Quote:
Originally Posted by conan50
Tolkien is great, he helped jump start the whole modern Fantasy genre. But he "borrowed" and was influenced by the Norse Eddas, Beowulf, the Kalevala, William Morris, and others. Gandalf, Frodo, about half the names of his dwarves came from the Eddas. William Morris first used the name "Mirkwood". Many modern fantasy authors "borrow" from Tolkien, but he first "borrowed" from the best.
Robert E. Howard is your guy if you are looking for a "Father" of Heroic Fantasy.
edit added the word "Heroic".
|
And Mr. Howard wrote mostly for the pulps when he created characters like Conan, Kull, and Solomon Kane. Which isn't to say there is anything wrong with that. Just that there is a difference between writing a novel and writing a series of short stories for magazines (IMO). When Mr. Howard created his characters for the pulps he was likely just trying to create something to keep food on the table for the next week or so and at the same time make sure the readers would want to come back for another story in the future, and magazines back then I'm sure were fairly cheap (from our stand point) compared to the cost of a book as well.