MarkTerpin@sri-unix.UUCP (07/31/83)
I think it's going to be hard for any fantasy author to surpass the Lord of the Rings, just because Tolkien put so much care and effort into developing Middle Earth. He started the Silmarillion in 1917, I seem to recall, and he never really finished it; it's practically a life work. Things in LotR just seem to fit together better than in most stories, and Middle Earth seems to me more 'real' than most other fantasy worlds, just because of all the detail and attention he put into it. You can really tell that Tolkien didn't develop Middle Earth just to write novels about it, but he enjoyed building it for its own sake. How many fantasy authors had spent years developing languages for peoples in their worlds, or drawing up philological maps, or drawing up family trees, all of which would never be published, just as a personal hobby. I think that this made Middle Earth richer in subtle ways. For instance in LotR, when Tolkien hints about something outside of the story in Lotr (e.g. Gondolin), you get the sense Tolkien actually had a bunch of interesting stories about the place, but that there just wasn't the space to go into detail. Even the cats of Queen Beruthiel had a (small) story behind them! I doubt if any fantasy authors have ever developed a world as rich as Middle Earth, although I'm open to opinions otherwise. On the subject of snarfing, LotR has not a few elements from Norse and Germanic mythology, and I think the names Gandalf and Frodo were from the Hiemskringla. -Mark -------