teenagers, who failed to follow his philsophy as expressed
in other novels of Heinlein's.
1961 Zenna Henderson: "Pilgrimmage: The Book of the People" (Garden
City NY: Doubleday)
1961 Stanislaw Lem: "Solaris" (Poland: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo)
Intelligent extraterrestrial ocean is metaphysically
beyond the attempts of humans to fathom in this enigmatic
novel, made into a superior Russian film {hotlink to be
done}
1961 Alan E. Nourse: "Tiger by the Tail and Other Science Fiction
Stories" (New York: McKay)
1961 Clifford Simak: "The Fisherman"
Nominee for 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1961 Theodore Sturgeon: "Some of Your Blood" (New York: Ballentine)
1961 James White: "Second Ending"
Nominee for 1961 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1962 xxxx: "The Manchrian Candidate" {to be done}
1962 Brian W. Aldiss: "The Long Afternoon of Earth" (New York: New
American Library)
1962 J. G. Ballard: "The Drowned World" (New York: Berkley)
surrealistic masterpiece about alienated protagonist
undergoing metaphysical transformation in the face of
global catastrophe (first of pseudo-trilogy including
1964: "The Burning World", and 1966: "The Crystal World")
1962 Marion Zimmer Bradley: "Sword of Aldones"
Nominee for 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1962 Anthony Burgess: "A Clockwork Orange" (London: heinemann)
{film hotlink to be done}
1962 Philip K. Dick: "The Man in the High Castle" (New York: Putnam)
Arguably the greatest alternate history ("parahistory)
novel. Here, the Germans and Japanese occupy a
balkanized America, having won World War II. In a
book-within-the-book, a novelist writes about an
alternate
world where America had won World War II. This Hugo
Award-winner was written with the aid of chance or
synchronicity (with Dick casting the "I Ching") and it
has a nuanced view of Eastern and Western cultures. A
disturbing and yet strangely uplifting masterpiece.
1962 H. Beam Piper: "Little Fuzzy"
Nominee for 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1962 "Vercors": "Sylva"
Nominee for 1962 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1963 Pierre Boule: "La Planete des Singes" (later translated as
"The Planet of the Apes")
1963 John Brunner: "Castaways' World" (New York: Ace)
1963 Robert A. Heinlein: "Glory Road"
Nominee for 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1963 Robert A. Heinlein: "Orphans of the Sky" (London: Gollancz)
concludes the "Future History" series
1963 Frank Herbert: "Dune World"
Nominee for 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1963 Andre Norton: "Witch World"
Nominee for 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1963 Clifford D. Simak: "Here Gather the Stars"
Winner of 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1963 Clifford D. Simak: "Way Station"
1963 Cordwainer Smith: "You Will Never Be The Same" (Evanston IL:
Regency)
8 stories from the "Instrumentality of mankind" series
1963 Walter Tevis: "The Man Who Fell to Earth" (Greenwich CT: Fawcett)
{film hotlink to be done}
1963 Jack Vance: "The Dragon Masters" (New York: Ace)
1963 Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: "Cat's Cradle" (New York: Holt Rinehart &
Winston)
Nominee for 1963 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1963 James White: "Star Surgeon" (New York: ballentine)
1964 Poul Anderson: "Trader to the Stars" (Garden City NY: Doubleday)
1964 J. G. Ballard: "The Burning World" (New York: Berkley)
surrealistic masterpiece about alienated protagonist
undergoing metaphysical transformation in the face of
global catastrophe (2nd of pseudo-trilogy including
1962: "The Drowned World", and 1966: "The Crystal World")
1964 James Blish: "The Issue at Hand" (SF Criticism, under pseudonym
William Atheling)
1964 John Brunner: "The Whole Man"
Nominee for 1964 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1964 Hal Clement: "Close to Critical" (New York: Ballentine) Sequel to
"Mission of Gravity" (1954)
1964 Robert E. Howard: "Almuric" (New York: Ace) posthumous
publication of "Weird Tales" serial (1939)
1964 Fritz Leiber: "The Wanderer" (New York: Ballentine)
1964 Hugo Award Winner for Best Novel
1964 Edgar Pangborn: "Davy" (New York: St.Martin)
Nominee for 1964 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1964 Cordwainer Smith: "The Planet Buyer"
Nominee for 1964 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1965 Brian W. Aldiss: "Best Science Fiction of Brian Aldiss" (London:
Faber & Faber)
1965 Poul Anderson: "The Star Fox" Nebula finalist
1965 John Brunner: "The Squares of the City" (New York: Ballentine)
War and peace,
human rights, dictatorship, politics, and all based on an
actual chess game!
Nominee for 1965 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1965 William Burroughs: "Nova Express", Hallucinatory, disjointed
Nebula finalist in which junkies and aliens blur together
1965 Avram Davidson: "Rogue Dragon" erudite Nebula finalist
1965 Philip K. Dick: "Dr. Bloodmoney" Nebula finalist
1965 Philip K. Dick: "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch"
(Garden City NY: Doubleday) One of Dick's dream-logic
masterpieces, in which drigs change the world rather than
individual consciousness. Nebula finalist
1965 Thomas M. Disch: "The Genocides" Nebula finalist
1965 G. C. Edmonson: "The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream" Nebula
finalist
1965 Frank Herbert: "Dune" (Philadelphia: Chilton) {film hotlink to
be done}
The breaktrhough od Space Opera into major Literature.
Winner of the first Nebula Award for Best Novel
Tied as Winner of 1965 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1965 Keith Laumer: "A Plague of Demons" Nebula finalist
1965 Sam Moskowitz [editor]: "Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction"
(Cleveland: World)
1965 Clifford D. Simak: "All Flesh is Grass" Nebula finalist
1965 E. E. Smith: "Skylark DuQuesne"
Nominee for 1965 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1965 Theodore L. Thomas & Kate Wilhelm: "The Clone" Nebula finalist
1965 James White: "Escape Orbit" Nebula finalist
1965 Roger Zelazny: "...And Call Me Conrad"
Tied as Winner of 1965 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1966 J. G. Ballard: "The Crystal World" (London: Cape; New York:
Berkley)
surrealistic masterpiece about alienated protagonist
undergoing metaphysical transformation in the face of
global catastrophe (3rd of pseudo-trilogy including
1962: "The Drowned World", and 1964: "The Burning World")
1966 Samuel R. Delany: "Babel-17" Amazing action-adventure space story
based on linguistics. Delany was a teenager when he wrote
this scintillating tale.
Nebula Award (tied for 1st place)
Nominee for 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1966 Harlan Ellison (ed.): "Dangerous Visions"
The most influential "New Wave" anthology
1966 Randall Garrett: "Too Many Magicians" Murder mystery in a world
where magic works, in a manner as logical as science is
for us. Nominee for 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1966 Robert A. Heinlein: "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" Nebula finalist
Nominee for 1965 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Winner of 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1966 Daniel Keyes: "Flowers for Algernon" (New York: Harcourt, Brace
and World)
Nebula Award (tied for 1st place)
adaped to film "Charlie" {hotlink to be done}
Nominee for 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1966 Ursula K. Le Guin: "Planet of Exile" (New York: Ace)
1966 Ursula K. Le Guin: "Rocannon's World" (New York: Ace)
1966 James H. Schmitz: "The Witches of Karres"
Nominee for 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1966 Thomas Burnett Swann: "Day of the Minotaur" [fantasy]
Nominee for 1966 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1966 James White: "The Watch Below" (New York: Ballentine)
1966 Roger Zelazny: "This Immortal" (New York: Ace)
The Earth may be attacked by aliens, crushed by
catastrophe, srawrming with mutants, but that is merely
the canvas for an optimistic tale of benign immortals
1967 Chester Anderson: "The Butterfly Kid"
Hippies save Greenwich Village -- and the world.
Nominee for 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1967 Piers Anthony: "Chthon"
Nebula finalist.
Nominee for 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1967 John Brunner: "Quicksand" (Garden City NY: Doubleday)
1967 Samuel Delany, Jr.: "The Einstein Intersection" (New York: Ace)
Nebula finalist.
Nominee for 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1967 Harlan Ellison [editor]: "Dangerous Visions" (Garden City NY:
Doubleday)
The most important anthology of the decade by far
1967 Hayden Howard: "The Eskimo Invasion" Nebula finalist
1967 Anna Kavan [Helen Woods Edmonds]: "Ice" (London: Owens)
1967 William Francis Nolan & George Clayton Johnson: "Logan's Run"
(New York: Dial) {film & TV hotlinks to be done}
1967 Robert Silverberg: "Thorns"
Nebula finalist.
Nominee for 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1967 Roger Zelazny: "Four for Tomorrow" (New York: Ace)
1967 Roger Zelazny: "Lord of Light" (New York: Doubleday)
Hindu and Buddhist mythology transformed gloriously into
science fiction. Nebula finalist.
Winner of 1967 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1968 James Blish: "Black Easter" Nebula finalist (ranked #5)
Theological horror
1968 John Brunner: "Stand on Zanzibar" (Garden City NY: Doubleday) Best
overpopulation/ecological crisis novel ever published,
which also predicted the Internet and computer viruses...
Sheer genius, very scary, and very funny at the same time.
Nebula finalist (ranked #3).
Winner of 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1968 Leslie Purnell Davies: "The Alien" (London: Jenkins)
1968 Samuel Delany, Jr.: "Nova" (Garden City NY: Doubleday)
Nominee for 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1968 Philip K. Dick: "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" Nebula
finalist
(tied for 6th place) adapted to film "Bladerunner"
{hotlink to be done}
1968 Thomas M. Disch: "Camp Concentration" (London: Rupert Hart Davis)
Secret military project injects prisoners with mutant
syphilis, and they become supergeniuses intent on a
transformational escape. Great wit and irony.
1968 R. A. Lafferty: "Past Master" (New York: Ace)
Nebula finalist (tied for #6).
Nominee for 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1968 Alexei Panshin: "Rite of Passage" (New York: Ace)
Teenagers on Heinleinian generation starship are required
to travel on a colonized planet in order to be transformed
into adults.
Won the 4th annual Nebula Award for Best Novel.
Nominee for 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1968 Keith Roberts: "Pavane" (Garden City NY: Doubleday) Another
contender for the greatest Alternate History novel: the
Spanish Armada
defeated England, and the Roman Catholic Church has
strangled technological
development
1968 Joanna Russ: "Picnic on Paradise" (New York: Ace)
Nebula finalist (ranked #4)
1968 Clifford Simak: "Goblin Reservation"
Nominee for 1968 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1968 Robert Silverberg: "The Masks of Time" Nebula finalist (ranked #2)
1968 Boris & Arkady Strugatski (anonymous editors):
"The Molecular Cafe" groundbreaking Soviet SF anthology
for
Western distribution
1969 Piers Anthony: "Macroscope" To your humble webmaster, this was
Piers Anthony's greatest work of science fiction. It
presumes with a straight face that Astrology is true, in
the sense that there are twelve zodaical zones in the
galaxy that affect human life, and pursues this notion
with
gosh-wow pseudo-hard-SF imagination involving astronomy
and evolutionary biology, with transcendent zeal.
Nominee for 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1969 John Brunner: "The Jagged Orbit"
Nominee for 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1969 Harry Harrison: "Captive Universe" (New York: Putnam)
Generation-ship novel in the great tradition.
1969 Ursula K. Le Guin: "The Left Hand of Darkness" (New York: Ace;
Walker)
Human colonists on the world Winter have mutated or been
genetically engineered into hermaphrodites who change sex
when powerfully aroused. This profound study of gender
and
society is seen through the eyes of a terrestrial human,
who is seen on Winter as a freak for not being able to
change from male to female. Very controversial novel.
Winner of 5th Annual Nebula Award for Best Novel.
Winner of 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1969 Anne McCaffrey: "The Ship Who Sang" (New York: Walker)
1969 Michael Moorcock: "The Ice Schooner" (London: Sphere)
1969 Robert Silverberg: "To Live Again" (Garden City NY: Doubleday)
1969 Robert Silverberg: "Up the Line" Nebula finalist, bawdy time travel
analysis of the paradox that if time travel tourism is
possible, why aren't there vast crowds at every historical
event? Makes original suggestion that people would find
incest with their remote ancestors to be very appealing.
Nominee for 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1969 Norman Spinrad: "Bug Jack Barron" Controversial novel about a
future television show journalist who engages celebreties
and callers with tough questions, very much in the way
that TV today has blurred the boundaries between news and
entertainment. He has a moral crisis when the scandal
he's
probing might buy him off with immortality.
Nebula finalist (ranked #3).
Nominee for 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1969 Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: "Slaughterhouse Five" (New York: Delacorte
Press)
Based on autobiographical experience of the firebombibg of
Dresden, Vonnegut creates a wry satire of science fiction
which is itself good science fiction, with the
4-dimensional Tralfamadoreans bringing protagonist Billy
Pilgrim into their perception of space and time.
{film hotlink to be done} Nebula finalist (ranked #2)
Nominee for 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
1969 Roger Zelazny: "Damnation Alley" (New York: Putnam)
1969 Roger Zelazny: "Isle of the Dead" (New York: Ace) Nebula finalist.
Nominee for 1969 Hugo Award for Best Novel.
Now I'm not claiming that my lists here are exhaustive, and one could
certainly quibble about a few of the entries. But even if we removed
the quibbles it would still leave a substantial list of movies,
television shows on both sides of the Atlantic, and books that sold
rather well that easily demonstrates that Sci Fi was hardly ghettoized
in 50s and 60s--in fact I think you would be hard pressed in th emovies
and tv depts. to name as many sci fi movies and shows in a 20 year
period of 1986-2006. But even if you could, it wouldn't support your
claim that SF lives in a "ghetto" and that Tolkien was unknown outside
that ghetto in 50s and 60s.
> I am no expert in British television, but I observe that just about all
> the truly successful British SF TV of the age that I am aware of seems
> to have been either children's shows created by the Andersons or "Dr.
> Who", also a children's show.
Really? I'm not sure what you have against children, but Dr. Who on
both sides of the Atlantic has proven as popular among adults as among
children. From my list above I count 7 series on the BBC for the 60s
decade, only one of which could be counted as "children" oriented. The
US had far more of those.
>
Larry Swain
> Larry Swain <thes...@operamail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>In point of fact, A&W reprinted their run of LoTR in 1957, 59, 61, 62,
>>63-64 and Readers Union sold out of a 3500 issue run and had another
>>edition in 1964.
>
>
> Thanks for that reprinting history - is there a good place to get
> information like that? I mean dates and volumes of reprints rather than
> editions?
I took this from my own notes on Wayne Hammond's J.R.R. Tolkien: A
Descriptive Bibliography. There are a couple of other sources beyond
this book that I don't have down in my notes but that I remember using
and will reconstruct if you need me too.
>
>>Also between those years a BBC radio adaptation was
>>played and replayed of the LoTR
>
>
> Replayed?
>
> I know of the BBC Third Programme (what became BBC Radio 3) radio
> adapation of LotR. As far as I can tell, from various sources, this
> production aired in two parts. Part 1, in 1955 (only months after 'The
> Return of the King' had been published) covered 'The Fellowship of the
> Ring' and Part 2 covered both 'The Two Towers' and 'The Return of the
> King'. The broadcast dates seem to have been November/December 1955 and
> 1956 respectively - the dates can be estimated from the letters from
> Tolkien on the subject, including correspondence between him and the
> producer Terence Tiller.
>
> But I'm not sure what you mean by replayed?
I have down that in 1959 the BBC 3 radio adaptation was repeated. Best
check on that though.
>
>
>>the LoTR was translated bet 1956 and
>>1959 into Dutch, Swedish, and Spanish at the very least (those I have
>>immediate knowledge of, there may have been more)
>
>
> Now there _must_ be a list of the translations somewhere! :-)
There must be. I recall that Hammond has some info in there. The three
I mention are 3 I've been able to pick up in various places I've lived.
>
> <snip>
>
>>Tolkien was known to more than a few obscure, SF
>>ghetto readers and fellow Oxford dons, and the LoTR made money for
>>Tolkien and A&U long before the mid-60s paperbacks brought Frodo to
>>America and a resurgence of popularity in Britain.
>
>
> Agreed. But the extent of coverage and the types of readers in each
> "wave" could be debated.
Sure. But even so, the claim was that Tolkien was unknown outside the
"SF Ghetto": which can hardly be true and in this context is the only
thing I'm interested in refuting. Its rather like saying that a book
that is reviewed in the NYT book review by Harold Bloom and in the Times
Literary Supplement by Stanley Fish and in the Paris Review by Umberto
Eco were known to only to the SF Ghetto. Hardly if its reviewed by
those kinds of people in those kinds of places--as Tolkien's works were.
I saw a reference somewhere that talked about
> how the BBC Third Programme radio adaptations may have contributed to
> public awareness of LotR because radio was the dominant broadcast medium
> in those days, and TV was not the force it is now.
Sure, the media feed into one another, and what was already a moderately
selling book became all the more widely known and sold even better:
which again, rather argues against Tolkien only being known in "ghetto"
circles, provided that one could call SF that in the 50s.
Remember that Sam
> Gamgee (the real person) wrote to Tolkien because people had told him
> about the radio adaptations of a book that had a character with the same
> name!
Yes, I was going to mention him and thought better of it.
Michelle J. Haines
> M
> 19-bloody-65. About the same time that "Help!" came out in theaters, and
> therefore quite some time after the script was written.
See previous post apologizing for misunderstanding your original post.
Michelle
Flutist
Derek Broughton
> On Mon, 29 May 2006 09:39:22 -0400, John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>
>> There were plenty of SF children's shows. "Star Trek", on the other
>> hand, struggled to survive for a mere three years, while "Men into
>> Space" barely made one, and is now all but forgotten. "The Twilight
>> Zone" had a sort of success, but it was made up largely of here-and-now
>> fantasies.
And, like Star Trek, it was really not hugely popular until it entered
syndication.
>> I am no expert in British television, but I observe that just about all
>> the truly successful British SF TV of the age that I am aware of seems
>> to have been either children's shows created by the Andersons or
I saw all those when they were new...
>> "Dr. Who", also a children's show.
Never mind the really, really, cheesy effects, it was _never_ a children's
show and I'm still a huge fan - even though I never get to see it.
> Quatermass (1953) which was for 'adults' was popular enough to spawn a
> movie or 2. John Lennon had his photo taken with a Dalek (one of the
> aliens from Dr Who).
Surely you'd actually have to _be_ an alien not to know what a Dalek is?
> And (much later) Ringo went on to narrate "Thomas the
> Tank Engine", a childrens show about talking trains.
That's really pushing it :-)
--
derek
Ost...@theonering.net
>> I found this fascinating tidbit while browsing a link that our
>> esteemed Christopher Kruezer provided:
>>
>> "Some have seen The Beatles' 1965 movie Help! as a good-natured parody
>> of LotR, in which four friends, one of whom is stuck with a cursed
>> ring, spend the entire movie trying to escape from the sinister forces
>> seeking to regain the ring and kill the one who bears it."
>>
>> Can anybody confirm this? If it is true, then I must add the Beatles
>> to my already lengthy list of people whom I Must Hate For All Eternity
>> for daring to mock the revered Professor Tolkien!
>
>Unlikely. The paperbacks of LotR didn't appear until after the movie was
>made; few people outside the academic community and the SF ghetto knew
>who Tolkien was. I'd want sworn testimony from one of the writers before
>I'd believe it.
Even in the U.S., the college crowd (and high schoolers like Dick
Plotz and Bob Foster) had already warmed to LotR before the paperback
appeared; and these fans were not an outgrowth of organized 'SF
Fandom' (the 'strange men and even stranger women' from the Worldcon
in '57 who gave Tolkien an award) but a new 'grass-roots' movement.
They were numerous enough to insist on the Ballantine paperback
rather than the Ace edition, for example.
In the UK, as others have noted, the book was even more widely
known in the mainstream. The idea that the paperback created
Tolkien's popularity is almost backwards - it was the unusual
popularity of these rather expensive hardbacks that prompted Donald
Wolheim and then Ian Ballantine to publish it in paperback form.
The paperback editions _enabled_ widespread reading of LotR; they
did not create the demand.
In any case, it is reasonably well known that the Beatles
were interested in filming LotR. For example:
[Denis] O'Dell's dealings with the Beatles were relentlessly frustrating.
In 1967, he had funding from United Artists in place to make the
"The Lord Of The Rings" and needed to land a major director. His
first choice, David Lean, was busy making a "little love story"
which was to become romantic epic "Ryan's Daughter." O'Dell sent
the Tolkien classics to Stanley Kubrick. Hopes were high, only for
Kubrick to persuade the Beatles over lunch at the Lion that he
considered the books "unmakable." (Producer Saul Zaentz, of course,
finally mobilized an animated version that misfired in 1978 --
decades before New Line's live-action juggernaut.)
(from http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117919078?categoryid=1010&cs=1 ;
or see http://music.yahoo.com/read/news/12060344 )
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> Even in the U.S., the college crowd (and high schoolers like Dick
> Plotz and Bob Foster) had already warmed to LotR before the paperback
> appeared
Is this "Bob Foster" the same as the Robert Foster who wrote the
"Complete Guide to Middle-earth"? I think I also recognise the name Dick
Plotz - didn't he found the Tolkien Socity of America?
Ah, yes, here we go:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Plotz
Nothing on Foster on Wikipedia though. :-)
> and these fans were not an outgrowth of organized 'SF
> Fandom' (the 'strange men and even stranger women' from the Worldcon
> in '57 who gave Tolkien an award) but a new 'grass-roots' movement.
> They were numerous enough to insist on the Ballantine paperback
> rather than the Ace edition, for example.
Where does the 'strange men and even stranger women' quote come from?
> In the UK, as others have noted, the book was even more widely
> known in the mainstream. The idea that the paperback created
> Tolkien's popularity is almost backwards - it was the unusual
> popularity of these rather expensive hardbacks that prompted Donald
> Wolheim and then Ian Ballantine to publish it in paperback form.
> The paperback editions _enabled_ widespread reading of LotR; they
> did not create the demand.
Ballantine would be the Ballantine publishing company. Who is this
Donald Wolheim?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald A. Wolheim
Aha! The Ace paperbacks scandal guy!
Ost...@theonering.net
Christopher Kreuzer <spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>Ost...@theonering.net <Ost...@theonering.net> wrote:
>
>Is this "Bob Foster" the same as the Robert Foster who wrote the
>"Complete Guide to Middle-earth"? I think I also recognise the name Dick
>Plotz - didn't he found the Tolkien Socity of America?
Yes, Robert Foster. Plotz and Foster were high-school buddies at the time.
Foster was generally referred to as 'Bob' in early Tolkien fan press,
and it seemed natural to refer to 'high school Foster' by that name.
>> and these fans were not an outgrowth of organized 'SF
>> Fandom' (the 'strange men and even stranger women' from the Worldcon
>> in '57 who gave Tolkien an award) but a new 'grass-roots' movement.
>> They were numerous enough to insist on the Ballantine paperback
>> rather than the Ace edition, for example.
>
>Where does the 'strange men and even stranger women' quote come from?
Oops, got it wrong (defective memory); it's just "strange men and
stranger women', from JRRT's letter to Christopher Tolkien shortly
afterward, describing the taxi that disgorged Forry Ackerman and
others in Oxford after the '57 Worldcon in London. I misused it
slightly - the people that JRRT was referring to came to visit him
ostensibly to pitch Ackerman's film project, not to give him the
International Fantasy Award. But the award had been, unlike the
more familiar Hugo award, awarded by a committee that was headed
up by the same Uncle Forry. So at least one of the 'strange men'
was the same.
John W. Kennedy
"Quatermass" did a total of 18 episodes in the space of five and half years.
John W. Kennedy
> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>> Larry Swain wrote:
>>
>>> Ok, I'll bit. In which non-fiction works does Lewis clearly treat
>>> science fiction as a "ghetto"?
>>
>>
>> "An Experiment in Criticism" makes it clear enough.
>
> I disagree. In my edition of the book science ficiton is discussed on
> pages 29, 68, 107 and 109. Nowhere does Lewis observe that science
> fiction is ghettoized. Nor in his 1946 essay "On Science Fiction" (the
> 1966 title) does he make such a statement. If anything it is the critic
> who is in the ghetto, Lewis observes, for too often the critic critiques
> what he does not like and what he does not know and can not know because
> he dislikes it and so reduces everything to a common mass, Sci Fi being
> a case in point where the critic lumps it all together as if it were
> homogenous rather than made up of many different sub genres, with as
> many different kinds of readers.
Yes, yes, very pretty. "Cute" as we say in the States.
The fact remains that Lewis was unusual in his acceptance of SF as a
legitimate form.
> Another non-sequitur. The Twilight Zone had nothing to do with
> McCarthyism or the McCarthy era, which was over in 1954, and McCarthy
> dead in 1957. Twilight Zone began airing in 1959 and ran until 1964. It
> was created because a lot of Serling's teleplays that the networks
> wanted to produce made controversial points, and advertisers were
> unwilling to pay for something that might be deemed negative by the
> audience. But Serling found that if the controversial point was made
> about a society on distant planet or in a different time then
> advertisers would approve.
Precisely. Because SF wasn't taken seriously.
Good God! man -- try reading the editorials and "The Analytical Library"
from 60's issues of "Analog" -- the constant complaints that SF is not
taken seriously as a form of literature. (Even Roddenberry noted the
problem in the "Star Trek" writer's guide, when he felt he needed to
explain to professional writers that they should write Captain Kirk as
seriously as they would write a Captain in the USN.)
> Really? I'm not sure what you have against children, but Dr. Who on
> both sides of the Atlantic has proven as popular among adults as among
> children.
And, in fact, I've seen every extant episode. So what? It was still a
children's program -- or was until the Nathan-Turner years, when it
degenerated, like most latter-day "Star Trek", into fan-crack. (The new
series is written at a rather higher level, though I suspect it might
still make John W. Campbell puke.)
I have yet to see any sensible argument in favor of the proposition that
the Beatles were familiar with "The Lord of the Rings" prior to the
craze that began in 1965, seeing that the overwhelming majority of
English speakers were not.
Burúmë
so therefore the Beatles never saw any sci-fi?
Error at line 2.
--
Burúmë
Davémon
> Burúmë wrote:
>
>> And (much later) Ringo went on to narrate "Thomas the
>> Tank Engine", a childrens show about talking trains.
>
> That's really pushing it :-)
LOL! It's "steampunk".
(P.S. Was just illustrating the Beatles / "childrens media" connection, as
if "Octopus's Garden" and foppish boy-bandism didn't give that away.)
--
Davémon
http://www.nightsoil.co.uk/
Burúmë
whoops ident shifting!
--
Burúmë
John W. Kennedy
You obviously have no interest in a rational argument. Bugger off.
Burúmë
Is it rational to assume that the band whose song-writer said of 2001 Space
Odyssey that "The movie should be shown in a temple 24 hours a day" and has
had his photo taken with Daleks suddenly got an interest in scifi
overnight?
--
Burúmë
Derek Broughton
>> Quatermass (1953) which was for 'adults' was popular enough to spawn a
>> movie or 2. John Lennon had his photo taken with a Dalek (one of the
>> aliens from Dr Who). And (much later) Ringo went on to narrate "Thomas
>> the Tank Engine", a childrens show about talking trains.
>
> "Quatermass" did a total of 18 episodes in the space of five and half
> years.
I never saw any of those - but I remember some (3 or 4 that I saw, I think)
from the 70s or early 80s.
--
derek
Derek Broughton
> Derek Broughton arranged shapes to form:
>
>> Burúmë wrote:
>>
>>> And (much later) Ringo went on to narrate "Thomas the
>>> Tank Engine", a childrens show about talking trains.
>>
>> That's really pushing it :-)
>
> LOL! It's "steampunk".
So it is - I only came across that term recently.
--
derek
Larry Swain
> Larry Swain wrote:
>
>> John W. Kennedy wrote:
>>
>>> Larry Swain wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ok, I'll bit. In which non-fiction works does Lewis clearly treat
>>>> science fiction as a "ghetto"?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "An Experiment in Criticism" makes it clear enough.
>>
>>
>> I disagree. In my edition of the book science ficiton is discussed on
>> pages 29, 68, 107 and 109. Nowhere does Lewis observe that science
>> fiction is ghettoized. Nor in his 1946 essay "On Science Fiction"
>> (the 1966 title) does he make such a statement. If anything it is the
>> critic who is in the ghetto, Lewis observes, for too often the critic
>> critiques what he does not like and what he does not know and can not
>> know because he dislikes it and so reduces everything to a common
>> mass, Sci Fi being a case in point where the critic lumps it all
>> together as if it were homogenous rather than made up of many
>> different sub genres, with as many different kinds of readers.
>
>
> Yes, yes, very pretty. "Cute" as we say in the States.
Since its nearly an exact quote from Lewis, I would say so. Do recall
that your point was that SF was a "ghetto" in this period and Tolkien
was not know outside of it--we've seen that that's an error. Part of
your evidence was Lewis in Experiment in Criticism--and now we've seen
that you've misunderstood Lewis as well as made a huge error in logic:
SFs position as a field of criticial inquiry for the academic has
nothing to do with SFs popularity in the period and whether four boys
growing up in England would have been disinterested in such films, TV
and radio shows, and books that were all around them: I doubt the 10
year old John Lennon gave 2 bits about a don in Cambridge's opinion on SF.
>
> The fact remains that Lewis was unusual in his acceptance of SF as a
> legitimate form.
Unusual for an academic, yes, not unusual in the population at large and
the Beatles, before they were the Beatles were in the latter category.
>
>> Another non-sequitur. The Twilight Zone had nothing to do with
>> McCarthyism or the McCarthy era, which was over in 1954, and McCarthy
>> dead in 1957. Twilight Zone began airing in 1959 and ran until 1964.
>> It was created because a lot of Serling's teleplays that the networks
>> wanted to produce made controversial points, and advertisers were
>> unwilling to pay for something that might be deemed negative by the
>> audience. But Serling found that if the controversial point was made
>> about a society on distant planet or in a different time then
>> advertisers would approve.
>
>
> Precisely. Because SF wasn't taken seriously.
No, because social commentary wasn't welcome; unless it was commentary
on someone else's society.
>
> Good God! man -- try reading the editorials and "The Analytical Library"
> from 60's issues of "Analog" -- the constant complaints that SF is not
> taken seriously as a form of literature. (Even Roddenberry noted the
> problem in the "Star Trek" writer's guide, when he felt he needed to
> explain to professional writers that they should write Captain Kirk as
> seriously as they would write a Captain in the USN.)
None of which has anything to do with its popularity or whether four
young men from Liverpool would have heard of or even read or heard
themselves LoTR before the paperbacks. Nothing at all to do with it.
SOrry you seem unable to grasp that.
>
>> Really? I'm not sure what you have against children, but Dr. Who on
>> both sides of the Atlantic has proven as popular among adults as among
>> children.
>
>
> And, in fact, I've seen every extant episode. So what? It was still a
> children's program -- or was until the Nathan-Turner years, when it
> degenerated, like most latter-day "Star Trek", into fan-crack. (The new
> series is written at a rather higher level, though I suspect it might
> still make John W. Campbell puke.)
More so what. Do recall ol' boy that you've responded to several things
with merely the words "a children's program" or "a children's book" as
if that somehow meant that a children's program or children's book
proves that SF wasn't popular or that LoTR wasn't popular. Once again,
your objections are mere so whats.
>
> I have yet to see any sensible argument in favor of the proposition that
> the Beatles were familiar with "The Lord of the Rings" prior to the
> craze that began in 1965, seeing that the overwhelming majority of
> English speakers were not.
Considering that every argument you've put forward in favor of the
proposition that the Beatles were not familiar with the LoTR has been
shown to be pure nonsense, including your concluding statement (which
has held true since LoTR publications: even at is height, the
overwhelming majority of English speakers on the planet were not
familiar with the LoTR): it really is immaterial about the overwhelming
majority of English speakers. What we're interested in is the English
speakers in ENGLAND who listen to things like the BBC, and see books in
bookshops on their street and buy them and read them. Considering that
LoTR was popular in England, continued to be in print and was a book
club favorite, plus the BBC's radio adaptation all indicate a high
probability that the Beatles had at least heard of Tolkien and LoTR and
even read it before the late 60s craze. You've offered no sensible
argument to think otherwise, but have offered a lot of disinformation.
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
>> Really? I'm not sure what you have against children, but Dr. Who on
>> both sides of the Atlantic has proven as popular among adults as
>> among children.
>
> And, in fact, I've seen every extant episode. So what? It was still a
> children's program -- or was until the Nathan-Turner years, when it
> degenerated, like most latter-day "Star Trek", into fan-crack. (The
> new series is written at a rather higher level, though I suspect it
> might still make John W. Campbell puke.)
When were the Nathan-Turner years? Which Doctor?
As for making Campbell puke, were any of the Doctor Who episodes good
enough to avoid that fate? I always found the books (even when based on
the TV episodes) to be superior to the TV episodes.
> I have yet to see any sensible argument in favor of the proposition
> that the Beatles were familiar with "The Lord of the Rings" prior to
> the craze that began in 1965, seeing that the overwhelming majority of
> English speakers were not.
1965? Was that the year of the legitimate Ballantine US publication,
with the UK Second Edition following in 1966. What was the year of the
pirated Ace US publication? Wouldn't that be when the craze began? And
wouldn't the craze have had to have started before then, for there to be
any reason for Ace to want to risk publishing a pirate paperback?
Christopher Kreuzer
> Considering that LoTR was popular in England, continued to be
> in print and was a book
> club favorite, plus the BBC's radio adaptation all indicate a high
> probability that the Beatles had at least heard of Tolkien and LoTR
> and even read it before the late 60s craze. You've offered no
> sensible argument to think otherwise, but have offered a lot of
> disinformation.
Well, it would help if you had a quote from one of the Beatles to
confirm your argument, which as you say is based on probability. Hell,
at least one of the Beatles is still alive. I mean, he may be busy with
divorce lawyers at the moment, but if you ask nicely he might write back
and tell you whether they really were LotR fans or not, and at what
point. You could also ask John Lennon's widow as well.
Charilaos Velaris
> that your point was that SF was a "ghetto" in this period and Tolkien was
> not know outside of it
It's funny how the only point everyone seems to agree upon on this
thread is that LotR /is/ science fiction. It is not. Science fiction, by my
definition, is dominated by technology and occurs, either in the future or
on another planet. LotR, on the other hand, is a Bible for Luddites. I would
prefer to class it in a genre (with the Silm but not much else) of
philosophical fantasy (which might make some of the arguments on this thread
slightly irrelevent.
Troels Forchhammer
"Charilaos Velaris" <velaris....@wanadoo.fr> enriched us with:
Larry Swain wrote:
>>
>> Since its nearly an exact quote from Lewis, I would say so. Do
>> recall that your point was that SF was a "ghetto" in this period
>> and Tolkien was not know outside of it
>
> It's funny how the only point everyone seems to agree upon on
> this thread is that LotR /is/ science fiction. It is not.
That, obviously, depends on the definition.
In this case, however, I think the point is whether science fiction
and fantasy fans in the period discussed were the same people. I
guess the common image is indeed that both genres appealed to the
same smallish group of people and were ostracised by the majority of
critics and other people in the literary industry (I am to some
extent also myself a victim of a mental picture of groups of
university nerds forming strange SF societies encompassing both
science fiction and fantasy). I wasn't there so I cannot comment on
the veracity of the picture I have (nor even, I suspect, whether it
is indeed as common as a claim).
> Science fiction, by my definition, is dominated by technology
I'd say science, naturally ;) And require the fictitious element to
extend also to the science described.
> and occurs, either in the future or on another planet.
That, on the other hand, is, IMO, completely irrelevant. It is true
that very much science fiction does, in actual fact, take place in
such settings, but I strongly disagree that this be a requirement. An
Arthurian story that describes the usual 'magic' as scientific
knowledge (adding, perhaps, some extra-terrestrials or Atlantides to
teach this science) would fully qualify as science fiction for me,
despite the strictly historical setting.
To some extent this is what Tolkien actually does. The cloaking
effect of the Elvish cloaks and the untying effect of the rope are
examples of seeming magic that is, story-internally, described by a
higher degree of craft, including an element of Art, which is
unattainable by humans.
Clarke comes to mind (of course). There is a huge overlap between
science fiction and fantasy, and the border seems at times rather
randomly drawn depending on whether the auther likes to write
'magic' and 'craft' or 'science' and 'tech' ;)
> LotR, on the other hand,
. . . is, in many ways, a classical romance.
> is a Bible for Luddites.
That is far too narrow a description. That it might also be that is
besides the point, really -- you might just as well claim it to be a
'bible' for certain small groups of white-supremists (that the author
would feel sympathetic towards one group and antagonistic towards the
other is really not interesting when discussing what his /book/ is).
> I would prefer to class it in a genre (with the Silm but not much
> else) of philosophical fantasy
I like the term, though I wouldn't be so restrictive with it.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic.
- Arthur C. Clarke, /Profiles of The Future/, 1961
(Also known as 'Clarke's third law')
Derek Broughton
> As for making Campbell puke, were any of the Doctor Who episodes good
> enough to avoid that fate? I always found the books (even when based on
> the TV episodes) to be superior to the TV episodes.
That's because you could make up your own, far-less cheesy, effects :-)
>
> 1965?
By which time, we were _all_ Doctor Who crazy, even if it was a children's
show.
--
derek
Charilaos Velaris
"Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> a écrit dans le message de
news: Xns97D68CDD...@131.228.6.99...
>
> In this case, however, I think the point is whether science fiction
> and fantasy fans in the period discussed were the same people. I
> guess the common image is indeed that both genres appealed to the
> same smallish group of people and were ostracised by the majority of
> critics and other people in the literary industry >
Is anyone suggesting that the appeal of LotR is confined to such "a smallish
group of people"? I think that even in the '60s it far exceeded any group of
science buffs or nerds. Actually, it had widespread cultural influence, with
some even suggesting that Tolkien's Elves were the inspiration for hippies
having long hair (and hippies weren't exactly scientifically oriented) :)
>
> Clarke comes to mind (of course). There is a huge overlap between
> science fiction and fantasy, and the border seems at times rather
> randomly drawn depending on whether the auther likes to write
> 'magic' and 'craft' or 'science' and 'tech' ;)
You might be right but it still /is/ a clearly distinguishable border.
Tolkien chose magic and craft.
>
>> LotR, on the other hand, is a Bible for Luddites.
>
> That is far too narrow a description. That it might also be that is
> besides the point, really -- you might just as well claim it to be a
> 'bible' for certain small groups of white-supremists (that the author
> would feel sympathetic towards one group and antagonistic towards the
> other is really not interesting when discussing what his /book/ is).
It did not mean to say that LotR was written as a Luddite manifesto. I was
just trying to say that it appeals to people with no love or interest for
science and technology, something that would be practically impossible for a
work of science fiction.
Robert Kolker
>
> Is anyone suggesting that the appeal of LotR is confined to such "a smallish
> group of people"? I think that even in the '60s it far exceeded any group of
> science buffs or nerds. Actually, it had widespread cultural influence, with
> some even suggesting that Tolkien's Elves were the inspiration for hippies
> having long hair (and hippies weren't exactly scientifically oriented) :)
Neither were they druggies or sexually promiscuous. Or perhaps there was
more in -lembas- than meets the eye.
Bob Kolker
Larry Swain
Sure, if it was that important to me. It isn't. What I reacted to in
this thread were John's claim that four young Englishman in the 60s
wouldn't have known Tolkien before the appearance of the paperbacks
because Tolkien and the LoTR were unknown outside the small SF ghetto
and the academic community. Regardless of whether the Beatles actually
did know Tolkien or not, LoTR was popular in England and the US, SF was
not a ghetto in the period but was everywhere one looked REGARDLESS of
its critical acceptance by the academy. I. E. all John's reasons for
regarding the Beatles as ignorant of Tolkien's works before 1965 are
based on false representations of the reception of Tolkien and LoTR in
the 50s and 60s--or to restate, I'm less interested in whether the
Beatles knew the work or not and more interested in setting the record
straight on Tolkien's reception, the ubiquity and popularity of SF, and
by extension that John has either misunderstood or misrepresented Lewis.
Larry Swain
Well, no, not true. I for one in this thread do not. I was merely
reacting to the claim that Tolkien was unknown outside the small SF
ghetto before the appearance of the 1965 paperbacks. That claim is
incorrect in that Tolkien was fairly widely known before that, and the
SF "community" was certainly no small ghetto.
As someone else pointed out in the thread, some did call TOlkien
"scientifiction" in the early 50s, since there was no "fantasy" genre
then, no one knew what to do with it when trying to pigeon hole the
work. Not unusual, Vonnegut faced the same problem and insisted that
his publisher sell his works as Literature though many were classifying
it as SF.
I wouldn't call LoTR fantasy either. LoTR certainly influenced and
influences the fantasy genre, but I think it transcends it, transcends
classification. It is a modern novel and yet like few other modern
novels absorbs as its basic structure the primary elements of epic
literature; yet is also an Edwardian period adventure story and is
probably the best example of that period, and yet is a medieval
legendarium.....
John W. Kennedy
> When were the Nathan-Turner years? Which Doctor?
From Tom Baker's last year through Sylvester McCoy, though it was only
around the time of Colin Baker that things began to degenerate, and the
scripts (or at least the finished episodes) began increasingly to
resemble transcripts of the writers' dreams.
> As for making Campbell puke, were any of the Doctor Who episodes good
> enough to avoid that fate? I always found the books (even when based on
> the TV episodes) to be superior to the TV episodes.
The original Dalek serial was surprisingly good, as were others, but few
of them could be taken seriously as SF at all.
> 1965? Was that the year of the legitimate Ballantine US publication,
> with the UK Second Edition following in 1966. What was the year of the
> pirated Ace US publication? Wouldn't that be when the craze began? And
> wouldn't the craze have had to have started before then, for there to be
> any reason for Ace to want to risk publishing a pirate paperback?
Ace was a major SF house at the time, roughly in the position of Tor
today, and certainly had their ear to the ground in the SF community.
They would have known that "The Lord of the Rings" was well established
within the community, and had kept up decent sales for an entire decade,
which was unusual for a hardcover. And they saw no risk, as they were
entirely within their rights under the abominable US law of the time;
indeed, they went far beyond their legal duty, putting aside an escrow
account for royalties to Tolkien, in case he ever decided to accept
them; they could have had no idea that what they were doing would become
one of the biggest scandals in publishing history ("questions raised in
the House" and all that), and that they would have to back down out of
the bad publicity alone.
(I doubt, though, that, even for a moment, they expected that LotR would
dominate the New York Times paperback bestseller list for over a year,
albeit not in their doomed edition.)
Larry Swain
> "Troels Forchhammer" <Tro...@ThisIsFake.invalid> a écrit dans le message de
> news: Xns97D68CDD...@131.228.6.99...
>
>>In this case, however, I think the point is whether science fiction
>>and fantasy fans in the period discussed were the same people. I
>>guess the common image is indeed that both genres appealed to the
>>same smallish group of people and were ostracised by the majority of
>>critics and other people in the literary industry >
>
>
> Is anyone suggesting that the appeal of LotR is confined to such "a smallish
> group of people"?
Yes, John Kennedy makes the claim that before 1965 Tolkien was only
known in the smallish "SF ghetto". He's wrong on that because SF was
not a "ghetto", and Tolkien was more widely known than among college
students and SF readers.
I think that even in the '60s it far exceeded any group of
> science buffs or nerds. Actually, it had widespread cultural influence, with
> some even suggesting that Tolkien's Elves were the inspiration for hippies
> having long hair (and hippies weren't exactly scientifically oriented) :)
Which in this case were inspired by the cheap paperbacks that first
appeared in 1965.
>>>LotR, on the other hand, is a Bible for Luddites.
>>
>>That is far too narrow a description. That it might also be that is
>>besides the point, really -- you might just as well claim it to be a
>>'bible' for certain small groups of white-supremists (that the author
>>would feel sympathetic towards one group and antagonistic towards the
>>other is really not interesting when discussing what his /book/ is).
>
>
> It did not mean to say that LotR was written as a Luddite manifesto. I was
> just trying to say that it appeals to people with no love or interest for
> science and technology, something that would be practically impossible for a
> work of science fiction.
Well, I for one disagree. I love LoTR, but I'm also fascinated by the
subgenre of SF that focuses on the technological aspects. I can't be
the only one.
Charilaos Velaris
">> It did not mean to say that LotR was written as a Luddite manifesto. I
was
>> just trying to say that it appeals to people with no love or interest for
>> science and technology, something that would be practically impossible
>> for a work of science fiction.
>
> Well, I for one disagree. I love LoTR, but I'm also fascinated by the
> subgenre of SF that focuses on the technological aspects. I can't be the
> only one.
I never said you can't simultaneously enjoy Tolkien /and/ SF. However, there
are also a lot of people who love the Professor's works who are NOT into SF.
In any case, my intention was to stress that LotR is not SF, and I think we
agree there.
Larry Swain
generalities....and yes we are in agreement on the important point.
Matthew T Curtis
<spam...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>John W. Kennedy <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote:
>> Larry Swain wrote:
>
>>
>> And, in fact, I've seen every extant episode. So what? It was still a
>> children's program -- or was until the Nathan-Turner years, when it
>> degenerated, like most latter-day "Star Trek", into fan-crack. (The
>> new series is written at a rather higher level, though I suspect it
>> might still make John W. Campbell puke.)
>
>When were the Nathan-Turner years? Which Doctor?
>
From the last Tom Baker season (when the 'time-tunnel' opening
sequence with the Delia Derbyshire theme music arrangement was
replaced by the 'starfield' sequence with the synthesised
arrangement), through to the end of the series in 1989, so Davison, C.
Baker and McCoy. Nathan-Turner tried to leave several times, feeling
jaded, but BBC bosses wouldn't let him.
--
Matthew T Curtis mtcurtis[at]dsl.pipex.com
HIV+ for 25 glorious years!
Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened
to your lecture, I am still confused. But on a higher level. - Enrico
Fermi
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> As someone else pointed out in the thread, some did call Tolkien
> "scientifiction" in the early 50s, since there was no "fantasy" genre
> then, no one knew what to do with it when trying to pigeon hole the
> work.
Oh dear, someone hasn't been paying attention again... :-)
I think you'll find, on re-reading the thread, that someone (Dirk
Thierbach) quoted the following:
>> From the intro to letter #145, dated 13 May 1954:
>>
>> He was also shown a set of opinions of the book which Allen & Unwin
>> proposed to cite on the jacket of the British edition. In these
[...]
>> Naomi Mitchison called Tolkien's story 'super science fiction'.
The reference to "scientifiction" was me saying this:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientifiction#Terminology
>>>
>>> "The term "science fiction" first came into popular usage in the
1930s
>>> with the publication of Science Wonder Stories magazine by Hugo
>>> Gernsback. Gernsback had previously coined the portmanteau word
>>> "scientifiction" for the genre, but the term did not gain
acceptance.
>>> Before then, stories in this genre were often referred to as
"scientific
>>> romances."
<snip>
> I wouldn't call LoTR fantasy either. LoTR certainly influenced and
> influences the fantasy genre, but I think it transcends it, transcends
> classification. It is a modern novel and yet like few other modern
> novels absorbs as its basic structure the primary elements of epic
> literature; yet is also an Edwardian period adventure story and is
> probably the best example of that period, and yet is a medieval
> legendarium.....
An Edwardian period adventure story? Haven't heard that one before. Can
you give other examples of this genre?
I agree that it is more than just fantasy, but it is definitely still
fantasy. I would also describe it as part of an exercise in
"world-building", though the more traditional way of referring to this
might be "myth-making".
I find that a couple of the reviewers' descriptions of 'The
Silmarillion' best sum up Tolkien's literary Middle-earth works for me:
"Stern, sweeping myth ... an imaginative work of staggering
comprehensiveness" (Sydney Morning Herald)
"How, given little over half a century of work, did one man become the
creative equivalent of a people" (The Guardian)
"Demanding to be compared with English mythologies ... at times rises to
the greatness of true myth" (Financial Times)
Does anyone have any idea how to track down the original review
articles?
Larry Swain
> Larry Swain <thes...@operamail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>>As someone else pointed out in the thread, some did call Tolkien
>>"scientifiction" in the early 50s, since there was no "fantasy" genre
>>then, no one knew what to do with it when trying to pigeon hole the
>>work.
>
>
> Oh dear, someone hasn't been paying attention again... :-)
>
> I think you'll find, on re-reading the thread, that someone (Dirk
> Thierbach) quoted the following:
Yes, thanks for the corrections.
>
>>I wouldn't call LoTR fantasy either. LoTR certainly influenced and
>>influences the fantasy genre, but I think it transcends it, transcends
>>classification. It is a modern novel and yet like few other modern
>>novels absorbs as its basic structure the primary elements of epic
>>literature; yet is also an Edwardian period adventure story and is
>>probably the best example of that period, and yet is a medieval
>>legendarium.....
>
>
> An Edwardian period adventure story? Haven't heard that one before. Can
> you give other examples of this genre?
I got it from Lobdell and the more I read and the more I contemplate it,
the more I think that Lobdell is right. Here's a summary of his points
and others of the genre:
Characteristics of Edwardian adventure story:
* a particular object associated with the adventure
* a fictional travelogue, or at least a travel story
* framed in familiarity
* odd and inexplicable things happen
* enchanted scenery & stock characters as in a dream
* characters are types
* nature itself is a character
* black-and-white morality
* a band of brothers/we happy few/a fellowship
* an eccentric, mysterious, and powerful leader
* story is told by one of the fellowship who has survived
* mysterious character indwelling the world itself
* nature is itself in a way supernatural
* past is alive in the present
* frankly aristocratic in its conventions
(11-19)
------------------------
Examples
* G.K. Chesterton, The Man who was Thursday (which I've read), The
Everlasting Man, The Napoleon of Notting Hill
* H. Ryder Haggard, She, King Solomon's Mines
* Algernon Blackwood, The Willows, Strange Stories
* Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
* Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
* Rudyard Kipling
* Masefield
* G. A. Henty
* Robert Louis Stevenson
* P. G. Wodehouse
* Farnol
One he didn't note that should be here is certainly Chesterton's "Ballad
of the White Horse"
>
> I agree that it is more than just fantasy, but it is definitely still
> fantasy. I would also describe it as part of an exercise in
> "world-building", though the more traditional way of referring to this
> might be "myth-making".
I guess I separate the two terms, I don't think "world buidling" and
"myth-making" are the same process, though at some points overlapping.
I would also say that Tolkien does both, and does both more successfully
than any fantasy author I know of save perhaps Kay or Le Guin's Left
Hand of Darkness (which isn't to say that I've not read some fabulous
fantasy out there, just on a scale of world building and/or mythmaking
doesn't compare to Tolkien) that to put them into the same category just
does not work.
>
> I find that a couple of the reviewers' descriptions of 'The
> Silmarillion' best sum up Tolkien's literary Middle-earth works for me:
>
> "Stern, sweeping myth ... an imaginative work of staggering
> comprehensiveness" (Sydney Morning Herald)
>
> "How, given little over half a century of work, did one man become the
> creative equivalent of a people" (The Guardian)
>
> "Demanding to be compared with English mythologies ... at times rises to
> the greatness of true myth" (Financial Times)
>
> Does anyone have any idea how to track down the original review
> articles?
Yes, I agree with all those assessments. But that for me doesn't make
Tolkien's work "fantasy", and the points raised in these statements are
touching on the elements that make LoTR epic in the technical sense and
not the Hollywood sense. Just my take I guess.
Robert Kolker
> I got it from Lobdell and the more I read and the more I contemplate it,
> the more I think that Lobdell is right. Here's a summary of his points
> and others of the genre:
>
> Characteristics of Edwardian adventure story:
>
> * a particular object associated with the adventure
> * a fictional travelogue, or at least a travel story
> * framed in familiarity
> * odd and inexplicable things happen
> * enchanted scenery & stock characters as in a dream
> * characters are types
> * nature itself is a character
> * black-and-white morality
> * a band of brothers/we happy few/a fellowship
> * an eccentric, mysterious, and powerful leader
> * story is told by one of the fellowship who has survived
> * mysterious character indwelling the world itself
> * nature is itself in a way supernatural
> * past is alive in the present
> * frankly aristocratic in its conventions
>
> (11-19)
I once attended a writing class where the professor taught us that there
are four elements to a succesful fictional narrative:
1. Royalty
2. Diety
3. Sex and or romance
4. Mystery.
He then tested us by asking to write a short fiction embodying the above
principles:
I submitted the following:
"My God!" said the Queen, "I'm pregnant! Whodunit?"
I got an A.
Bob Kolker
Christopher Kreuzer
<snip>
> I once attended a writing class where the professor taught us that
> there are four elements to a succesful fictional narrative:
>
> 1. Royalty
> 2. Diety
> 3. Sex and or romance
> 4. Mystery.
>
> He then tested us by asking to write a short fiction embodying the
> above principles:
>
> I submitted the following:
>
> "My God!" said the Queen, "I'm pregnant! Whodunit?"
>
> I got an A.
LOL! Nice story!
Count Menelvagor
Larry Swain wrote:
> Christopher Kreuzer wrote:
one small point. everlastng man is non-fiction, a combination of
apologetics and an interpretation of history, so wouldn't quite go
here. i'm not sure notting hill does either (though it's fiction), but
it's been a while since i read it. i suppose it cd be a kind of science
fiction, in the sense that it's based on an imaginative supposition
about the future. (by an odd coincidence, it's set in 1984.)
Troels Forchhammer
> message de news: Xns97D68CDD...@131.228.6.99...
>>
<snip>
> Is anyone suggesting that the appeal of LotR is confined to such
> "a smallish group of people"?
I couldn't say for sure, but that was how I understood the discussion.
> I think that even in the '60s it far exceeded any group of
> science buffs or nerds. Actually, it had widespread cultural
> influence, with some even suggesting that Tolkien's Elves
> were the inspiration for hippies having long hair
My understanding was that the discussion was about the earlier part of
the sixties, but again, I could easily be mistaken.
>> Clarke comes to mind (of course). There is a huge overlap between
>> science fiction and fantasy, and the border seems at times rather
>> randomly drawn depending on whether the auther likes to write
>> 'magic' and 'craft' or 'science' and 'tech' ;)
>
> You might be right but it still /is/ a clearly distinguishable
> border. Tolkien chose magic and craft.
But he also chose to use 'the deceits of the Enemy' as the magical
representation of 'the Machine' in his book. Technology is clearly
present as a force for evil in LotR.
To me that distinction is neither so clear nor as meaningful as it
might appear. To my eyes the magic and the science serves the same
narrative purpose, and in the end the distinction it is about as
meaningful as the discussion about Holland vs. Netherlands[*]. Clarke's
law, I think, works both ways -- magic is equivalent to a sufficiently
advanced technology (any factors of 'c' can be set to 1 and left out of
consideration <G>).
[*] Neither, as I understand it, is in the historical perspective
a correct name for the modern state. The Netherlands
historically included modern Belgium and possibly more,
while historical Holland is only a part of the modern nation.
[...]
> It did not mean to say that LotR was written as a Luddite
> manifesto. I was just trying to say that it appeals to people with
> no love or interest for science and technology, something that
> would be practically impossible for a work of science fiction.
I think you're mistaken there. There have been a number of stories
written in the more traditional, or more easily recognisable, Science
Fiction genre, which propound a 'back to the nature' ethics, and
clearly portrays technology as the root cause of evil in a far more
direct (and hence occasionally very poor) manner than does LotR; in
other words there have been books that are clearly SF by your
definition which are really Luddite manifestos.
There might very well be people who dislike the use of technology and
science as explanations while liking the use of magic and inexplicable
'art' (and vice versa), but basically I think that such are a rather
small part of the fans of either subgenre, while the majority of fans
are fans of both.
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid mail is <t.forch(a)email.dk>
"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he
said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"
- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)