Slate article: Lester Del Rey - The Man Who Invented Fantasy

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I'd argue, more charitably, that it made "high fantasy" a viable genre, which allowed both good (and bad) authors to take it up as a vocation where they might not otherwise have been able.

I think you are right.

In general, I don't care for high fantasy, Tolkien-alikes and that colors my perceptions. A good number of authors got right (or at least got published) by writing popular books that made many people happy. And I probably shouldn't slag that.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Point is the Del Rey titles were common in UK bookshops, you just didn't know it since they were picked up by local publishers over there.

Publishing in different geo-restricted regions often doesn't work like that, especially English language UK vs USA. Often an author or an agent would do separate deals in separate region, especially in the past when there were many USA publishers unable to distribute in UK and vice-versa. It was a consequence of certain publishers from Victorian era till 1960s ignoring copyrights of works published elsewhere.

They are only a Del Rey title when they are published by Del Rey. There may or may not have been any contractual arrangement with Del Rey by British publishers, or they may have had a separate deal with the author(s).

Edit
First book in Thomas Covenant series (Lord Foul's Bane):
1st published in USA by Holt Rinehart and Winston 1977
First published in UK by Fontana Books 1978
22nd impression 1987 (Fontana Books, printed by William Collins)

Copyright © 1977 by Stephen R. Donaldson.

So likely Donaldson did a deal with Collins (Fontana was their imprint).

What ever titles Del Ray published doesn't make them Del Ray titles when someone else publishes them in a different country, even if Del Ray published them first.

I've read short stories in magazines by Lester Del Ray, but as a publishing house Del Ray seems to have little to do with UK or Ireland.

[Quoth]

There was High Fantasy before and after Tolkien. There was and are loads of British & Irish fantasy writing from Victorian era till now.
Not all fantasy that might be termed High Fantasy is like Tolkien and maybe the worst are the attempts to badly imitate elements by people with no background or understanding of the Mythos and stories of the past that Tolkien mined.

I've no doubt that Lester and the Del Rey publishing helped popularise certain kinds of fantasy in the USA, that's probably good. But the article is a bit hyperbolic and ignores elsewhere.

[Quoth]

I really searched!
I found ONE Piers Anthony (1983) by Del Rey. It's an import, maybe even bought in USA as it was picked up in a charity shop.
All the legitimately distributed books in UK and Ireland then have an extra £stg barcode. The Irish price would be a sticker, if bought in Ireland. So all the other Piers Anthony books have UK/Australia publishers, Macdonald, using Futura imprint.
All inc the imported Del Rey edition are © Piers Anthony Jacob, not Del Rey.

We get a lot of S/H USA stuff in the Mid West of Ireland due to USA companies and the return of many Irish from USA in the last 20 years.

[slm]

The article was certainly hyperbolic--there were other imprints publishing Tolkein imitaters.
I just looked at my favorite of the imitations--Red Moon and Black Mountain. It appears to have been published under a Ballentine "Adult Fantasy" series.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Quoth

What ever titles Del Ray published doesn't make them Del Ray titles when someone else publishes them in a different country, even if Del Ray published them first.

...Del Ray seems to have little to do with UK or Ireland.

But those books were chosen for publication by Lester Del Rey, editor. If he didn't publish them to great success in the US, would there have been a UK edition? It is telling that the books were published a year after they were best-sellers in the US market.

Therefore, yes, Del Rey did have an impact on the fantasy genre in the U.K. as well.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by slm

The article was certainly hyperbolic--there were other imprints publishing Tolkein imitaters.
I just looked at my favorite of the imitations--Red Moon and Black Mountain. It appears to have been published under a Ballentine "Adult Fantasy" series.

I went and read a bit about Red Moon and Black Mountain. Sadly, it is out of print. Anyway, I don't think it is an imitation, in the way that Sword of Shannara is. Joy Chant at least claimed that she had read the same myths and folklore.

I wonder how the book holds up and why it is out of print.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I went and read a bit about Red Moon and Black Mountain. Sadly, it is out of print. Anyway, I don't think it is an imitation, in the way that Sword of Shannara is. Joy Chant at least claimed that she had read the same myths and folklore.

I wonder how the book holds up and why it is out of print.

I admire that pretty much every printing had its own distinct, but still awesome cover:

https://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.c...-moon-and.html

The Frank Frazetta one in particular, is, well, Frazetta. What more could you want for an Epic Fantasy cover?

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/169448004710751871/

[slm]

I'm deeply saddened that there is no ebook version currently available. I have an ebook from 2011 and I re-read it every couple of years.

As to the "Tolkein copy" question, I see it as an independent work, but there are group who see it as somewhat of an imitation. For example, one reviewer on Amazon wrote:

You could almost make yourself believe "Red Moon and Black Mountain" is a quasi-sequel of The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings , as the story is very much written in their spirit. At times author Joy Chant seems to be working with the template of "The Lord of the Rings" given the contents of her story: there are horse-people here, and a beautiful magical maiden who gives up her immortality for love, and a Dark Lord who threatens the freedom of the world. There's a white city, and giant eagles, and a race which has a deep kinship with the stars, and fantasy names like "Vandarei" and "Kendrith" that wouldn't look out of place in a Tolkien novel.

All of the points of similarity are accurate but the details and overall feel of either or the "cognates" are very different from Lord of the Rings.

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by slm

I'm deeply saddened that there is no ebook version currently available. I have an ebook from 2011 and I re-read it every couple of years.

Who's the publisher on the 2011 ebook, out of curiosity? Was it "officially" released as an ebook, or was it someone's digitized OCR of a text copy?

[slm]

The publisher shows as E.P. Dutton.
My guess is that it is an OCR.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Cactus Chef

I admire that pretty much every printing had its own distinct, but still awesome cover:

https://tolkienandfantasy.blogspot.c...-moon-and.html

The Frank Frazetta one in particular, is, well, Frazetta. What more could you want for an Epic Fantasy cover?

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/169448004710751871/

Like any right thinking individual, I do love some Frazetta. But lately, I've been enjoying the more delicate fantasy covers of the late sixties and seventies. For Red Moon and Black Mountain, I liked the Bob Pepper cover best, then the Ian Millar.

Incidentally, I think I have a paperback copy of The Grey Mane of Morning floating around at home. I've never read it and didn't know it was part of a series. But the cover always draws my attention.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by slm

...one reviewer on Amazon wrote:

All of the points of similarity are accurate but the details and overall feel of either or the "cognates" are very different from Lord of the Rings.

It's funny. Because when you read the Wiki article on Joy Chant, she explains that the land of Vandarei was her playworld from childhood, once called 'Equitania' when she was really into horses:

... it began as a playworld, the sort that a lot of children have, and I was of course the Queen, the character about whom I created the adventures. But I had the disposition of a pedant. I didn't really want to pretend: I wanted to know, to be sure, to get it right. So even in its childish form this playworld tended to become concise, factual. As I grew older, horses became a passion and the playworld developed into "Equitania"—the horse motif strengthening. During this time the history of the country itself assumed an importance and I began to actually write. At fifteen, however, the last links with "Equitania" wavered and the name "Vandarei" appeared. The Queen was abandoned and ceased to be an avatar of myself, becoming a character whom I manipulated, but with whom I no longer especially identified.

[Wiggo]

Originally Posted by slm

The article was certainly hyperbolic--there were other imprints publishing Tolkein imitaters.
I just looked at my favorite of the imitations--Red Moon and Black Mountain. It appears to have been published under a Ballentine "Adult Fantasy" series.

One of my favourite books as a teenager.
In a cardboard box

[Quoth]

What's the connection between US Ballentine and Del Rey in the past?