Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirtel
...I liked the atmosphere in the books. And that sense of long, long history, long-forgotten ages. It was sad and somehow chilling. Imho no one has been able to create that sense as well as Tolkien did....
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Part of that of course is that there
was a long, long history, worked out by Tolkien. I appreciate the work he did. It showed in his novels and I did appreciate that. Not many fantasy authors do that kind of work. Or if they do, they just aren't as good as Tolkien.
I think Frank Herbert did a comparable job with Dune. There was lots of stuff where you knew there was more there than what you were 'seeing' as a reader*
I appreciate that sort of back story. I just don't think every last bit of it needs to be explored in future works. Doing that can rob the initial work of some of what made it special.
In movies, George Lucas did a good job of fake history with Star Wars. Talking about the time before the empire and the clone wars. What a neat world. But then the follow-up trilogy happened and a lot of that lost its luster.
*Incidentally, there's a good video comparing the work of Tolkien and Herbert, explaining why their made-up fantasy names don't inadvertently make you laugh the way some others do: