Quote:
Originally Posted by roc
Apparently you have not been around, or paid much attention, to the fantasy that has been widely available since Tollkien really became popular in the late 60's into the next decade. I have had a multitude of such books yellowing and rotting away due to their age from those days (reason I am much more into ebooks now).
Don't assume what you do not know about does/did not exist ;-)
|
When I was in High School in the 70s, all my friends read Tolkein. We loved Fantasy, but we all read the same books because there weren't very many of them. The fantasy section in our bookstore (which was part of sci-f) was tiny. The whole sci-fi section was tiny. There was Norton, Burroughs, Bradbury, Perry Rhodan translations, and a half a dozen other individual books.
When I went to see Star Wars, opening night, I was shocked. I had never been to a science fiction movie where more than half the seats were filled, and here the line went out the door. And I went to a lot of sci-fi movies. You can argue about who made the biggest difference, but there IS a BIG difference in the sci-fi and fantasy audiences now and those of just a few decades ago.
As for Rowling, I think most people who denigrate her writing do so because they think it makes them sound sophisticated somehow. (Railing against something so popular always makes you cool, right?) Nobody who knows writing and has read hers, believes that she is less than a competent writer. Some have criticized her because her ideas are synthesized from existing legends and mythology rather than original. Speaking as one who has tried, it is difficult to take so many disparate legends and weave them into one cohesive sophisticated story-- which Harry Potter is.