[Timboli]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I would tend to say comparing a teenager/young adult with a grandfather. The two authors couldn't have been more different.

I was actually referring to Moorcock later in his career, but essentially we are in agreement.

To an extent, Tolkien was one of the last great Victoria age writers and was of the old fantasy genre with William Morris (The Well at World's End - 1896), E.R.R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros - 1922) and H. Rider Haggard (Eric Brighteyes - 1891, but most famous for She and King's Soloman's Mine). The Hobbit was published in 1937 and the LOTR was released in 1954-55). He famously labored long and hard over LOTR, taking almost 20 years to write it (if you only include the time period when he was actually working on it)

Yep, I agree ... from a different age really ... and Tolkien's formative years and social circle were vastly different to Moorcock's.

Tolkien and many of that era, were quite perfectionist too with their writing, and their focus being very different to the newcomers of the 60s ... dare I say more literary (words & language), marked by Tolkien's participation in the Oxford Dictionary.

Moorcock was of the experimental 60's and was one of the first of the anti-hero authors. I would tend to compare Moorcock and his Eternal Champion series much more to Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series in the early 70's. (which are favorites of mine and I think have aged better than the Elric books).

You are possibly right there, though the Eternal Champion saga basically covers all or most of Moorcock's stories from what I recall, and the Corum segment for one was damn good, quite magical in my memory.

I have only read one or two (maybe 3) of Wagner's novels, long ago, one of those being a Conan one, which I enjoyed. He is one of the many many authors I have checked out over the years, and who I fully intended to read more of one day. Alas I have been unable to keep up with the huge number of authors I am already a big fan of, so it is looking less likely now.