LOTR/Tolkien: Do The Valar Suck?
Jon Kay
its very core, that is totally different from the real world.
In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically are
lesser and worse off than their granddads.
The weapons used in the Dagor Bragollach in which Morgoth beat the
Noldor are far, far more terrible in effect than the weapons used in
the War of the Ring. Sauron had only one Balrog and no dragons atall,
whereas Morgoth had plenty of each to kill the greatest Noldor and
make Beleriand a living hell. The Noldor, on the other hand, were
the Elves' greatest warriors ever, and were equipped with the greatest
arms and equipment that Elves would ever bear.
The greatest artifacts ever made in Middle-Earth were made early
indeed. And it continues; nobody in the Third Age can make any
artefacts like the Rings of Power. If you think about it, that whole
fear of the Ring is like us fearing, say, those awful new triremes
that the Greeks just introduced three thousandish years ago (actually,
even in Middle-Earth, it's not clear why the Wise didn't just forge
new Rings or other artefacts that could aid their power).
Is this just my imagination? Is it just the weapons, or is it the
whole quality of life / civilization thing?
More concretely, were Noldor farmers before the Dagor Bragollach
more productive than farmers, say, in Gondor?
What indices of civilization are likely to be most important in
Middle-Earth? Is there any index that increases at all?
Going down the list of traditional OTL civilizational indices, which
indices actually increase in the short term (e.g., after the Noldor
land or in Numenor?), and when? Which indices increase in the long
term (e.g., Noldor vs. Numenor vs. Gondor).
Agriculture
Big Projects
R&D
Education
Building
Population
Transportation
Military Power
Pollution
Corruption
Justice
Government
If you believe in that story of decline, what is different about
Middle-Earth that allows it to so consistently decline, even over
3,000-year spans, when OTL things mostly improve? If you don't
believe in it, how are the peoples 'represented' by the White Council
better off than the high-elves at the beginning?
Does it Have To Be This Way? Are the decisions of the Valar to blame,
or is it an inevitable basic aspect of reality in Middle-Earth? Is
there reason to think that different Valar or high-elvish policy
decisions could have resulted in more widespread prosperity at the end
of the Third Age?
Why did the Valar have to 'call in airstrikes' to deal with Numenor?
Is the administration of the Valar better or worse than that of
Morgoth and Sauron? ->*WHY*<- (points will be deducted from papers
just saying that Morgoth and Sauron are evil!)
Jon
Michael S. Schiffer
<3C69721C...@pushcache.com>:
>You know, there is something really STRANGE about Tolkien's world,
>at its very core, that is totally different from the real world.
>In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically
>are lesser and worse off than their granddads.
>The weapons used in the Dagor Bragollach in which Morgoth beat the
>Noldor are far, far more terrible in effect than the weapons used
>in the War of the Ring. Sauron had only one Balrog and no dragons
>atall, whereas Morgoth had plenty of each to kill the greatest
>Noldor and make Beleriand a living hell. The Noldor, on the
>other hand, were the Elves' greatest warriors ever, and were
>equipped with the greatest arms and equipment that Elves would
>ever bear.
>The greatest artifacts ever made in Middle-Earth were made early
>indeed. And it continues; nobody in the Third Age can make any
>artefacts like the Rings of Power. If you think about it, that
>whole fear of the Ring is like us fearing, say, those awful new
>triremes that the Greeks just introduced three thousandish years
>ago (actually, even in Middle-Earth, it's not clear why the Wise
>didn't just forge new Rings or other artefacts that could aid
>their power).
The people who knew how to forge Rings of Power were all killed in the
war between the Elves and Sauron. Moreover, the ring-lore they had
had was largely derived from Sauron himself, and aimed at the making
of rings that could be hijacked by the One. Saruman apparently
learned enough to forge a ring of his own (at least, he calls himself
"Saruman Ring-Maker" and Gandalf notices that he's wearing a ring at
their confrontation in the first book)-- but that was a cause, effect,
or both of his slide into corruption.
Moreover, seeking after power is in itself bad in the metaphysics of
Middle Earth, It's unlikely that anyone who could successfully seek
after enough power to fight Sauron directly could avoid the corrupting
effects of having such power, even if it wasn't directly linked to
Sauron. (*Using* power that one has, either inherently or as a result
of fortune, isn't necessarily bad, though it's dangerous as a road to
pride. But even the good centers of power tend to fall when they
trust entirely to their own preparations.)
>Is this just my imagination? Is it just the weapons, or is it the
>whole quality of life / civilization thing?
It's the whole thing. "Such is the fate of Arda marred." It's an old
concept, that the world is getting progressively worse, and one that
Tolkien (as can be seen in his letters) subscribed to wholeheartedly.
Real improvement was only possible by divine providence, outside the
World or at the end of days.
>More concretely, were Noldor farmers before the Dagor Bragollach
>more productive than farmers, say, in Gondor?
It's not clear that there were Noldor farmers, as such. But Elves in
general had a much more friendly relationship with plants than Men do
(perhaps because they weren't cursed to eat bread by the sweat of
their brow). A handful of the soil of Lorien produced the most
fertile year the Shire had ever seen-- it may be that an Elvish realm
naturally produced enough food for Elves to live on with minimal work.
So the answer to the question is probably, in essence, yes.
>What indices of civilization are likely to be most important in
>Middle-Earth? Is there any index that increases at all?
Over short times, sure. There were more cities in Middle Earth after
the revolt of the Noldor than before, though they were reduced one-by-
one in the ensuing centuries. The late Second Age and early Third saw
a lot more and better towers and cities in Gondor and Arnor than the
previous age did-- though more than the subsequent age as well.
Overall, though, things are expected to get worse (implicitly till the
Incarnation, at which point the prospects of Men improve on the
spiritual if not material plane).
>Going down the list of traditional OTL civilizational indices,
>which indices actually increase in the short term (e.g., after the
>Noldor land or in Numenor?), and when? Which indices increase in
>the long term (e.g., Noldor vs. Numenor vs. Gondor).
Note that Tolkien didn't *like* most of the indices you mention.
Things like R&D, Big Projects, Military Power, etc. were more the
province of Mordor than the Free Peoples. What you (or I) might call
improvement, he'd call a decline. But overall, even the material
power of both sides decreased over time-- Sauron was a shadow of
Morgoth, even in evil.
>...
>If you believe in that story of decline, what is different about
>Middle-Earth that allows it to so consistently decline, even over
>3,000-year spans, when OTL things mostly improve?
In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that draws on
a nonrenewable resource. Even the Valar apparently use up their
capability to make things over time-- Yavanna couldn't just whip up
another Two Trees, and none of the other Valar could make anything
comparable to replace them as light sources. Each generation, perhaps
because they're further from the original Creation, has less of that
inherent capability to work with. In addition, the world itself has a
life cycle, and is perceptibly aging over historical time. In
_Unfinished Tales_, it's noted that the light of the Sun itself isn't
so bright and clear in the Second Age as it was in the First.
If you don't
>believe in it, how are the peoples 'represented' by the White
>Council better off than the high-elves at the beginning?
They're not facing what's effectively an incarnate Satan as their
primary enemy. The Free Peoples of the Third Age are far better off
than those of the First and Second in that they spend most of the Age
dealing with threats that aren't that much more powerful than they
are. From the destruction of the Trees, the peoples of Beleriand
lived in armed camps, mostly hidden, with most of the outside world
full of hostile (and often supernatural) creatures. For most of the
Third, the Free Peoples lived in relatively broad realms, occasionally
attacked, sometimes destroyed, and generally declining, but without
the same sense of constant siege.
>Does it Have To Be This Way? Are the decisions of the Valar to
>blame, or is it an inevitable basic aspect of reality in
>Middle-Earth? Is there reason to think that different Valar or
>high-elvish policy decisions could have resulted in more
>widespread prosperity at the end of the Third Age?
The Valar weren't given sufficient information about Men to trust
themselves to deal with them. To change that would require a
different policy on the part of Iluvatar. It's unlikely that the
Noldor could have made things much better themselves-- their methods
of creation inherently can't be scaled up to mass production even if,
in Tolkien's world, that wouldn't itself be a sign of corruption.
(And if they hadn't revolted, it's unclear if or when the Valar would
have acted against Morgoth, which leaves Men in, if anything, worse
shape.)
>Why did the Valar have to 'call in airstrikes' to deal with
>Numenor?
Same deal-- they weren't given complete information about Men, and
were afraid of messing up Eru's plan for them.
>Is the administration of the Valar better or worse than that of
>Morgoth and Sauron? ->*WHY*<- (points will be deducted from
>papers just saying that Morgoth and Sauron are evil!)
The administration of the Dark Lords was actively bad-- it involved
slavery, torture, and destruction on a vast scale. What technology
was developed was never applied to make the lives of their subjects
any better-- quite the reverse. The worst you can say about the Valar
is that they were negligent, and they did at least make some attempts
to fix things. (E.g., summoning the Elves to Aman, providing covert
assistance during the First and Third Ages.) Without their
assistance, neither Morgoth's nor Sauron's tortures would have ever
ended.
It's arguable that they didn't do enough, and I'd argue it. On the
other hand, the results of their direct interventions invariably
involved the sinking of continental land masses, which explains some
of their reluctance.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Ross TenEyck
>In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically are
>lesser and worse off than their granddads.
[Much snipped]
Well, that was Tolkien's worldview: the Golden Age was in the past,
there were giants on the earth in those days, it's all going to hell
in a handbasket, kids these days.
Brin has a rant on this. The "newer is better" worldview is a fairly
recent innovation, peculiar to technological societies. The "older
is better" worldview was predominant through much of human history.
(It's possible this may have become entrenched in the centuries
after the fall of Rome; when, in many ways, things *had* gone in
the shitter, compared to the glory that was past. But I think
the attitude predates Rome, if you dig for it.)
You can find it in a lot of the standard fantasy tropes (which
themselves came from folktales and myths, via several authors):
the most powerful magics are in the oldest, mustiest spellbooks
(modern wizards can't make up their own spells); the mightiest
artifacts are the ones dug up from centuries-old ruins (modern
craftsmen can't make anything of like potency); the great empires
of the past have crumbled into patchworks of petty kingdoms
(no modern king can hold together such a vast empire.) It's
a more pervavise meme than I think you've realized.
So yeah, Tolkien's history is a story of a long decline, with
only isolated bumps in the overall downward curve. He wasn't
alone in that; historically, most thinkers would probably have
agreed with him.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Aris Katsaris
"Ross TenEyck" <ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu> wrote in message
news:a4c2h2$g...@gap.cco.caltech.edu...
> Jon Kay <jk...@pushcache.com> writes:
>
> >In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically are
> >lesser and worse off than their granddads.
>
> [Much snipped]
>
> Well, that was Tolkien's worldview: the Golden Age was in the past,
> there were giants on the earth in those days, it's all going to hell
> in a handbasket, kids these days.
I'm not that sure it's so simplistic. Yes, the world did begin in a state
of bliss and went worse from there, but it's not a *constant* decline
by any means. The Dunedain were much greater than their ancestors
and reached their peak in "blissfullness" near the middle of the Second
Age ("children were born to them more beautiful than their parents")
and their growth in power and craftsmanship was steady even after
the "blissfullness" turned into evil. With Elessar Minas Tirith became
more glorious than even in the time of its founding. The Dwarves of
the Lonely Mountain aren't as skilled as their ancestors in forging
swords and mail but they are even better than their ancestors in
building/architecture/etc...
History has its ups and downs... To quote Tolkien himself:
"Friar Carter gave a pretty stirring little sermon, based on Rogation
Days (next Mon - Wed) in which he suggested we were all a lot of
untutored robots for not saying Grace; and did not suggest but
categorically pronounced Oxford to deserve to be wiped out with
fire and blood in the wrath of God for the abominations and
wickedness there perpetrated. We all woke up. I am afraid it is all
too horribly true. But I wonder if it is specially true now? A small
knowledge of history depresses one with the sense of the everlasting
mass and weight of human iniquity: old, old, dreary, endless
repetitive unchanging incurable wickedness. All towns, all villages,
all habitations of men--sinks! And at the same time one knows that
there is always good: much more hidden, much less clearly discerned,
seldom breaking out into recognizable, visible, beauties of word or
deed or face--not even when in fact sanctity, far greater than the
visible advertised wickedness, is really there."
Aris Katsaris
Brenda W. Clough
> Jon Kay <jk...@pushcache.com> wrote in
> <3C69721C...@pushcache.com>:
>
> >The greatest artifacts ever made in Middle-Earth were made early
> >indeed. And it continues; nobody in the Third Age can make any
> >artefacts like the Rings of Power. If you think about it, that
> >whole fear of the Ring is like us fearing, say, those awful new
> >triremes that the Greeks just introduced three thousandish years
> >ago (actually, even in Middle-Earth, it's not clear why the Wise
> >didn't just forge new Rings or other artefacts that could aid
> >their power).
>
> The people who knew how to forge Rings of Power were all killed in the
> war between the Elves and Sauron.
I particularly note, in UNFINISHED TALES, that Celebrimbor the ringmaker
was killed by Sauron, who then went on to sack Eregion carrying the body
of Celebrimbor as a banner, on a pole. Now there's the way to rally the
populace to your side. What a PR meister that Sauron was, eh?
>
> It's the whole thing. "Such is the fate of Arda marred." It's an old
> concept, that the world is getting progressively worse, and one that
> Tolkien (as can be seen in his letters) subscribed to wholeheartedly.
> Real improvement was only possible by divine providence, outside the
> World or at the end of days.
It could be persuasively argued that this is Despair, a mortal sin. To
just throw up your hands and say 'well, nothing can be done, it's all
going to hell in a handbasket' is uncourageous.
> Note that Tolkien didn't *like* most of the indices you mention.
> Things like R&D, Big Projects, Military Power, etc. were more the
> province of Mordor than the Free Peoples. What you (or I) might call
> improvement, he'd call a decline. But overall, even the material
> power of both sides decreased over time-- Sauron was a shadow of
> Morgoth, even in evil.
I wonder how much of this attitude was a product of Tolkien's time. The
British empire had been declining steadily for the past generation; they
were losing India, losing their world primacy both militarily and
scientifically; even the king had abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson. The
Allies won the Great War but only at stupendous cost; and nothing was
gained by the sacrifices of the fallen, since WWII was rolling up on the
horizon like thunder. Of course the past looked much sunnier than the
present.
> >If you believe in that story of decline, what is different about
> >Middle-Earth that allows it to so consistently decline, even over
> >3,000-year spans, when OTL things mostly improve?
>
> In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that draws on
> a nonrenewable resource.
I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again with
despair. A painter with only one painting in him is barely an artist, and
a writer with only one book in her is hardly a novelist. Feanor should
have just sat down and made something else. Move on, man!
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough
Read my novella "May Be Some Time"
Complete at www.analogsf.com
My web page is at http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Michael S. Schiffer
<3C699721...@erols.com>:
>"Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>...
>> The people who knew how to forge Rings of Power were all killed
>> in the war between the Elves and Sauron.
>I particularly note, in UNFINISHED TALES, that Celebrimbor the
>ringmaker was killed by Sauron, who then went on to sack Eregion
>carrying the body of Celebrimbor as a banner, on a pole. Now
>there's the way to rally the populace to your side. What a PR
>meister that Sauron was, eh?
There's a place in PR for the message "You can't win. Surrender now
and you'll rate a quick death, surrender later and you'll get a slow
one." Especially if, like Sauron, your goal is personal
aggrandizement and the enjoyment of your enemies pain. If he just
wanted to run things efficiently, with himself at the top, his
strategy might be different. One gets the feeling that pretending to
be a good guy was a strain for him, and that he was much more pleased
when he could drop the fair guise and make the enemy suffer.
>> It's the whole thing. "Such is the fate of Arda marred." It's
>> an old concept, that the world is getting progressively worse,
>> and one that Tolkien (as can be seen in his letters) subscribed
>> to wholeheartedly. Real improvement was only possible by divine
>> providence, outside the World or at the end of days.
>It could be persuasively argued that this is Despair, a mortal
>sin. To just throw up your hands and say 'well, nothing can be
>done, it's all going to hell in a handbasket' is uncourageous.
Only if it's an excuse for inaction. Tolkien didn't take it that
way. He supported his sons' military service (though, Luddite that
he was, he disliked the fact that Christopher's was served in the RAF
because he didn't like warplanes.) His heroes are one example after
another of enlisting in a hopeless cause, knowing that it's hopeless.
Sometimes providence aids you and you win, albeit at great cost
(Beren and Luthien, Earendil and Elwing, the quest of the Ring).
Sometimes fate is against you and you lose (Hurin, Turin)-- though
even then, you make a name and a rallying point for those who come
after you. I suspect that Tolkien would argue that hope is a virtue
only insofar as despair is a temptation-- in a world that looks
hopeful, hope is the easy course.
>...
>I wonder how much of this attitude was a product of Tolkien's
>time. The British empire had been declining steadily for the past
>generation; they were losing India, losing their world primacy
>both militarily and scientifically; even the king had abdicated to
>marry Wallis Simpson. The Allies won the Great War but only at
>stupendous cost; and nothing was gained by the sacrifices of the
>fallen, since WWII was rolling up on the horizon like thunder. Of
>course the past looked much sunnier than the present.
Probably quite a bit. Tolkien may not have been writing allegory,
but his work was certainly a product of his experience.
>...
>> >If you believe in that story of decline, what is different
>> >about Middle-Earth that allows it to so consistently decline,
>> >even over 3,000-year spans, when OTL things mostly improve?
>> In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that
>> draws on a nonrenewable resource.
>I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again with
>despair. A painter with only one painting in him is barely an
>artist, and a writer with only one book in her is hardly a
>novelist. Feanor should have just sat down and made something
>else. Move on, man!
Perhaps if Tolkien himself had written more than a few stories,
including only one finished masterwork and a handful of well-told
legends that he niggled with indefinitely, he might have agreed with
you. But a world with a different metaphysic would never have
supported a _Lord of the Rings_-- imagine if Sauron could respond to
the destruction of the Ring by starting work on a bigger, better one.
(Granted, E.E. Smith's LotR might have been interesting to read. But
I'm glad enough to have Tolkien's, even if I don't share his
worldview.)
In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear to have one
Great Work in them. And most reach a point of diminishing returns
eventually-- it's the rare artist (and even rarer scientist) who
produces bigger and better things throughout a long career. Most
peak, at some point, and produce lesser works (or no new work)
thereafter. Tolkien is just saying that it's the same for the gods
(if not for God)-- except that their furiously creative youth, and
the world's, was over before Men made it onto the scene.
Lois Tilton
> (It's possible this may have become entrenched in the centuries
> after the fall of Rome; when, in many ways, things *had* gone in
> the shitter, compared to the glory that was past. But I think
> the attitude predates Rome, if you dig for it.)
Dig up Hesiod, who explicitly labeled the ages Gold, Silver, etc, in
order of decline from the time when the gods walked on earth and sat down
to banquet with mortal men.
--
LT
David E. Siegel
> You know, there is something really STRANGE about Tolkien's world, at
> its very core, that is totally different from the real world.
>
> In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically are
> lesser and worse off than their granddads.
>
> The weapons used in the Dagor Bragollach in which Morgoth beat the
> Noldor are far, far more terrible in effect than the weapons used in
> the War of the Ring. Sauron had only one Balrog and no dragons atall,
> whereas Morgoth had plenty of each to kill the greatest Noldor and
> make Beleriand a living hell. The Noldor, on the other hand, were
> the Elves' greatest warriors ever, and were equipped with the greatest
> arms and equipment that Elves would ever bear.
>
> The greatest artifacts ever made in Middle-Earth were made early
> indeed. And it continues; nobody in the Third Age can make any
> artefacts like the Rings of Power. If you think about it, that whole
> fear of the Ring is like us fearing, say, those awful new triremes
> that the Greeks just introduced three thousandish years ago (actually,
> even in Middle-Earth, it's not clear why the Wise didn't just forge
> new Rings or other artefacts that could aid their power).
>
>
> Is this just my imagination? Is it just the weapons, or is it the
> whole quality of life / civilization thing?
It is virtually everything in Tolkien's world, not jsut in middle
earth. I think that the only real answer is that it was an importan
part of JRRT's personal worldview that by important measures, things
were in fact going from bad to worse in OTL as well, and this is an
important basic fact of the world(s) that he created.
Consider, as a young boy, he lived in some of the last gasp of rural
19th cent england, which he always looked on as a "golden age" in part
because it was the lost great place of his boyhood, and in part
because the creation of the industrial midlands in the early 20th was
in fact a pretty ugly thing. (Consider how much of mordor seems to be
a waste from a very badly run smelter/factory, and how negativly
anything even slightly savoring of industial development is looked on
in LOTR-- orcs as munitions workers in The hobbit; Sauraman, Ted
Sandyman, etc). Consider further that his entry into adulthood was
marked by WWI, in which all the british culture of his adolesence was
destroyed or greatly changed, and most of his friends lost their
lives, while the early years in which LOTR was composed were those of
WWII (in which his son christopher served). Consider furhter that his
professional interestes were very much past-oriented, leading to an
equation of the 'orgininal form' of a language, tale, etc as the
"pure" or best form, and that searches for such original forms, often
quite unobtainable in full, were a major task of him and his fellow
philologists (e.g. the gothic language). Plus there were clearly
strong personal feelings involved, which may not derive from any
simple source in his life story -- all these worked together to forge
his quite complex worldview, a major part of which seesm to be the
assumption that older, particularly older things part of a "valid"
tradition, is better, and that the world in general is decaying from
ancient glory.
>
> More concretely, were Noldor farmers before the Dagor Bragollach
> more productive than farmers, say, in Gondor?
>
No real evidence that I can see, not a topic which seems to have
interested JRRT.
<snip>
> If you believe in that story of decline, what is different about
> Middle-Earth that allows it to so consistently decline, even over
> 3,000-year spans, when OTL things mostly improve? If you don't
> believe in it, how are the peoples 'represented' by the White Council
> better off than the high-elves at the beginning?
>
> Does it Have To Be This Way? Are the decisions of the Valar to blame,
> or is it an inevitable basic aspect of reality in Middle-Earth? Is
> there reason to think that different Valar or high-elvish policy
> decisions could have resulted in more widespread prosperity at the end
> of the Third Age?
>
No i think within Tolkein's world this si simply a basic datum, as
inevitable as the increase of entropy in a closed system is in the
real world.
> Why did the Valar have to 'call in airstrikes' to deal with Numenor?
>
> Is the administration of the Valar better or worse than that of
> Morgoth and Sauron? ->*WHY*<- (points will be deducted from papers
> just saying that Morgoth and Sauron are evil!)
>
> Jon
The Valar are both just and merciful, they allow free will to others
(and the one major time they tried to over-ride the elves free will it
was a major mistake) They do not take delight in the pain and
unhappyness of others, they do ot desire power for its own sake, they
do desire to create beauty (rather than destroy it) etc.
-DES
Jerry Friedman
> its very core, that is totally different from the real world.
>
> In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically are
> lesser and worse off than their granddads.
[snip examples]
For Tolkien, yes. The belief that things were getting worse in the
real world was common in ancient times. I strongly suspect that
Tolkien agreed, and considered that in OTL things were mostly NOT
improving. I think he would have been bemused by the assumption that
a world with nuclear weapons, the Holocaust, and poison gas was better
than anything in the past. Note also that in LotR all the technology
beyond metalwork, from the Sandymans' new mill to the creation of the
Uruk-hai, is in the service of evil. So most of your indices of
civilization would be, for him, indices of decay.
See <http://groups.google.com/groups?q=rec.arts.sf.written+Gandalf+Theoden+modern&hl=en&selm=slrna20am6.vdc.jdege%40jdege.visi.com&rnum=1>
for one of Tolkien's own comment on medieval versus modern ways of
thinking. See also his friend Lewis's attacks on "chronological
chauvinism", the idea that we understand anything important better
than people in the past did.
Nostalgia is one of the central emotions of the trilogy, and one of
the things that makes it so interesting to me.
--
Jerry Friedman
Vandevere
That's what Tolkien's work-the WHOLE THING from "The Silmarillion to
"Return of the King"- was about; how everything started out gloriously
beautiful, and strong, and just...went to hell.
Actually, Tolkien thought our society-the one we have today-was
extremely degraded and corrupt, compared to what God-or Eru-had
originally intended for His Creation.
Vandevere
John S. Novak, III
>> In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that draws on
>> a nonrenewable resource.
> I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again with
> despair. A painter with only one painting in him is barely an artist, and
> a writer with only one book in her is hardly a novelist. Feanor should
> have just sat down and made something else. Move on, man!
I'd noticed the same thing, but not been able to say it as
articulately. However, I wonder, is this the same for all the Free
Peoples, or is it just a quirk of the Elvish psyche that Iluvatar put
there to keep them from running amok over their younger siblings?
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
The Humblest Man on the Net
Michael S. Schiffer
<a4ceri$1dvt99$1...@ID-100778.news.dfncis.de>:
It applies to the Valar as well, at least. We don't hear a lot about
the particular works of Men or Dwarves juxtaposed with the stories of
their creators. Was the Arkenstone the capstone to a long career of
gemsmithing or a one-shot burst of creativity? Did the architect of
Orthanc go on to lay out Minas Tirith and Osgiliath? We don't know,
AFAIK.
Though it's not fair to say that Feanor only had one work in him. He
made the palantiri, after all, and numerous weapons and lesser gems--
not to mention less tangible inventions like the Tengwar. The
Silmarils were just his Big Idea, and the thing he'd poured most of
his power into.
Brenda W. Clough
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in
> <3C699721...@erols.com>:
>
> >"Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
> >...
> >> The people who knew how to forge Rings of Power were all killed
> >> in the war between the Elves and Sauron.
>
> >I particularly note, in UNFINISHED TALES, that Celebrimbor the
> >ringmaker was killed by Sauron, who then went on to sack Eregion
> >carrying the body of Celebrimbor as a banner, on a pole. Now
> >there's the way to rally the populace to your side. What a PR
> >meister that Sauron was, eh?
>
> There's a place in PR for the message "You can't win. Surrender now
> and you'll rate a quick death, surrender later and you'll get a slow
> one." Especially if, like Sauron, your goal is personal
> aggrandizement and the enjoyment of your enemies pain. If he just
> wanted to run things efficiently, with himself at the top, his
> strategy might be different. One gets the feeling that pretending to
> be a good guy was a strain for him, and that he was much more pleased
> when he could drop the fair guise and make the enemy suffer.
It's -inefficient-. Are we going to be an -effective- tyrant and
overlord, or are we just going to indulge in random violence and
cruelty? But I suppose this is where character really is destiny, and
that old cloven hoof has to peep out.
> >> In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that
> >> draws on a nonrenewable resource.
>
> >I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again with
> >despair. A painter with only one painting in him is barely an
> >artist, and a writer with only one book in her is hardly a
> >novelist. Feanor should have just sat down and made something
> >else. Move on, man!
>
> Perhaps if Tolkien himself had written more than a few stories,
> including only one finished masterwork and a handful of well-told
> legends that he niggled with indefinitely, he might have agreed with
> you. But a world with a different metaphysic would never have
> supported a _Lord of the Rings_-- imagine if Sauron could respond to
> the destruction of the Ring by starting work on a bigger, better one.
> (Granted, E.E. Smith's LotR might have been interesting to read. But
> I'm glad enough to have Tolkien's, even if I don't share his
> worldview.)
It's particularly wrong considering that the Elves are immortal. Men are
prey to disease and the Brain-Eater; Elves should be good to go for
millennia.
> In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear to have one
> Great Work in them.
I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort. GONE WITH THE
WIND, Margaret Mitchell's only published novel, is not really Great.
Homer? But it is presumed that many of his works have been lost over
time. It is hard to become really first-rank without quite a bit of
practice, and most writers are happy to let these earlier lesser works be
published. Even Tolkien wrote tons of stuff -- he just never organized
most of it sufficiently to be printed.
Brenda W. Clough
> The Valar are both just and merciful, they allow free will to others
> (and the one major time they tried to over-ride the elves free will it
> was a major mistake) They do not take delight in the pain and
> unhappyness of others, they do ot desire power for its own sake, they
> do desire to create beauty (rather than destroy it) etc.
>
What they possibly are not is smart. Nor are they good managers, of Elves or Men. <brief
digression: What Bill Clinton could have done, in their situation! The mind reels.> It
is probably just as well that they spend a lot of their time watching -- if they accumulate
enough data and study Elves and Men long enough, they might get a handle on how they tick.
Rachel Brown
> > Note that Tolkien didn't *like* most of the indices you mention.
> > Things like R&D, Big Projects, Military Power, etc. were more the
> > province of Mordor than the Free Peoples. What you (or I) might call
> > improvement, he'd call a decline. But overall, even the material
> > power of both sides decreased over time-- Sauron was a shadow of
> > Morgoth, even in evil.
>
> I wonder how much of this attitude was a product of Tolkien's time. The
> British empire had been declining steadily for the past generation; they
> were losing India,
I don't blame Tolkien, or indeed anyone British at that time for
seeing that as a decline, but from the point of view of the Indians,
it was an impending triumph. I see an extremely loose Middle Earth
parallel here: the fall of the elves is the rise of men.
> > In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that draws on
> > a nonrenewable resource.
>
> I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again with
> despair. A painter with only one painting in him is barely an artist, and
> a writer with only one book in her is hardly a novelist. Feanor should
> have just sat down and made something else. Move on, man!
One of the most striking scenes in one of Susan Cooper's books, I
think _Silver on the Tree_, is the meeting with the swordsmith who has
fallen victim to that exact sort of despair, and she does portray it
as despair and defeat.
And yet Sam's garden is treated as his creativity and life force, if
in a lesser sense, and when he and Galadriel's dust make the Shire
blossom, it continues to blossom. When Aragorn comes to Gondor, he
finds and plants a new White Tree. Maybe only men and hobbits have art
and fecundity work so that the more you give, the more you get. Maybe
that's the Achilles heel of the elves and dwarves, and why the elves
must sail over sea rather than stay to make Middle Earth bloom once
more with mallorn trees.
Rachel
Allyn
news:3C69CC97...@erols.com:
> "David E. Siegel" wrote:
>
>> The Valar are both just and merciful, they allow free will to
>> others (and the one major time they tried to over-ride the elves
>> free will it was a major mistake) They do not take delight in
>> the pain and unhappyness of others, they do ot desire power for
>> its own sake, they do desire to create beauty (rather than
>> destroy it) etc.
>>
>
> What they possibly are not is smart. Nor are they good managers,
> of Elves or Men. <brief digression: What Bill Clinton could
> have done, in their situation! The mind reels.> It is probably
> just as well that they spend a lot of their time watching -- if
> they accumulate enough data and study Elves and Men long enough,
> they might get a handle on how they tick.
>
It is possible that previous experience in multipart harmony as Ainur
was an insufficient qualification for running a world.
Cheers!
Allyn
Michael S. Schiffer
>"Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>...
>> If he just wanted to run things efficiently, with himself at the
>> top, his strategy might be different. One gets the feeling that
>> pretending to be a good guy was a strain for him, and that he
>> was much more pleased when he could drop the fair guise and make
>> the enemy suffer.
>It's -inefficient-. Are we going to be an -effective- tyrant and
>overlord, or are we just going to indulge in random violence and
>cruelty? ...
The latter. As some people have pointed out re the Evil Overlord
Rules, there's such a thing as being so effective that you're missing
the point of being an Evil Overlord.
>> >> In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that
>> >> draws on a nonrenewable resource.
>> >I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again
>> >with despair. A painter with only one painting in him is
>> >barely an artist, and a writer with only one book in her is
>> >hardly a novelist. Feanor should have just sat down and made
>> >something else. Move on, man!
>> Perhaps if Tolkien himself had written more than a few stories,
>> including only one finished masterwork and a handful of
>> well-told legends that he niggled with indefinitely, he might
>> have agreed with you. But a world with a different metaphysic
>> would never have supported a _Lord of the Rings_-- imagine if
>> Sauron could respond to the destruction of the Ring by starting
>> work on a bigger, better one. (Granted, E.E. Smith's LotR might
>> have been interesting to read. But I'm glad enough to have
>> Tolkien's, even if I don't share his worldview.)
>It's particularly wrong considering that the Elves are immortal.
>Men are prey to disease and the Brain-Eater; Elves should be good
>to go for millennia.
In Tolkien's cosmology, Elves are immortals with a limited creative
capacity. That's why they grow weary, and that's why they envy Men
their gift of being able to leave the world instead. (The world
grows weary as well, and won't last forever.) Creativity in Middle
Earth isn't strictly a matter of physical stamina or mental acuity.
That's a consistent feature of that world. (Feanor's own mother gave
up so much of her inner fire in bearing Feanor that she died shortly
afterwards.) In what sense "should" it be different? (It would,
perhaps, give it a happier history if it weren't. But then, it might
not-- imagine if Morgoth and Sauron were constantly renewable, while
the Valar maintained their hands-off policy.)
>> In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear to have
>> one Great Work in them.
>I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort. GONE
>WITH THE WIND, Margaret Mitchell's only published novel, is not
>really Great. Homer? But it is presumed that many of his works
>have been lost over time. It is hard to become really first-rank
>without quite a bit of practice, and most writers are happy to let
>these earlier lesser works be published. Even Tolkien wrote tons
>of stuff -- he just never organized most of it sufficiently to be
>printed.
Feanor had lots of early, lesser works as well. (Many of which were
eaten by Ungoliant as an appetizer, IIRC, while others were still
important in the counsels of the great two ages after his death.) He
just had one set of Silmarils. Dante did other writing, but it's the
Divine Comedy that he's famous for (and to a much lesser extent, La
Vita Nuova). Is there a second Cervantes work of note? Did John
Bunyan write anything memorable other than Pilgrim's Progress?
Doubtless Feanor could have made baubles and butter knives to his
heart's content-- but his heart wouldn't have been content with
baubles.
And, of course, these may not be first-rank artists (except for
Dante, anyway). But part of what makes one a first-rank artist is
the existence of a body of work-- it's a rare artist who can get by
on a reputation established by only one or two creations. (There are
more artists who have one or two major works and a larger number of
minor ones, though.) Feanor's lesser works include things like the
palantiri and the Tengwar and most of the early weapons of the
Noldor, plus a host of gems that never made it into the tales of
Middle-Earth individually because they were eaten, but were of
more than passing interest to a fallen angel and a spider-demon.
In any case, why such impatience with Feanor, but not with the Valar?
If Feanor is assumed capable of replacing the Silmarils with
something better, then surely Yavanna doesn't need *his* help to get
Valinor lit again. Either Feanor is right, and they're asking a heck
of a sacrifice, or he's wrong, and they have no right or reason to
ask it. (One imagines that even if it *wasn't* the last and greatest
thing they'd ever accomplish, most authors wouldn't appreciate being
asked for their painting or irreplaceable manuscript to be used as
kindling to get the local electrical generator going again. And
they might well ask how it was that the generating company hadn't
laid in any backup plans of its own.)
Fred Ramen
> lesser and worse off than their granddads.
>
One must also remember, in addition to the other points raised in this
thread, that Tolkien was a big C Catholic Christian, and much of the history
of Middle-Earth can be read as reflecting the belief that the fallen world
could not be redeemed until the Eucatastrophe, the Incarnation of the
Savior. I don't recall if this was ever explicitly pointed out in any of his
writing, but I know I've run across it in writings on Tolkien's work.
Fred Ramen
Dan Tilque
> > to have one Great Work in them.
>
> I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort.
> GONE WITH THE WIND, Margaret Mitchell's only published
> novel, is not really Great.
Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird was the only thing she wrote.
I personally would call it Great.
Among SF authors, I believe Walter Miller's only published work
while living was A Canticle for Leibowitz, although a sequel was
published posthumously.
If you want to count those who died young, there's Emily Bronte
(Wuthering Heights) and Thomas Heggen (Mister Roberts).
--
Dan Tilque
Courtenay Footman
Michael S. Schiffer wrote:
>But a world with a different metaphysic would never have
>supported a _Lord of the Rings_-- imagine if Sauron could respond to
>the destruction of the Ring by starting work on a bigger, better one.
>(Granted, E.E. Smith's LotR might have been interesting to read. But
>I'm glad enough to have Tolkien's, even if I don't share his
>worldview.)
>
LOL!
Normally I thank everyone who makes me LOL, but I am not at all certain
that I should thank you for this. Imagining Smith's LotR is making my
mind boggle. (Particularly imagining the conference of magic users where
they try and device the next magical advance.)
--
Courtenay Footman I have again gotten back on the net, and
c...@lightlink.com again I will never get anything done.
(All mail from non-valid addresses is automatically deleted by my system.)
Brenda W. Clough
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in
>
>
> >> >> In Middle Earth, creation is a highly personal activity that
> >> >> draws on a nonrenewable resource.
>
> >> >I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again
> >> >with despair. A painter with only one painting in him is
> >> >barely an artist, and a writer with only one book in her is
> >> >hardly a novelist. Feanor should have just sat down and made
> >> >something else. Move on, man!
>
> In Tolkien's cosmology, Elves are immortals with a limited creative
> capacity. That's why they grow weary, and that's why they envy Men
> their gift of being able to leave the world instead. (The world
> grows weary as well, and won't last forever.) Creativity in Middle
> Earth isn't strictly a matter of physical stamina or mental acuity.
> That's a consistent feature of that world. (Feanor's own mother gave
> up so much of her inner fire in bearing Feanor that she died shortly
> afterwards.) In what sense "should" it be different?
For me length of days without constant creativity would (to paraphrase
Aslan) be a weariness. The whole -point- of living for a long time would
be to be able to make and write (and read, and see) many interesting
things. I don't think the Eldar got -out- enough. Probably sitting in
the rec room surfing the cable channels, until Middle Earth really was a
drag.
> In any case, why such impatience with Feanor, but not with the Valar?
> If Feanor is assumed capable of replacing the Silmarils with
> something better, then surely Yavanna doesn't need *his* help to get
> Valinor lit again. Either Feanor is right, and they're asking a heck
> of a sacrifice, or he's wrong, and they have no right or reason to
> ask it. (One imagines that even if it *wasn't* the last and greatest
> thing they'd ever accomplish, most authors wouldn't appreciate being
> asked for their painting or irreplaceable manuscript to be used as
> kindling to get the local electrical generator going again. And
> they might well ask how it was that the generating company hadn't
> laid in any backup plans of its own.)
My viewpoint may be colored by the fact that my own media are cheap and
easily replaced. As long as you -always- back up your disc you're
cool...
Brenda W. Clough
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote
> >
> > > In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear
> > > to have one Great Work in them.
> >
> > I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort.
> > GONE WITH THE WIND, Margaret Mitchell's only published
> > novel, is not really Great.
>
> Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird was the only thing she wrote.
> I personally would call it Great.
>
> Among SF authors, I believe Walter Miller's only published work
> while living was A Canticle for Leibowitz, although a sequel was
> published posthumously.
Um, bzzt!! I have here a copy of THE SHORT STORIES OF WALTER M.
MILLER. They may not be great, but he certainly wrote a great deal.
> If you want to count those who died young, there's Emily Bronte
> (Wuthering Heights) and Thomas Heggen (Mister Roberts).
>
Emily Bronte wrote tons of stuff. It mostly was for the amusement of
her sisters and was never published.
Brenda W. Clough
>
> And yet Sam's garden is treated as his creativity and life force, if
> in a lesser sense, and when he and Galadriel's dust make the Shire
> blossom, it continues to blossom. When Aragorn comes to Gondor, he
> finds and plants a new White Tree. Maybe only men and hobbits have art
> and fecundity work so that the more you give, the more you get. Maybe
> that's the Achilles heel of the elves and dwarves, and why the elves
> must sail over sea rather than stay to make Middle Earth bloom once
> more with mallorn trees.
And I wonder (to answer a previous post in this thread) whether that is not tied
to Elven immortality. If every Elf was creative as Martha Stewart but lived
4000 years or so the entire substance of the planet would be speedily used up as
busy Elves turned raw materiel into craft items. Whereas if each Elf only has a
dozen or so Works in him or her, then resources are conserved and younger Elves
get a crack at them. (You wonder why Arwen only ever embroiders a banner for
Aragorn? It's because fabric ornamentation was her Thing.)
Brenda W. Clough
So you shove the blame back up the heirarchy to Iluvatar, who handed off
Arda to a bunch of poorly trained middle-management types.
Eric Walker
work, yet that one
of at least reasonable (and often high) quality. Of those
listed below, all
of whom I think meet those criteria, several are still
producing books, albeit
not sf, so we may yet see more (but in most or all cases it
seems doubtful).
Bauer, Steven: Satyrday
Bell, Douglas: Mojo and the Pickle Jar
Bellairs, John: The Face in the Frost [1]
Benary-Isbert, Margot: The Wicked Enchantment
Byatt, A.S.: The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye [2]
Carlyon, Richard: The Dark Lord of Pengersick
DeMarinis, Rick: Cinder
Hickman, Stephen: The Lemurian Stone [3]
Houarner, Gerard Daniel: The Bard of Sorcery
Jacob, Max: King Kabul the First and Gawain the Kitchen Boy
Kathryns, G.A.: The Borders of Life
Lieberman, Herbert: Sandman, Sleep
Lightman, Alan: Einstein's Dreams
Lindsay, David: A Voyage To Arcturus
Mirlees, Hope: Lud-in-the-Mist
Mujica Lainez, Manuel: The Wandering Unicorn
Read, Herbert: The Green Child
Silas, A.E.: The Panorama Egg
Stephens, James: The Crock of Gold [2]
Tinniswood, Peter: The Stirk of Stirk
Werfel, Franz: Star of the Unborn
Woolf, Virginia: Orlando
Wright, Austin Tappan: Islandia
Wright, Grahame: Jog Rummage
There is an additional similar set of authors with but two
books:
Hanratty, Peter: The Last Knight of Albion
The Book of Mordred
Orr, A.: The World in Amber
In the Ice King's Palace
Wangerin, Walter: The Book of the Dun Cow
The Book of Sorrows
Warner, Sylvia Townsend: Lolly Willowes
Kingdoms of Elfin
Wilde, Oscar: The Happy Prince
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Notes:
------
[1] _The Pdeant and the Shuffly_ might move Bellairs to the
second list; there is also his _St. Fidgeta_, with which
I am unfamiliar. He did many children's books, which,
though they are pleasant reading, I ignore here.
[2] For these, I may be overlooking other works in our fields.
[3] Hickman has told me that he is planning another novel; our
correspondence reminded him of how much he liked writing
(he is a noted illustrator) and and wanted to get going
on it again.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Eric the Read
> There is an additional similar set of authors with but two
> books:
>
> The Picture of Dorian Gray
I can't speak for the rest (I'm not as well read as I'd like to be),
but Wilde had such a large output of fiction that it seems grossly
unfair to me to cite him in this list simply because only two of them
happened to be published as novels.
-=Eric
Eric Walker
It is rather that those are the only two I know offhand--and I
am far from expert on his oeuvre--that qualify as speculative
fiction.
Michael S. Schiffer
>"Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>...
>> In Tolkien's cosmology, Elves are immortals with a limited
>> creative capacity. That's why they grow weary, and that's why
>> they envy Men their gift of being able to leave the world instead.
>> (The world grows weary as well, and won't last forever.)
>> Creativity in Middle Earth isn't strictly a matter of physical
>> stamina or mental acuity. That's a consistent feature of that
>> world. (Feanor's own mother gave up so much of her inner fire in
>> bearing Feanor that she died shortly afterwards.) In what sense
>> "should" it be different?
>For me length of days without constant creativity would (to
>paraphrase Aslan) be a weariness.
And so it is, by the Elves' own telling. And a short life that can be
cut even shorter by chance or malice is, by some accounts at least, a
vale of tears. Whatever Illuvatar was going for in the creation of the
world, it apparently wasn't maximum happiness. (Or it was, but Morgoth
messed it up-- juxtaposing omnipotence and omniscience with free will
leads to this sort of apparent confusion.) But that's a criticism of
the creator (whether Tolkien or Illuvatar)-- the creations are just
operating according to the rules set for them.
The whole -point- of living for a
>long time would be to be able to make and write (and read, and see)
>many interesting things. I don't think the Eldar got -out- enough.
>Probably sitting in the rec room surfing the cable channels, until
>Middle Earth really was a drag.
If anything, they were out too much. (Especially in Lorien-- roof
technology would apparently be a big innovation there.) :-) But it's
unclear whether experience of the world was a big boost to Elven
creativity. Gondolin was supposedly only an echo of Tirion, and the
Elves of Eregion never outdid Feanor.
>> In any case, why such impatience with Feanor, but not with the
>> Valar? If Feanor is assumed capable of replacing the Silmarils
>> with something better, then surely Yavanna doesn't need *his* help
>> to get Valinor lit again. Either Feanor is right, and they're
>> asking a heck of a sacrifice, or he's wrong, and they have no
>> right or reason to ask it. (One imagines that even if it *wasn't*
>> the last and greatest thing they'd ever accomplish, most authors
>> wouldn't appreciate being asked for their painting or
>> irreplaceable manuscript to be used as kindling to get the local
>> electrical generator going again. And they might well ask how it
>> was that the generating company hadn't laid in any backup plans of
>> its own.)
>My viewpoint may be colored by the fact that my own media are cheap
>and easily replaced. As long as you -always- back up your disc
>you're cool...
Though that's recent even for authors. Tolkien's drafts were
handwritten and two-finger typed. Revision was a pain (which, as
Shippey seems to suggest, may explain why Tolkien never adjusted the
tone of Book I to fit the rest of the story). Loss of the manuscript
could be a major disaster, with the only backups possible being carbons
(which I don't know if Tolkien used-- for all I know, they were scarce
due to the war) or laborious retyping. (The original sequel to _The
Witches of Karres_ is, apparently, as lost as two of the Silmarils.) It
may well have been easier to imagine something you poured your heart and
labor into being lost forever and irretrievable when the solution wasn't
to dump it to a floppy or FTP it to a remote server for safe keeping.
(I wonder if those who work in oil paints or stone would feel more
kinship with Feanor, or if they would agree that he's making too big a
deal over what should be old news.)
Michael S. Schiffer
<3C6A015F...@erols.com>:
>...
>And I wonder (to answer a previous post in this thread) whether that
>is not tied to Elven immortality. If every Elf was creative as
>Martha Stewart but lived 4000 years or so the entire substance of
>the planet would be speedily used up as busy Elves turned raw
>materiel into craft items.
That would seem a risk, given the scale the Elves sometimes worked on.
Though with the low breeding rate, it might not be an issue-- even
Martha Stewart can only do so much when she has to do everything by
hand. (Elves don't seem to have much staff, possibly because they're
all working on their own projects. Galadriel, to all appearances, had
less help in the kitchen than Martha does.)
Whereas if each Elf only has a dozen or
>so Works in him or her, then resources are conserved and younger
>Elves get a crack at them. (You wonder why Arwen only ever
>embroiders a banner for Aragorn? It's because fabric ornamentation
>was her Thing.)
I'm sorry, but Arwen's a drip. Maybe it's because she can only
inherently be a sixteenth as cool as Luthien, but one banner is a pretty
poor showing even by Elven standards. If it weren't for that strange
power Elves have over Men, it wouldn't have been an issue whether
Aragorn was worthy of her. Rather, we'd ask what she'd achieved that
lets her rate the greatest human hero of the Age and the queenship of
the restored realms of the Dunedain.
Robert Carnegie
> Allyn wrote:
>
> > On 12 Feb 2002, Brenda W. Clough wrote in
> > news:3C69CC97...@erols.com:
> >
> > > "David E. Siegel" wrote:
> > >
> > >> The Valar are both just and merciful, they allow free will to
> > >> others (and the one major time they tried to over-ride the elves
> > >> free will it was a major mistake) They do not take delight in
> > >> the pain and unhappyness of others, they do ot desire power for
> > >> its own sake, they do desire to create beauty (rather than
> > >> destroy it) etc.
> > >>
> > >
> > > What they possibly are not is smart. Nor are they good managers,
> > > of Elves or Men. <brief digression: What Bill Clinton could
> > > have done, in their situation! The mind reels.> It is probably
> > > just as well that they spend a lot of their time watching -- if
> > > they accumulate enough data and study Elves and Men long enough,
> > > they might get a handle on how they tick.
> > >
> > It is possible that previous experience in multipart harmony as Ainur
> > was an insufficient qualification for running a world.
> >
>
> So you shove the blame back up the heirarchy to Iluvatar, who handed off
> Arda to a bunch of poorly trained middle-management types.
Now you guys have got me seeing the Valar as graduates of a
dot-com start-up's ill-conceived management team-building
exercise in co-writing a mission statement and company song.
_Really_ not what Tolkien had in mind...
Jens Kilian
> Now you guys have got me seeing the Valar as graduates of a
> dot-com start-up's ill-conceived management team-building
> exercise in co-writing a mission statement and company song.
>
> _Really_ not what Tolkien had in mind...
Damn. Now I'm imagining Morgoth with pointy hair beneath the Iron Crown.
(And Sauron's helmet in _LotR:FotR_ looked suspicious, too.)
--
mailto:j...@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
PGP: 06 04 1C 35 7B DC 1F 26 As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
0x555DA8B5 BB A2 F0 66 77 75 E1 08 so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
Chad R. Orzel
<ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>Numerous authors have produced but one speculative-fiction
>work, yet that one
>of at least reasonable (and often high) quality. Of those
>listed below, all
>of whom I think meet those criteria, several are still
>producing books, albeit
>not sf, so we may yet see more (but in most or all cases it
>seems doubtful).
>
>Bauer, Steven: Satyrday
>Bell, Douglas: Mojo and the Pickle Jar
>Bellairs, John: The Face in the Frost [1]
>Notes:
>------
>[1] _The Pdeant and the Shuffly_ might move Bellairs to the
> second list; there is also his _St. Fidgeta_, with which
> I am unfamiliar. He did many children's books, which,
> though they are pleasant reading, I ignore here.
Which seems both unfair and snobbish.
As, for that matter, does the inclusion of Oscar Wilde, who wrote tons
of stuff, but not so many novels.
--
Chad Orzel
Book Log: http://home.earthlink.net/~orzelc/booklog.html
Reviews: http://home.earthlink.net/~orzelc/Reviews.html
Captain Button
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote
>>
>> > In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear
>> > to have one Great Work in them.
>>
>> I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort.
>> GONE WITH THE WIND, Margaret Mitchell's only published
>> novel, is not really Great.
> Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird was the only thing she wrote.
> I personally would call it Great.
I recall reading somewhere that when it came out lots of people
didn't think she wrote it by herself, that she had lots of
help from a famous writer friend (Truman Capote?). She was
offended or upset and never wrote again.
I can't cite other cases, but I've had an impression that it is
not that uncommon for new writers to overreact to critics.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Jeffrey C. Dege
>
>I'm sorry, but Arwen's a drip. Maybe it's because she can only
>inherently be a sixteenth as cool as Luthien, but one banner is a pretty
>poor showing even by Elven standards. If it weren't for that strange
>power Elves have over Men, it wouldn't have been an issue whether
>Aragorn was worthy of her. Rather, we'd ask what she'd achieved that
>lets her rate the greatest human hero of the Age and the queenship of
>the restored realms of the Dunedain.
She had HUGE ( ) tracts of land.
--
[T]o preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people
always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young
Richard Henry Lee
David E. Siegel
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in
> <3C69CBE5...@erols.com>:
>
> >"Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
> >...
>
> >> one Great Work in them.
>
> >I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort. GONE
> >WITH THE WIND, Margaret Mitchell's only published novel, is not
> >really Great. Homer? But it is presumed that many of his works
> >have been lost over time. It is hard to become really first-rank
> >without quite a bit of practice, and most writers are happy to let
> >these earlier lesser works be published. Even Tolkien wrote tons
> >of stuff -- he just never organized most of it sufficiently to be
> >printed.
>
> Feanor had lots of early, lesser works as well. (Many of which were
> eaten by Ungoliant as an appetizer, IIRC, while others were still
> important in the counsels of the great two ages after his death.) He
> just had one set of Silmarils. Dante did other writing, but it's the
> Divine Comedy that he's famous for (and to a much lesser extent, La
> Vita Nuova). Is there a second Cervantes work of note? Did John
> Bunyan write anything memorable other than Pilgrim's Progress?
> Doubtless Feanor could have made baubles and butter knives to his
> heart's content-- but his heart wouldn't have been content with
> baubles.
>
Indeed the idea that a great artist has a single overarching
masterpiece is a particualrly mideval and classic notion. It does not
say that such a creator can only make *one* work, but that the one
*best* work, once achieved, can never be matched.
> And, of course, these may not be first-rank artists (except for
> Dante, anyway). But part of what makes one a first-rank artist is
> the existence of a body of work-- it's a rare artist who can get by
> on a reputation established by only one or two creations. (There are
> more artists who have one or two major works and a larger number of
> minor ones, though.) Feanor's lesser works include things like the
> palantiri and the Tengwar and most of the early weapons of the
> Noldor, plus a host of gems that never made it into the tales of
> Middle-Earth individually because they were eaten, but were of
> more than passing interest to a fallen angel and a spider-demon.
>
> In any case, why such impatience with Feanor, but not with the Valar?
> If Feanor is assumed capable of replacing the Silmarils with
> something better, then surely Yavanna doesn't need *his* help to get
> Valinor lit again. Either Feanor is right, and they're asking a heck
> of a sacrifice, or he's wrong, and they have no right or reason to
> ask it. (One imagines that even if it *wasn't* the last and greatest
> thing they'd ever accomplish, most authors wouldn't appreciate being
> asked for their painting or irreplaceable manuscript to be used as
> kindling to get the local electrical generator going again. And
> they might well ask how it was that the generating company hadn't
> laid in any backup plans of its own.)
>
> Mike
This throws an interesting light on JJRT's "Leaf by Niggle" where
Niggle is asked (and then forced) to give up his masterwork to such
mundane and quite temporary uses, and finds that he indeed has no
other creative work in him -- until he is in paradise, or perhaps it
should be called purgatory.
-DES
David E. Siegel
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in
<snip>
> >My viewpoint may be colored by the fact that my own media are cheap
> >and easily replaced. As long as you -always- back up your disc
> >you're cool...
>
> Though that's recent even for authors. Tolkien's drafts were
> handwritten and two-finger typed. Revision was a pain (which, as
> Shippey seems to suggest, may explain why Tolkien never adjusted the
> tone of Book I to fit the rest of the story). Loss of the manuscript
> could be a major disaster, with the only backups possible being carbons
> (which I don't know if Tolkien used-- for all I know, they were scarce
> due to the war) or laborious retyping. (The original sequel to _The
> Witches of Karres_ is, apparently, as lost as two of the Silmarils.) It
> may well have been easier to imagine something you poured your heart and
> labor into being lost forever and irretrievable when the solution wasn't
> to dump it to a floppy or FTP it to a remote server for safe keeping.
> (I wonder if those who work in oil paints or stone would feel more
> kinship with Feanor, or if they would agree that he's making too big a
> deal over what should be old news.)
>
> Mike
In fact i think that almost all of Tolkien's drafts were handwritten,
and the typed versions were either done by his wife, or by paid
typists (at what must have been fairly expensive rates for his income
prior to the publication and takeoff of LOTR), at least this is my
impression from HoM.
Plenty of authors have lost manuscripts and never replaced them --
Hemingway lost lots of early stuff (mentioned on the group in anothe
thread recently); Garrison Kellior mentions near the start of _Lake
Wobegone days_ losing two early stories which he thought at the time
were the best he had ever done, and being quite unable to recapture
them from his sparse notes and memories.
-DES
David E. Siegel
> >> a nonrenewable resource.
>
> > I've always felt this was wrong, wrong, wrong -- tinged again with
> > despair. A painter with only one painting in him is barely an artist, and
> > a writer with only one book in her is hardly a novelist. Feanor should
> > have just sat down and made something else. Move on, man!
>
> articulately. However, I wonder, is this the same for all the Free
> Peoples, or is it just a quirk of the Elvish psyche that Iluvatar put
> there to keep them from running amok over their younger siblings?
It is clearly true for the Valar, as the case of the two trees, and
before that the lamps over middle earth, suggest. But then, the Elves
were "more like to the Ainur" then men were IIRC. I can not think of
any clear-cut case of a single creative man (as opposed to elf, vala,
or maia) in Tolkine's world who made a single great creation and was
unable to recreate it or surpass it, although in general first/older
works of men are better than the later ones, frex the early stonework
of Gondor was better than the later work.
-DES
David E. Siegel
> On 13 Feb 2002 00:27:18 -0700, Eric the Read wrote:
>
> >"Eric Walker" <ra...@owlcroft.com> writes:
> >> There is an additional similar set of authors with but two
> >> books:
> >>
> >> Wilde, Oscar: The Happy Prince
> >> The Picture of Dorian Gray
> >
> >I can't speak for the rest (I'm not as well read as I'd like to be),
> >but Wilde had such a large output of fiction that it seems grossly
> >unfair to me to cite him in this list simply because only two of them
> >happened to be published as novels.
>
> It is rather that those are the only two I know offhand--and I
> am far from expert on his oeuvre--that qualify as speculative
> fiction.
Several others are at least on the boundries 'The Gentle Giant' (a
fairy-story/allegory); "The Cantrville ghost" (a classic ghost story),
frex. Most of his writing was short stories and plays, and much is
not now well known. I don't think he qualifies.
-DES
James Nicoll
>
>Among SF authors, I believe Walter Miller's only published work
>while living was A Canticle for Leibowitz, although a sequel was
>published posthumously.
Only novel length work but he had a fair body of short stories,
some of which were quite good.
By solo novel standards, Howard Waldrop is also a one-shot
wonder, even though he continues to write short stories. Not sure
one should only look at the novel length output of authors.
--
"[...] it's been about 12 years now that I've been singing this dumb song. You
know, it's amazing that that someone could get away with singing a song this
dumb for that long. [...] What's more amazing is that someone could make a
living singing a song this dumb for that many years. But, that's America." AG
Andrew Plotkin
> power Elves have over Men, it wouldn't have been an issue whether
> Aragorn was worthy of her. Rather, we'd ask what she'd achieved that
> lets her rate the greatest human hero of the Age and the queenship of
> the restored realms of the Dunedain.
Maybe he likes her sense of humor.
Men. Can't figure 'em.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Jon Kay
>
> "David E. Siegel" wrote:
>
> > The Valar are both just and merciful, they allow free will to others
> > (and the one major time they tried to over-ride the elves free will it
> > was a major mistake) They do not take delight in the pain and
> > unhappyness of others, they do ot desire power for its own sake, they
> > do desire to create beauty (rather than destroy it) etc.
> >
>
> What they possibly are not is smart. Nor are they good managers, of Elves or Men. <brief
> digression: What Bill Clinton could have done, in their situation! The mind reels.>
So many mortal maidens, so little time :-).....
Maybe THAT'S why Utumno spends so much time around Middle-Earth.
--
Jon Kay pushcache.com jk...@pushcache.com
http://www.pushcache.com/ (512) 420-9025
Squid consulting, installation, maintenance 'push done right.'
Matt Ruff
>
> "Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>
>> In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear to
>> have one Great Work in them.
>
> I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort.
You're soaking in him. Tolkien may have written "tons of stuff," but so
far as I know almost all of it was part of the saga of Middle Earth.
-- M. Ruff
Matt Ruff
>
> Dante did other writing, but it's the Divine Comedy that
> he's famous for (and to a much lesser extent, La Vita Nuova).
> Is there a second Cervantes work of note? Did John Bunyan
> write anything memorable other than Pilgrim's Progress?
Since you bring it up, are any of Bram Stoker's many other novels worth
a look? How about Frank Herbert's?
-- M. Ruff
mstemper - emis . com
>In article <Xns91B3B21314B8...@130.133.1.4>, Michael S. Schiffer wrote:
>>But a world with a different metaphysic would never have
>>supported a _Lord of the Rings_-- imagine if Sauron could respond to
>>the destruction of the Ring by starting work on a bigger, better one.
>>(Granted, E.E. Smith's LotR might have been interesting to read. But
>>I'm glad enough to have Tolkien's, even if I don't share his
>>worldview.)
> Imagining Smith's LotR is making my
>mind boggle. (Particularly imagining the conference of magic users where
>they try and device the next magical advance.)
Cardynge meets Gandalf? Boggle, indeed.
Or, how about a sequel to LotR, where it turns out that Sauron didn't
really get offed after all, and the Valar team up with him to fight
an even bigger menace? we could call it _The Return of DuKing_
--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Disclaimer>
Robert E. McElwaine (UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this
IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED)
William T. Hyde
I'm told not, but then I haven't read them.
How about Frank Herbert's?
Definitely. One of the worst things about Dune was
that it distracted attention from Herbert's other
work.
Tastes vary, of course, but I liked his first novel,
"Under Pressure", as well as "The Santaroga Barrier"
and even "Hellstrom's Hive". I wasn't too fond of
"Whipping Star" or "Destination: Void" though these
have their supporters.
He later wrote trendier stuff (before concentrating
on Dune sequels) which I didn't read ("The Jesus
Incident", IIRC).
William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University
Jon Kay
>
> Jon Kay <jk...@pushcache.com> wrote in
> <3C69721C...@pushcache.com>:
> > . . . If you don't
> >believe in it, how are the peoples 'represented' by the White
> >Council better off than the high-elves at the beginning?
>
> They're not facing what's effectively an incarnate Satan as their
> primary enemy. The Free Peoples of the Third Age are far better off
> than those of the First and Second in that they spend most of the Age
> dealing with threats that aren't that much more powerful than they
> are. From the destruction of the Trees, the peoples of Beleriand
> lived in armed camps, mostly hidden, with most of the outside world
> full of hostile (and often supernatural) creatures. For most of the
> Third, the Free Peoples lived in relatively broad realms, occasionally
> attacked, sometimes destroyed, and generally declining, but without
> the same sense of constant siege.
...although, it's not just the threat that's scaled down here, it's
also the good guys. The "free peoples" are no more able to beat Sauron
militarily than the Noldor were able to win Dagor Bragollach.
And most ARE living under a sense of siege. The Orcs pretty much owned
the Misty Mountains for most of the Age, and launched raids on everyplace
even vaguely near. And Dol Guldur turns Greenwood in Mirkwood for much
of the age, also running terrorist camps :-) and launching raids. Gondor
is assailed by a plague and a variety of Sauron-incited opponents such
as the Wainriders. The Shire and the Havens are safe for the whole age,
by who else?
OTOH, they are better off, and because of Valar intervention at that:
the Istari DO have the moxie to knock Sauron off (with lots of help).
Good point.
> >Does it Have To Be This Way? Are the decisions of the Valar to
> >blame, or is it an inevitable basic aspect of reality in
> >Middle-Earth? Is there reason to think that different Valar or
> >high-elvish policy decisions could have resulted in more
> >widespread prosperity at the end of the Third Age?
>
> The Valar weren't given sufficient information about Men to trust
> themselves to deal with them. To change that would require a
> different policy on the part of Iluvatar. It's unlikely that the
> Noldor could have made things much better themselves-- their methods
> of creation inherently can't be scaled up to mass production even if,
> in Tolkien's world, that wouldn't itself be a sign of corruption.
> (And if they hadn't revolted, it's unclear if or when the Valar would
> have acted against Morgoth, which leaves Men in, if anything, worse
> shape.)
>
> >Why did the Valar have to 'call in airstrikes' to deal with
> >Numenor?
>
> Same deal-- they weren't given complete information about Men, and
> were afraid of messing up Eru's plan for them.
So you're suggesting that this is more like the British realizing
they're doing a bad job of ruling faraway lands from London, and
letting the locals run their own show?
Or, more apropos to our own age, the Chinese gov't realizing they
don't understand Hong Kong and adopting a hands off policy?
The British version of that would link it to Tolkien nicely. Anyone
remember what year the Brits left South Africa?
Michael S. Schiffer
>"Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>> From the destruction of the Trees, the
>> peoples of Beleriand lived in armed camps, mostly hidden, with
>> most of the outside world full of hostile (and often
>> supernatural) creatures. For most of the Third, the Free
>> Peoples lived in relatively broad realms, occasionally attacked,
>> sometimes destroyed, and generally declining, but without the
>> same sense of constant siege.
>...although, it's not just the threat that's scaled down here,
>it's also the good guys. The "free peoples" are no more able to
>beat Sauron militarily than the Noldor were able to win Dagor
>Bragollach.
This is true.
>And most ARE living under a sense of siege. The Orcs pretty much
>owned the Misty Mountains for most of the Age, and launched raids
>on everyplace even vaguely near. And Dol Guldur turns Greenwood
>in Mirkwood for much of the age, also running terrorist camps :-)
>and launching raids. Gondor is assailed by a plague and a variety
>of Sauron-incited opponents such as the Wainriders. The Shire and
>the Havens are safe for the whole age, by who else?
Nobody's safe for the whole age-- even the Shire weathers an Orc
invasion (the source of Bandobras Took's lasting fame) and wolf
attacks. Nonetheless, the realms of the Free Peoples are largely able
to survive as known lands with mortal defenders, rather than as
secret, fortified holes in the ground. They all need to maintain a
military presence (or have one maintained for them, in the case of the
Shire and Bree), but it's still possible to live a more or less normal
life (including the normality of periodic wars and plagues). The only
realm of comparable extent and longevity in the First Age was Doriath,
and that had a full-powered Maia defending it. And it fell a
generation after she stopped doing so.
>...
>> >Why did the Valar have to 'call in airstrikes' to deal with
>> >Numenor?
>> Same deal-- they weren't given complete information about Men,
>> and were afraid of messing up Eru's plan for them.
>So you're suggesting that this is more like the British realizing
>they're doing a bad job of ruling faraway lands from London, and
>letting the locals run their own show?
Tolkien was a Little Englander in fact. However, I think that he was
more strongly influenced by religious notions of free will, and the
idea that men had the potential to become, in some ways, greater than
the angels. (Consider the Catholic imagery of the Virgin Mary as
Queen of Heaven.)
Jon Kay
>
> >Is the administration of the Valar better or worse than that of
> >Morgoth and Sauron? ->*WHY*<- (points will be deducted from
> >papers just saying that Morgoth and Sauron are evil!)
>
> The administration of the Dark Lords was actively bad-- it involved
> slavery, torture, and destruction on a vast scale. What technology
> was developed was never applied to make the lives of their subjects
> any better-- quite the reverse. The worst you can say about the Valar
> is that they were negligent, and they did at least make some attempts
> to fix things. (E.g., summoning the Elves to Aman, providing covert
> assistance during the First and Third Ages.) Without their
> assistance, neither Morgoth's nor Sauron's tortures would have ever
> ended.
OK, people have provided plenty of textevd that they were totally evil
and nasty to everybody around them. What about to their own people,
though? At the very least, the Dark Lords seem to be good at feeding
their own people. Otherwise we could not have seen the rapid growth.
Might the life of an average farmer in Mordor be better than the life
of an average peasant in Gondor or Rohan, since he gets better tech
to do it with?
Do we have enough textevd to really know what the life of an average
soldier is like? We are 2/2 on seeing internecine battles in orc-bands,
but OTOH both incidents were Ring-driven, and the same thing happens to
even the Fellowship on the good side.
phil hunt
>> There's a place in PR for the message "You can't win. Surrender now
>> and you'll rate a quick death, surrender later and you'll get a slow
>> one." Especially if, like Sauron, your goal is personal
>> aggrandizement and the enjoyment of your enemies pain. If he just
>> wanted to run things efficiently, with himself at the top, his
>> strategy might be different. One gets the feeling that pretending to
>> be a good guy was a strain for him, and that he was much more pleased
>> when he could drop the fair guise and make the enemy suffer.
>
>It's -inefficient-. Are we going to be an -effective- tyrant and
>overlord, or are we just going to indulge in random violence and
>cruelty? But I suppose this is where character really is destiny, and
>that old cloven hoof has to peep out.
He really should have read the Evil Overlord rules.
--
===== Philip Hunt ===== ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk =====
Herbivore, a zero-effort email encryption system. Details at:
<http://www.vision25.demon.co.uk/oss/herbivore/intro.html>
phil hunt
>
>Perhaps if Tolkien himself had written more than a few stories,
>including only one finished masterwork and a handful of well-told
>legends that he niggled with indefinitely, he might have agreed with
>you. But a world with a different metaphysic would never have
>the destruction of the Ring by starting work on a bigger, better one.
Well, why couldn't he? If he could do it once, he could do it again.
And, he'd have the experience of the first time so be more skilled
at it.
Doesn't the LoTR universe have causality?
>In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear to have one
>Great Work in them. And most reach a point of diminishing returns
>eventually-- it's the rare artist (and even rarer scientist) who
>produces bigger and better things throughout a long career. Most
>peak, at some point, and produce lesser works (or no new work)
>thereafter. Tolkien is just saying that it's the same for the gods
>(if not for God)-- except that their furiously creative youth, and
>the world's, was over before Men made it onto the scene.
I suppose that's an explanation of a kind.
phil hunt
>Jon Kay <jk...@pushcache.com> writes:
>
>>In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically are
>>lesser and worse off than their granddads.
>
>[Much snipped]
>
>Well, that was Tolkien's worldview: the Golden Age was in the past,
>there were giants on the earth in those days, it's all going to hell
>in a handbasket, kids these days.
>
>Brin has a rant on this. The "newer is better" worldview is a fairly
>recent innovation, peculiar to technological societies. The "older
>is better" worldview was predominant through much of human history.
True. But From about 1600 onwards, things really were getting better
all the time, with technology making slow continual advances that allowed
a continuous incremental improvement in the welath of society (if not
the wealth of many individuals). By 1850 or so it was obvious to
everyone that things were getting better, and the technological basis
existed for everyone to be materially better off.
>(It's possible this may have become entrenched in the centuries
>after the fall of Rome; when, in many ways, things *had* gone in
>the shitter, compared to the glory that was past. But I think
>the attitude predates Rome, if you dig for it.)
I expect so. I think it is all bascially a vatrient of the grass being
greaner on the other side. Or perhaps its nostalgia for the time of
one's childhood.
Julie Lim
> >so Works in him or her, then resources are conserved and younger
> >Elves get a crack at them. (You wonder why Arwen only ever
> >embroiders a banner for Aragorn? It's because fabric ornamentation
> >was her Thing.)
>
> I'm sorry, but Arwen's a drip. Maybe it's because she can only
> inherently be a sixteenth as cool as Luthien, but one banner is a pretty
> poor showing even by Elven standards. If it weren't for that strange
> power Elves have over Men, it wouldn't have been an issue whether
> Aragorn was worthy of her. Rather, we'd ask what she'd achieved that
> lets her rate the greatest human hero of the Age and the queenship of
> the restored realms of the Dunedain.
I cite http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/theories/arag_arw.htm for the
definitive word on this debate.
It seems, though, that the Great Works of the immortals are somewhat
vampiric in actually requiring some of their creators' life force to
be invested into them. We all know about Sauron's Ring, natch,. When
the Two Trees were et, the Valar who'd made them said they couldn't be
remade, and could only be revived if they could get a quick light
transfusion by breaking the Silmarils-- and Feanor refused on the
grounds that he'd never be able to recreate the Silmarils, either, and
the destruction might actually kill him. (Or am I misremembering that
last clause?) And then there's the business of Arda effectively
becoming "Morgoth's Ring", with so much of his power invested in it
that he himself became relatively weak.
One wonders, if Celebrimbor had still been alive at the end of the
Third Age, what the effects would've been on him when the warranty for
the three Elven rings ran out.
For that matter, IIRC Feanor's mother, Miriel, spoke of *him* as her
Great Work whose birth had consumed so much of her spirit that she
didn't have enough left to live herself. If something on a lesser
scale happens for all elven births, that could go toward explaining
the low birth rate. It's also interesting that Feanor was described
(in one of the HoME vols?) as having the Elven record for number of
children. (His wife doesn't seem to've suffered any ill effects.)
Joseph Michael Bay
>On 12 Feb 2002 23:30:23 GMT, Michael S. Schiffer <msch...@condor.depaul.edu> wrote:
>>
>>Perhaps if Tolkien himself had written more than a few stories,
>>including only one finished masterwork and a handful of well-told
>>legends that he niggled with indefinitely, he might have agreed with
>>you. But a world with a different metaphysic would never have
>>supported a _Lord of the Rings_-- imagine if Sauron could respond to
>>the destruction of the Ring by starting work on a bigger, better one.
>Well, why couldn't he? If he could do it once, he could do it again.
>And, he'd have the experience of the first time so be more skilled
>at it.
>Doesn't the LoTR universe have causality?
Well, he already poured his malice, his hate, and his will to
dominate into the Ring. So he probably can't be arsed to go
forging a new one -- why bother?
--
Joseph M. Bay Lamont Sanford Junior University
Putting the "harm" in molecular pharmacology since 1998
The worst thing about censorship is ( deleted ) .
Do you like http://www.stanford.edu/~jmbay gladiator movies?
Michael S. Schiffer
>...
>OK, people have provided plenty of textevd that they were totally
>evil and nasty to everybody around them. What about to their own
>people, though? At the very least, the Dark Lords seem to be good
>at feeding their own people. Otherwise we could not have seen the
>rapid growth. Might the life of an average farmer in Mordor be
>better than the life of an average peasant in Gondor or Rohan,
>since he gets better tech to do it with?
Tolkien referred to "slave farms" in Nurnen as Mordor's primary food
supply, so probably not.
>Do we have enough textevd to really know what the life of an
>average soldier is like? We are 2/2 on seeing internecine battles
>in orc-bands, but OTOH both incidents were Ring-driven, and the
>same thing happens to even the Fellowship on the good side.
But the armies of Gondor and Rohan aren't driven to the front by
whip-wielding sergeants. The Free Peoples have, AFAICT, no
conscription at all, whereas the soldiers of the enemy are either
explicitly conscripts or treated as such. (They're also apparently
lacking in either training, armament, or both, given the fact that it
appears to take about fifty of them to equal one of the good guys.)
Matthew Austern
> Otherwise we could not have seen the rapid growth.
> Might the life of an average farmer in Mordor be better than the life
> of an average peasant in Gondor or Rohan, since he gets better tech
> to do it with?
You're making the assumption that "better tech" makes people happier.
I more or less agree with that assumption (with some reservations),
but it is not Tolkien's assumption. You can see this most clearly in
the last part of the book, when we see what "better tech" has done to
the Shire.
Matthew Austern
> True. But From about 1600 onwards, things really were getting better
> all the time, with technology making slow continual advances that allowed
> a continuous incremental improvement in the welath of society (if not
> the wealth of many individuals). By 1850 or so it was obvious to
> everyone that things were getting better, and the technological basis
> existed for everyone to be materially better off.
Indeed. I think that between 1850 and 1914 it was indeed obvious
to everyone. In 1914 it stopped being so obvious.
A.C.
"Michael S. Schiffer" <msch...@condor.depaul.edu> wrote in message
news:Xns91B4880A0FFD...@130.133.1.4...
> >since he gets better tech to do it with?
> >Do we have enough textevd to really know what the life of an
> >average soldier is like? We are 2/2 on seeing internecine battles
> >in orc-bands, but OTOH both incidents were Ring-driven, and the
> >same thing happens to even the Fellowship on the good side.
>
> But the armies of Gondor and Rohan aren't driven to the front by
> whip-wielding sergeants. The Free Peoples have, AFAICT, no
> conscription at all, whereas the soldiers of the enemy are either
> explicitly conscripts or treated as such. (They're also apparently
> lacking in either training, armament, or both, given the fact that it
> appears to take about fifty of them to equal one of the good guys.)
All that proves is that the soldiers of Gondor and Rohan took less
convincing to leave their homes behind. That could be used to argue that
the people/creatures of Mordor had a better alternative to soldiering than
their opponents, who must have hated peasant life so much that they were
willing to trek halfway across the world to fight horrid monsters and storm
a volcano rather than stay home and plant the rutabagas.
David T. Bilek
Absolutely.
"The lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit
again in our lifetime."
Lord Grey, 3 August 1914.
-David
Thomas Yan
"Eric Walker" <ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
> Numerous authors have produced but one speculative-fiction
> work
-snip-
> Kathryns, G.A.: The Borders of Life
-snip-
She does not belong on this list: I recall learning from this group
that that is really Gael Baudino writing under a pseudonym. Since I
liked many of her books (but avoided her last series), that book is in
my physical to-read pile.
--
Thomas Yan (ty...@twcny.rr.com) Note: I don't check e-mail often.
Be pro-active. Fight sucky software and learned helplessness.
Apologies for any lack of capitalization; typing hurts my hands.
Progress on next DbS installment: pp1-38 of pp1-181 of _Taltos_
Thomas Yan
rja.ca...@excite.com (Robert Carnegie) wrote:
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in message news:<3C6A01B5...@erols.com>...
> > Allyn wrote:
> >
> > > On 12 Feb 2002, Brenda W. Clough wrote in
> > > news:3C69CC97...@erols.com:
> > >
[intelligence of Valar and Maiar]
> > > It is possible that previous experience in multipart harmony as Ainur
> > > was an insufficient qualification for running a world.
> >
> > So you shove the blame back up the heirarchy to Iluvatar, who handed off
> > Arda to a bunch of poorly trained middle-management types.
>
> Now you guys have got me seeing the Valar as graduates of a
> dot-com start-up's ill-conceived management team-building
> exercise in co-writing a mission statement and company song.
>
> _Really_ not what Tolkien had in mind...
Perhaps doing so with the help of two programs from WayForward
Technologies (_Dirk Gently's Holististic Detective Agency_): Reason, by
Gordon Way, to automatically rationalize management decisions/goals and
Anthem, by Richard MacDuff, to turn company accounts into music.
Hm. I wonder if Bombadil is related to the ruler of the universe,
living alone with his cat in a hut in the presumably wet rain.
Irina Rempt
> For that matter, IIRC Feanor's mother, Miriel, spoke of *him* as her
> Great Work whose birth had consumed so much of her spirit that she
> didn't have enough left to live herself. If something on a lesser
> scale happens for all elven births, that could go toward explaining
> the low birth rate. It's also interesting that Feanor was described
> (in one of the HoME vols?) as having the Elven record for number of
> children. (His wife doesn't seem to've suffered any ill effects.)
Ooh. That would explain a lot. I was wondering whether the Elves kept
the number of children low on purpose, so as not to swamp the world
with their offspring, or whether their fertility was naturally very
low. It's *elegant* as well as plausible.
Irina
--
ir...@valdyas.org
http://www.valdyas.org/irina/index.html (English)
http://www.valdyas.org/irina/backpage.html (Nederlands)
David E. Siegel
> In article <3c69e...@news.nwlink.com>, Dan Tilque <dti...@nwlink.com> wrote:
> >
> >Among SF authors, I believe Walter Miller's only published work
> >while living was A Canticle for Leibowitz, although a sequel was
> >published posthumously.
>
> Only novel length work but he had a fair body of short stories,
> some of which were quite good.
>
seperately, and are of lengths comperable with much of his other work
-- some of which deals with similar themes, and soem of which does
not. Miller was neither a one-shot author nor a one-trick pony.
-DES
Allyn
news:3C6A01B5...@erols.com:
> Allyn wrote:
>
>> On 12 Feb 2002, Brenda W. Clough wrote in
>> news:3C69CC97...@erols.com:
>>
>> > What they possibly are not is smart. Nor are they good
>> > managers, of Elves or Men. <brief digression: What Bill
>> > Clinton could have done, in their situation! The mind reels.>
>> > It is probably just as well that they spend a lot of their
>> > time watching -- if they accumulate enough data and study
>> > Elves and Men long enough, they might get a handle on how they
>> > tick.
>> >
>> It is possible that previous experience in multipart harmony as
>> Ainur was an insufficient qualification for running a world.
>>
>
> So you shove the blame back up the heirarchy to Iluvatar, who
> handed off Arda to a bunch of poorly trained middle-management
> types.
>
Well, either there was a shortage of other competant help until elves
and humans came along...
Or, perhaps, it was to give them a challenge to grow into.
Cheers!
Allyn
Brenda W. Clough
I don't think that anyone would say that either Stoker or Herbert were of the
first rank of writers -- not peers of Shakespeare or Dante, for example.
Down here at the lower levels we're allowed to be as screwy as we like.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough
Read my novella "May Be Some Time"
Complete at www.analogsf.com
My web page is at http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Nyrath the nearly wise
> Tolkien referred to "slave farms" in Nurnen as Mordor's primary food
> supply, so probably not.
Did the term "slave farm" mean that the slaves
*farmed* food or that the slave *were* food?
Brenda W. Clough
> It
> may well have been easier to imagine something you poured your heart and
> labor into being lost forever and irretrievable when the solution wasn't
> to dump it to a floppy or FTP it to a remote server for safe keeping.
> (I wonder if those who work in oil paints or stone would feel more
> kinship with Feanor, or if they would agree that he's making too big a
> deal over what should be old news.)
Think about Picasso -- zillions of canvases, engravings, lithos, assorted
art, pouring out of him from his early teens until he died in his 80s. Or
Degas, painting and sculpting and casting in wax (many many ballerinas!).
Garrison Keillor (cited in another post) is another fine example -- he must
easily produce a novel's worth of "News from Lake Wobegon," every year, in
his weekly increments.
That's real creative power. You can be an okay artist if you don't produce
much, but to be a great artist you -must- be facile, generating a high
-volume- of work. It's very noticeable, when you watch such persons at
their craft. There was a film about Alexander Calder, which ran with some
of his art exhibits. He began sculpting in his early teens, making a duck
out of scrap metal. In the film he was in his 70s, moving around this
warehouse-sized studio jammed full of his work.
Brenda W. Clough
Uh, what was he doing all that time at Oxford then? I can't remember the
title of his collected literary essays, but they're around. He did a lot
of professional writing and translating.
Aris Katsaris
"phil hunt" <ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:slrna6kr1j...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk...
> On 12 Feb 2002 23:30:23 GMT, Michael S. Schiffer <msch...@condor.depaul.edu>
wrote:
> >
> >Perhaps if Tolkien himself had written more than a few stories,
> >including only one finished masterwork and a handful of well-told
> >legends that he niggled with indefinitely, he might have agreed with
> >you. But a world with a different metaphysic would never have
> >supported a _Lord of the Rings_-- imagine if Sauron could respond to
> >the destruction of the Ring by starting work on a bigger, better one.
>
> Well, why couldn't he?
He had already poured most of his power into the ring... As far
as it existed he was in rapport (sp?) with it, but when it was
destroyed he became as powerless as your average poltergeist. :-)
What power there remained for him to give it there?
> If he could do it once, he could do it again.
> And, he'd have the experience of the first time so be more skilled
> at it.
The whole Rings thing was a bit for a fiasco for him... He failed to
dominate the Elves through the Rings, then he failed to dominate the
dwarves through the Rings also (in both cases he declared war on
the species to get the rings back) and okay he succeeded to create
nine powerful dude servants, but were they *really* worth all the
aggrevation?
And in exchange, he created a pretty damn big Achilles' heel for
himself.
> I suppose that's an explanation of a kind.
Yeah, but I think the thing about Sauron is much more simpler and
has more to do with his diminished power rather than an artist's
inability to create a copy of his own work after the original is
destroyed...
Aris Katsaris
Bruce Baugh
Matthew Austern <aus...@research.att.com> wrote:
> Indeed. I think that between 1850 and 1914 it was indeed obvious to
> everyone. In 1914 it stopped being so obvious.
I'd have to check, but weren't there significant declines in lifespan
for various groups working in and around factories in the latter 19th
century? My impression has long been that the Industrial Revolution was
seriously bad for a bunch of people for several generations, even though
later generations did better than they could possibly have without it.
--
Bruce Baugh <*> Writer of Fortune <*> bruce...@spiretech.com
Feb: Clan Lasombra Trilogy, volume 1: Shards
Mar: Serial Experiments Lain Ultimate Fan Guide
http://www.tkau.org/
Nyrath the nearly wise
> > everyone that things were getting better, and the technological basis
> > existed for everyone to be materially better off.
>
> Indeed. I think that between 1850 and 1914 it was indeed obvious
> to everyone. In 1914 it stopped being so obvious.
Yes. This is touched upon in Isaac Asimov's science
fact article "The Sin of the Scientist"
Asimov says that a "scientific sin" would be a
act that harmed science itself. Something that
would turn public opinion against science.
In the late 1800's, science was heralding the
dawn of a new paradise. In the late 1900's
science is more like Pandora's box and
Frankenstein's monster.
The obvious sin would be the invention of
the atom bomb, but Asimov argues that the sin
happened much earlier.
His candidate was the invention of posion gas
and its use in WWI.
Brenda W. Clough
> "Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in
> . (You wonder why Arwen only ever
> >embroiders a banner for Aragorn? It's because fabric ornamentation
> >was her Thing.)
>
> I'm sorry, but Arwen's a drip. Maybe it's because she can only
> inherently be a sixteenth as cool as Luthien, but one banner is a pretty
> poor showing even by Elven standards. If it weren't for that strange
> power Elves have over Men, it wouldn't have been an issue whether
> Aragorn was worthy of her. Rather, we'd ask what she'd achieved that
> lets her rate the greatest human hero of the Age and the queenship of
> the restored realms of the Dunedain.
Tch! As with Feanor, we don't get a view of her (ten or twelve) great Works
in the text. Probably because the hobbits were not interested in that sort
of thing, and they had little relevance to the war effort. I daresay
several beds in Imaldris were well-furnished with her candlewicked
bedspreads, and that she worked a number of very handsome and strikingly
original pairs of bedshoes and slippers.
Michael S. Schiffer
>Matt Ruff wrote:
>> "Brenda W. Clough" wrote:
>> > "Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>> >> In any case, there are artists and scientists who appear to
>> >> have one Great Work in them.
>> > I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort.
>> You're soaking in him. Tolkien may have written "tons of stuff,"
>> but so far as I know almost all of it was part of the saga of
>> Middle Earth.
>Uh, what was he doing all that time at Oxford then?
According to Shippey, not as much as he was supposed to, and he felt
guilty about it. (This element also shows up in "Leaf by Niggle".)
I can't
>remember the title of his collected literary essays, but they're
>around. He did a lot of professional writing and translating.
I don't think he did a lot, given the amount of time involved. But
most of my information on his non-ME works (other than those that
showed up in thin volumes like _A Tolkien Reader_) is mostly
secondhand, so I may be wrong.
Brenda W. Clough
> Julie Lim wrote:
>
> > For that matter, IIRC Feanor's mother, Miriel, spoke of *him* as her
> > Great Work whose birth had consumed so much of her spirit that she
> > didn't have enough left to live herself. If something on a lesser
> > scale happens for all elven births, that could go toward explaining
> > the low birth rate. It's also interesting that Feanor was described
> > (in one of the HoME vols?) as having the Elven record for number of
> > children. (His wife doesn't seem to've suffered any ill effects.)
>
> Ooh. That would explain a lot. I was wondering whether the Elves kept
> the number of children low on purpose, so as not to swamp the world
> with their offspring, or whether their fertility was naturally very
> low. It's *elegant* as well as plausible.
Indeed! Although it would have embarrassed Tolkien himself incredibly, to
discourse upon it.
Brenda W. Clough
> rja.ca...@excite.com (Robert Carnegie) writes:
> > Now you guys have got me seeing the Valar as graduates of a
> > dot-com start-up's ill-conceived management team-building
> > exercise in co-writing a mission statement and company song.
> >
> > _Really_ not what Tolkien had in mind...
>
> Damn. Now I'm imagining Morgoth with pointy hair beneath the Iron Crown.
> (And Sauron's helmet in _LotR:FotR_ looked suspicious, too.)
> --
I am imagining Iluvatar as a Ken Lay, so hands-off that the corporation goes down
in flames, taking all the underlings with it. Then he takes the Fifth...
Michael S. Schiffer
>...
>I am imagining Iluvatar as a Ken Lay, so hands-off that the
>corporation goes down in flames, taking all the underlings with
>it. Then he takes the Fifth...
Actually, Illuvatar is one of the few entities that can take the
First instead.
Andrew Plotkin
The former.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Andrew Plotkin
> The whole Rings thing was a bit for a fiasco for him... He failed to
> dominate the Elves through the Rings, then he failed to dominate the
> dwarves through the Rings also (in both cases he declared war on
> the species to get the rings back) and okay he succeeded to create
> nine powerful dude servants, but were they *really* worth all the
> aggrevation?
> And in exchange, he created a pretty damn big Achilles' heel for
> himself.
I wonder if the Elves lost some of their own power into the Rings as
well. It seems likely. So there was a mixed win for Sauron there; if
the Elves had never begun crafting Rings at all, they would have had
greater stature during the Third Age.
We see them wielding the Three to good effect (post Isildur),
defending the Elven enclaves -- but they might have had a better
position overall if the Three had never existed.
Captain Button
IIRC the actual phrase was "slave-worked fields", so the former.
ObSFSlaveFarm:
The Genfarms in _ First Channel _ by Jean Lorrah and Jacqueline
Lichtenberg.
The Gens aren't raised as *food* precisely, but there isn't much
practical difference for them.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Joseph Michael Bay
It was mistranslated from the Black Speech; that should read "server farm"
or perhaps "server cluster". This generated their income (mostly spam
engine stuff); locally they used a tolkien ring network.
--
Joseph M. Bay Lamont Sanford Junior University
Putting the "harm" in molecular pharmacology since 1998
The worst thing about censorship is ( deleted ) .
Do you like http://www.stanford.edu/~jmbay gladiator movies?
Timothy A. McDaniel
Julie Lim <womba...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>I cite http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/theories/arag_arw.htm for the
>definitive word on this debate. ["Arwen is a drip"]
I stumbled over
http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/theories/grima.htm
A Theory about Grima of Rohan
Laughing, I almost aspirated a cookie. I am *definitely* reading the
Tolkien Crackpot Theories pages.
--
Tim McDaniel is tm...@jump.net; if that fail,
tm...@us.ibm.com is my work account.
"To join the Clueless Club, send a followup to this message quoting everything
up to and including this sig!" -- Jukka....@hut.fi (Jukka Korpela)
John Schilling
>"Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in
><3C6AEE42...@erols.com>:
>>...
>>I am imagining Iluvatar as a Ken Lay, so hands-off that the
>>corporation goes down in flames, taking all the underlings with
>>it. Then he takes the Fifth...
>Actually, Illuvatar is one of the few entities that can take the
>First instead.
Amendment, Commandment, or both?
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
John Schilling
Well, the Orcs *are* degenerate Elves. Only makes sense that their
armies would feed on Soylent Lembas...
Aaron Brezenski
Joseph Michael Bay <jm...@Stanford.EDU> wrote:
>Nyrath the nearly wise <nyra...@home.com> writes:
>
>>"Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>>> Tolkien referred to "slave farms" in Nurnen as Mordor's primary food
>>> supply, so probably not.
>
>> Did the term "slave farm" mean that the slaves
>> *farmed* food or that the slave *were* food?
>
>It was mistranslated from the Black Speech; that should read "server farm"
>or perhaps "server cluster". This generated their income (mostly spam
>engine stuff); locally they used a tolkien ring network.
Tragically, due to the efforts of self-appointed net.cops like Spamwise Gamgee,
Webmistress Shelob lost her position as the dotcom bubble burst and web-based
advertising wasn't durthang anymore.
--
Aaron Brezenski
Not speaking for my employer in any way.
Michael S. Schiffer
@spock.usc.edu>:
>msch...@condor.depaul.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:
>
>>"Brenda W. Clough" <clo...@erols.com> wrote in
>><3C6AEE42...@erols.com>:
>>>...
>>>I am imagining Iluvatar as a Ken Lay, so hands-off that the
>>>corporation goes down in flames, taking all the underlings with
>>>it. Then he takes the Fifth...
>>Actually, Illuvatar is one of the few entities that can take the
>>First instead.
>Amendment, Commandment, or both?
I was thinking Amendment. But now that you mention it, either or
both. (If Illuvatar isn't "an establishment of religion", I don't
know what is.)
Ethan Merritt
>It's also interesting that Feanor was described
>(in one of the HoME vols?) as having the Elven record for number of
>children. (His wife doesn't seem to've suffered any ill effects.)
Is his wife even mentioned anywhere? I can find no reference to her
in the volumes I have here.
--
Ethan A Merritt
Richard Horton
wrote:
>I recall reading somewhere that when it came out lots of people
>didn't think she wrote it by herself, that she had lots of
>help from a famous writer friend (Truman Capote?). She was
>offended or upset and never wrote again.
>
>I can't cite other cases, but I've had an impression that it is
>not that uncommon for new writers to overreact to critics.
I'm pretty sure it's still regarded in many circles as "not unlikely"
that Truman Capote did indeed have a great deal to do with the writing
of _To Kill a Mockingbird_.
So -- either she was offended, or she couldn't write anything else on
her own. You choose.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.tangentonline.com)
Brenda W. Clough
> The whole Rings thing was a bit for a fiasco for him... He failed to
> dominate the Elves through the Rings, then he failed to dominate the
> dwarves through the Rings also (in both cases he declared war on
> the species to get the rings back) and okay he succeeded to create
> nine powerful dude servants, but were they *really* worth all the
> aggrevation?
>
> And in exchange, he created a pretty damn big Achilles' heel for
> himself.
I particularly like Neil Gaiman's take on this situation. Readers of SANDMAN will
recall that Dream put a great deal of -his- power into a Dreamstone. Which in time
was stolen from him and given to an enemy, who used its innate power to whump Dream
hard. But
<If you need this spoiler, you had better go buy SANDMAN right now>
the enemy decided to destroy Dream forever, by breaking the stone. And when he
did, all the power leaked out and reverted back to Dream again. Then he was able
to casually triumph over the foe and start really managing the dreamscape again.
Courtenay Footman
Thomas Yan wrote:
>In article <enfsjbjypebsgpbz...@news.cis.dfn.de>,
> "Eric Walker" <ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
>> Numerous authors have produced but one speculative-fiction
>> work
>
>-snip-
>> Kathryns, G.A.: The Borders of Life
>-snip-
>
>She does not belong on this list: I recall learning from this group
>that that is really Gael Baudino writing under a pseudonym. Since I
>liked many of her books (but avoided her last series), that book is in
>my physical to-read pile.
>
Unless I have missed one, her last series was better than the preceding
one. It is exceedingly odd, which I blame on an overdose of Joyce,
but, possibly because it is so odd, it is not so relentless depressing
as some of her earlier work. Some horrible things happen, but at least
they happen to people who deserve it.
Now I will have to look for the Kathryns, because I do not recall having
ever even seen this book.
--
Courtenay Footman I have again gotten back on the net, and
c...@lightlink.com again I will never get anything done.
(All mail from non-valid addresses is automatically deleted by my system.)
Michael S. Schiffer
>Aris Katsaris wrote:
>> The whole Rings thing was a bit for a fiasco for him... He failed
>> to dominate the Elves through the Rings, then he failed to
>> dominate the dwarves through the Rings also (in both cases he
>> declared war on the species to get the rings back) and okay he
>> succeeded to create nine powerful dude servants, but were they
>> *really* worth all the aggrevation?
>> And in exchange, he created a pretty damn big Achilles' heel for
>> himself.
>I particularly like Neil Gaiman's take on this situation. Readers
>of SANDMAN will recall that Dream put a great deal of -his- power
>into a Dreamstone. Which in time was stolen from him and given to
>an enemy, who used its innate power to whump Dream hard. But
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
><If you need this spoiler, you had better go buy SANDMAN right now>
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>the enemy decided to destroy Dream forever, by breaking the stone.
>And when he did, all the power leaked out and reverted back to Dream
>again.
From the signs, I'd guess that if Feanor were to be allowed to reabsorb
the power of the Silmarils, he might have been able to, at which point
he might have been able to do Something Else. (If the Valar can
transfer that creative essence to the dying Trees, they can transfer it
to Feanor himself, can't they? But, of course, that would defeat the
purpose of the exercise from their perspective.) Conversely, if someone
had figured out how to tap the energy of the dreamstone instead of
releasing it (say, a Doctor Destiny operating on a much larger scale,
who wasn't overwhelmed by Dream's full power), Dream might have been in
serious trouble. I'm not sure this is so much a difference in concept
as a difference in circumstances. (Sauron couldn't reclaim the power of
the Ring, but he doesn't operate on the same level as the Valar, let
alone one of the Endless. If he could get someone *really* powerful on
his side, who knows what he could accomplish?)
Jon Kay
>
> Yes. This is touched upon in Isaac Asimov's science
> fact article "The Sin of the Scientist"
>
> Asimov says that a "scientific sin" would be a
> act that harmed science itself. Something that
> would turn public opinion against science.
>
> In the late 1800's, science was heralding the
> dawn of a new paradise. In the late 1900's
> science is more like Pandora's box and
> Frankenstein's monster.
>
> The obvious sin would be the invention of
> the atom bomb, but Asimov argues that the sin
> happened much earlier.
>
> His candidate was the invention of posion gas
> and its use in WWI.
The same thing was true of the crossbow, bombards, and
doubtless plenty of other showily clever but potentially
destructive devices that had the potential to kill
more people than before.
And yet...the inventors of these devices are not the ones
who kill anybody. And there can be no question that the
scientists in the Manhattan Project did the Right Thing.
In fact, although it's a point I don't want to make too hard,
lest I have to eat my words in a very expensive way, nuclear
weaponry has arguably preserved the peace. In a very ironic
and prayer-fraught way.
Again, that's a point that can be leaned on too hard. MAD
assumes that all players are RATIONAL ACTORS. The Soviet Union
did turn out to have that level of basic rationality, but as it
continues to proliferate, of course, we cannot be too hopeful
on the continuation of MAD's effectivess.
Jon (who just rewatched Dr. Strangelove)
Ethan Merritt
Richard Horton <rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 14:39:53 GMT, but...@io.com (Captain Button)
>wrote:
>
>>I recall reading somewhere that when it came out lots of people
>>didn't think she wrote it by herself, that she had lots of
>>help from a famous writer friend (Truman Capote?). She was
>>offended or upset and never wrote again.
Truman Capote was Harper Lee's cousin, as I understand it,
and to the extent that _To Kill a Mockingbird_ was autobiographical,
he was the real life counterpart of Scout's cousin, Dill.
So yes, I'm sure he saw it and had a chance to comment.
But the insinuation that Capote somehow is due the credit for
_To Kill A Mockingbird_ rather than Harper Lee has always struck
me as absurd. After all, how many times have you seen
_In Cold Blood_ or _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ listed among
the great works of American fiction? What is true is that
Lee continued to live in the same small town which she wrote
about in TKaM, and the townsfolk were not, shall we say,
universally appreciative of their treatment in the book.
--
Ethan A Merritt
Eric Walker
>On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 22:42:40 -0800 (PST), "Eric Walker"
><ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
>>Numerous authors have produced but one speculative-fiction
>>work, yet that one
>>of at least reasonable (and often high) quality. Of those
>>listed below, all
>>of whom I think meet those criteria, several are still
>>producing books, albeit
>>not sf, so we may yet see more (but in most or all cases it
>>seems doubtful).
>>
>
>>Bauer, Steven: Satyrday
>>Bell, Douglas: Mojo and the Pickle Jar
>>Bellairs, John: The Face in the Frost [1]
>
>>Notes:
>>------
>>[1] _The Pdeant and the Shuffly_ might move Bellairs to the
>> second list; there is also his _St. Fidgeta_, with which
>> I am unfamiliar. He did many children's books, which,
>> though they are pleasant reading, I ignore here.
>
>Which seems both unfair and snobbish.
>As, for that matter, does the inclusion of Oscar Wilde, who wrote tons
>of stuff, but not so many novels.
It may or may not be unfair--I haven't decided myself (and have
on order as I type two more of Bellairs' "children's books"),
but it is not snobbish. They have a certain appeal, but it is
not an appeal that seems to me universal, the way Oz or Alice
are universally appealing to adults. I myself like them a lot,
but I would not rise up in wrath if someone else whose taste I
generally respect found them too jejune. My standing advice
was and is try one and see.
I'm not sure what the objection to Wilde is. As someone has
pointed out recently here, Wilde did write more than I had at
first recalled of what we today would call speculative fiction.
I think he deserves recognition within the field, but may not
qualify after all as a single-novel author. _Dorian Gray_ of
course comes up, but so, now that my memory is jogged, does
_The Canterbury Ghost_; both are, I gather, technically
novellas, but I now think they remove Wilde from the one-novel
class.
The larger subject of authors with but one or, at most two,
novels but a substantial short-story output is a distinct one.
I forget the exact origin of this thread, but I suspect "novel"
was, for better or worse, in it. I have a sharp bias in favor
of novels (or short stories about the same set of characters),
but I recognize that as an idiosyncracy; I entertain no foolish
notions that the novel is somehow superior to the short story.
--
Cordially,
Eric Walker, webmaster
Great Science-Fiction & Fantasy Works
http://owlcroft.com/sfandf
Matt Ruff
>
> Matt Ruff wrote:
>
>>>
>>> "Michael S. Schiffer" wrote:
>>>
>>>> to have one Great Work in them.
>>>
>>> I'm trying to think of a first-rank writer of this sort.
>>
>> You're soaking in him. Tolkien may have written "tons of
>> stuff," but so far as I know almost all of it was part of
>> the saga of Middle Earth.
>
> remember the title of his collected literary essays,
They're that great, huh?
-- M. Ruff
Omri Schwarz
> On 12 Feb 2002 21:47:14 GMT, Ross TenEyck <ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu> wrote:
> >Jon Kay <jk...@pushcache.com> writes:
> >
> >>In Tolkien's world, things really do grow worse. People typically are
> >>lesser and worse off than their granddads.
> >
> >[Much snipped]
> >
> >Well, that was Tolkien's worldview: the Golden Age was in the past,
> >there were giants on the earth in those days, it's all going to hell
> >in a handbasket, kids these days.
> >
> >Brin has a rant on this. The "newer is better" worldview is a fairly
> >recent innovation, peculiar to technological societies. The "older
> >is better" worldview was predominant through much of human history.
>
> True. But From about 1600 onwards, things really were getting better
> all the time, with technology making slow continual advances that allowed
> a continuous incremental improvement in the welath of society (if not
> the wealth of many individuals). By 1850 or so it was obvious to
> everyone that things were getting better, and the technological basis
> existed for everyone to be materially better off.
By 1850, right after the potato famine?
Even as late as WW1 the suckitude of the world
was still plainly manifest (as in how the enlisted
men in the British army were noticeably shorter than
the officers (might that have been the reason hobbits
are short?)). The methodologies used to determine that
life was improving, i.e. health statistics, archaeological
forensics, et cetera, got their start in our century.
> >(It's possible this may have become entrenched in the centuries
> >after the fall of Rome; when, in many ways, things *had* gone in
> >the shitter, compared to the glory that was past. But I think
> >the attitude predates Rome, if you dig for it.)
>
> I expect so. I think it is all bascially a vatrient of the grass being
> greaner on the other side. Or perhaps its nostalgia for the time of
> one's childhood.
That and the duty of the elderly to give harangues to the
young to get them to go and fight when wars start - almost
universal among hunter gatherer packs, and first noticed
by French colonists in what is now Brazil (and was
then Antarctic France). "Kids these days" rants are
a matter of instinct.
--
Omri Schwarz --- ocs...@mit.edu ('h' before war)
Timeless wisdom of biomedical engineering: "Noise is principally
due to the presence of the patient." -- R.F. Farr
Eric Walker
>In article <enfsjbjypebsgpbz...@news.cis.dfn.de>,
> "Eric Walker" <ra...@owlcroft.com> wrote:
>
>> Numerous authors have produced but one speculative-fiction
>> work
>
>-snip-
>> Kathryns, G.A.: The Borders of Life
>-snip-
>
>She does not belong on this list: I recall learning from this group
>that that is really Gael Baudino writing under a pseudonym. Since I
>liked many of her books (but avoided her last series), that book is in
>my physical to-read pile.
I beg to differ. Authors commonly adopt pen names to
distinguish various modes or styles of their work. "G. A.
Kathryns" as a person may be Gael Baudino, but as a writer is
G. A. Kathryns and no one else, and has written, to date, one
novel.
It is, by the way, a very good to excellent novel, well worth
searching out. It is slightly marred by a bit of heavy handed
obviousness in a small but significant matter (I will note it
below some spoiler separators), but that does not mar the total
effect.
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Really now: having a black gentleman (in an old-fashioned
southern setting) be named Mr. Dark is pressing a bit. Having
his full name turn out to be Primal Dark (especially given what
he seems to truly be) is more than a bit OTT. What compounds
the folly is Kathryns' having him, when politely asked his
given name, first toss off a remark about folk of his race
often having bizarre given names. Ok, the idea was unwise; but
just do it, don't compound the felony by apologizing for doing
it.
Eric Walker
[...]
>After all, how many times have you seen _In Cold Blood_
>or _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ listed among the great works
>of American fiction?
Quite a number, as it happens. Having read neither, nor
anything else by Capote, I have no opinion about the
reliability of such remarks, but I have often seen them.
Robert Carnegie
> > . (You wonder why Arwen only ever
> > >embroiders a banner for Aragorn? It's because fabric ornamentation
> > >was her Thing.)
> >
> > I'm sorry, but Arwen's a drip. Maybe it's because she can only
> > inherently be a sixteenth as cool as Luthien, but one banner is a pretty
> > poor showing even by Elven standards. If it weren't for that strange
> > power Elves have over Men, it wouldn't have been an issue whether
> > Aragorn was worthy of her. Rather, we'd ask what she'd achieved that
> > lets her rate the greatest human hero of the Age and the queenship of
> > the restored realms of the Dunedain.
>
> Tch! As with Feanor, we don't get a view of her (ten or twelve) great Works
> in the text. Probably because the hobbits were not interested in that sort
> of thing, and they had little relevance to the war effort. I daresay
> several beds in Imaldris were well-furnished with her candlewicked
> bedspreads, and that she worked a number of very handsome and strikingly
> original pairs of bedshoes and slippers.
Indeed; hobbits don't use footwear.
But Aragorn's socks were marvellously waterproof, whilst allowing
the skin to breathe. The fabric in which his lady had invested a
fraction of her vital force was consequently called by Elves
"cloth-of-blood", which in the Vulgar Speech is rendered as
Gore-tex.
Robert Carnegie
> In article <slrna6jvr...@adore.lightlink.com>, c...@adore.lightlink.com (Courtenay Footman) writes:
> > Imagining Smith's LotR is making my
> >mind boggle. (Particularly imagining the conference of magic users where
> >they try and device the next magical advance.)
>
> Cardynge meets Gandalf? Boggle, indeed.
>
> Or, how about a sequel to LotR, where it turns out that Sauron didn't
> really get offed after all, and the Valar team up with him to fight
> an even bigger menace? we could call it _The Return of DuKing_
I'll be disappointed if there isn't an Elvish word for "skylark".
Robert Carnegie
> rja.ca...@excite.com (Robert Carnegie) writes:
> > Now you guys have got me seeing the Valar as graduates of a
> > dot-com start-up's ill-conceived management team-building
> > exercise in co-writing a mission statement and company song.
> >
> > _Really_ not what Tolkien had in mind...
>
> Damn. Now I'm imagining Morgoth with pointy hair beneath the Iron Crown.
> (And Sauron's helmet in _LotR:FotR_ looked suspicious, too.)
Sauron can be Catbert, Evil Director of Human Resources,
but I'm not sure about Gandalf as Dogbert (although his
perpetual consultancies _do_ fit Mithrandir's role in
various states' affairs) or Sam Gamgee as maybe Ratbert.
Jens Kilian
> Maybe THAT'S why Utumno spends so much time around Middle-Earth.
ITYM "Ulmo."
--
mailto:j...@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
PGP: 06 04 1C 35 7B DC 1F 26 As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
0x555DA8B5 BB A2 F0 66 77 75 E1 08 so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]