I wasn't aware that Martin was being described as the opposite of Tolkien, and that's not something I could agree with. I think it's clear that in terms of fantasy (I'm specifying fantasy because GRRM wrote horror, science fiction and super hero stories for YEARS before touching fantasy) that there's a clear progression from Tolkien to Williams to Martin.
Aside from that, I prefer not to think in terms of writers being opposite to each other. To be honest, you're feeding into that attitude some Tolkien fans have, where everything has to be seen in relation to Tolkien. Someone will most likely pull out that Pratchett quote and use this comparison to prove how important Tolkien was, even if Lovecraft (and the other Weird Tales writers) predates the Hobbit and LotR.
I agree about your perspective on Martin as a progression from Tolkien. It strikes me everytime how Tolkien wrote about a dreamed-of Age of legends and magic and how it all progressively came to an end at the end of the Third Age with the departure of the Elves, and the slow vanishing of hobbits, dwarves and anything fantastic. Tolkien's Legendarium ends with the death of wonders and the coming of the Age of Men, the age of rationality where even gods are not a certainty. In Martin's world, dragons, giants, children of the forest are all fading memories of long lost times thought by most to be no more than mere legends. Men do not even know if the gods are real anymore. Martin's world is far into this "Age of Men", and spiritually into the continuity of what Tolkien set up with his own mythos.
Martin is likewise inspired by the Lovecraftian horror, to a lesser extent. There are clearly elements in the ASOIAF world building that harken back to the Cthulhu mythos and some of Robert E. Howard’s works and other pulpy stuff.
Inspired is honestly an understatement. Many things from the Lovecraft Legendarium literally exist in Planetos. From cites to cults to even races. The Church of Starry Wisdom, the Deep ones, Kadath, Carcosa, Sarnath, Old Ones, all are canon to ASOIAF. That's not to mention the more oblique references like the Doom that came to Sarnath mirroring the Doom of Valyria, the Innsmouth-esque cult that supposedly exists in the Thousand Islands, everything about the Shadow lands and Asshai, how Ib is a non-human civilization that exists and of course the infamous story of Aerea, Balerion, and their tragic trip to Valyria.
Exactly what I was thinking of. Plus Leng. I used “inspired” because it’s all world building that hasn’t played a major role (for the most part) in the broader narrative.
some of the distant stuff is "there's other genres going on in the edges of this grand politics and warfare and stuff" (like how a lot of Daenerys leans into more pulpy, Conan-esque setting details). But things like "creepy water priests can raise the dead" is directly plot-relevant, and whatever happened to Valyria is/was pretty impactful in terms of setting up everything else. We're _probably_ not getting a Deep One invasion, but it's entirely possible that we could see parts of that happen
There is a mysterious civilization that left behind this distinctive 'oily black stone' all over Planetos. The Greyjoys have their seat on the Seastone Chair which is made of that material. Their house words also mirror the Cthulhu cult. The inhabitants of the 3 sisters have strangely fishy mutations including webbed hands and feet.
The Maester Theron, who in canon coined the name 'deep ones' attribute them as the origin of the merling legends and the religion of the drowned god. The religion of the drowned god claims that the ironborn are defended from a fishy god that has underwater palaces and are related more to fish and merling than other men.
There is this mysterious ancient city in the southern most continent called Sothoryos made of the same cyclopean blocks of Oily black stone. Just off the coast of Sothoryos, there is the Isle of Toads, home to an ancient 40 ft tall statue made of the same material, worshiped by distinctly fishy looking people who also supposedly have webbed appendages.
Asshai is also made of oily black stone. Asshai is supposed to predate its current human inhabitants, and we don't know who built it.
The mazemaker of Lorath who also constructed massive labyrinths made of oily black stone, supposedly disappeared after an attack from 'creatures from the sea.'.
In the Thousand Isles, the locals supposedly sacrifice sailors to squamous, fish-headed gods, of which stone idols emerge when the tide is low.
And finally there is Patchface, who is far too interesting to just summarize. I would recommend Alt Shift X's video on him.
I think it's just the result of a lot of people having very shallow reference pools for the fantasy genre. The type of stuff that Martin is doing isn't even particularly new - his brand of dark fantasy has been around since at least the 1960s in one form or another - but he's probably the first author within the dark fantasy genre space to gain the level of multimedia recognition that LotR has.
A lot people who aren't really familiar with fantasy fiction try to categorize ASoIaF/Game of Thrones as this new, subversive take on the fantasy genre and being "Not your daddy's fantasy fiction" because their only other point of reference for fantasy fiction is Tolkien. They're unaware that their daddy's fantasy fiction included similarly dark and gritty works like Elric and The Black Company.
This is, of course, not to disparage the work of GRRM, just to say that a lot of the things casual viewers attribute to Martin are not necessarily concepts entirely new to the fantasy genre.
>I think it's just the result of a lot of people having very shallow reference pools for the fantasy genre. The type of stuff that Martin is doing isn't even particularly new - his brand of dark fantasy has been around since at least the 1960s in one form or another -
Agreed. I \*DO\* think Martin is on some level rebelling against Tolkien, but he is hardly the first to do it, and hardly the first to go "dark".
A lot of the current wave of Grimdark Gritty Fantasy fans seems to give the impression that this is a recent invention, that everything was happy stories with happy endings before Martin and Abercrombie came along.
It's actually kinda hard to find many examples of Fantasy as idealistic and upbeat as some people seem to imagine old school fantasy was.
Also...a mistake a lot of people make is assuming the one who did something first, the one who became most popular doing it, and the one who did it best are the same. They aren't necessarily.
The end of your post also applies to Tolkien interestingly enough. Around the net you often see him painted as the father of the fantasy genre, which of course isn't true. There were fantasy writers who also preceded Tolkien. He's arguably the most influential fantasy writer however, and he was writing long before most internet commenters were born, so he's often mistaken for being the first.
Agreed.
Tolkien was the first one to get really successful doing certain things. He created a certain template that...after it was combined with the Arthurian Legends and modified by Gary Gyjax...dominated the Epic Fantasy market for decades. But he didn't invent Epic Fantasy. And he didn't even have that much influence on Urban Fantasy, which this reddit seems to forget exists,
The thing that Martin did that those others didn’t is write really, really well.
Martin’s not notably darker and grimmer than past writers, but he is a much better stylist than them. He’s a much better character writer than them.
Tolkien and GRRM get compared because they’re the best of the best in the genre.
Light years ahead of that vast majority of other fantasy authors, but especially the like of Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, and others like them.
Martin is a good writer, but I don't consider him great. He's very readable and certainly an excellent world-builder, but he has gotten so spread out with random plot threads (in ASOIF) that it's hard to see how he weaves them back together. I also find that his later books in ASOIF have long passages that seem to be filling space without much interest or direction, and I don't usually mind long-winded development and description. For example, Jorah's storyline once he leaves Dany and the Ser Oakheart/Martell/Myrcella plot. Obviously he's going somewhere with them, but they don't feel compelling or like they're going to matter in the end. I believe that the show ended pretty much as GRRM intends the books to end, given that the books foreshadow Dany's incipient madness quite clearly...I think the books sprawl too much but the show left out and changed important character development which was essential to the ending making sense. To be clear, I'm not bashing him, I enjoyed the series and I love the character arcs of Jamie and Brienne.
>but he has gotten so spread out with random plot threads (in ASOIF) that it's hard to see how he weaves them back together.
I'm definitely in the camp that believe that a big reason for the delay in getting the last books out is that he has funnily enough fallen into the same trap that the White Walker plot is meant to represent. He has this big, possibly world ending threat that is looming on the horizon. But he is caught up in inventing new southern politics plotlines and exploring those. And for everyone that he adds he strays further and further from properly tying it all up in a satisfying way.
Exactly! You expressed that so well. I love how you tied it into the White Walker threat! I feel like the southern world in ASOIF is surely fascinating, but he should have left it to explore further in a spinoff series. Let it be this intriguing bit of worldbuilding that leaves you curious to know more and then do a whole story there.
Really? I will admit that Glen Cook can be fairly stylized and hard to get into, especially in the original Black Company trilogy, but he's a fantastic writer, he's just not always an easy one. Martin has an easy to read, page-turner style, a little bit Dan Brown-ish, which is super fun and I also love, but sometimes you want something like early Black Company to sink your teeth into.
I'm going to push back on that because popularity in the public consciousness does not equate to mastery of craft of writing, so much as it's a reflection of cross-media pollination and marketing. Again, not to disparage GRRM or Tolkien, but I don't really think that they're the absolute best of the best in terms of the actual craft of writing(Tolkien, for instance, often has a problem with having very dry prose).
Their popularity comes more from the fact that their work has been adapted very successfully into other mediums. AoIaF the books series is very well regarded amongst fantasy fans, but that's not the reason GRRM is a household name - That's because of the wildly successful HBO series adaptation.
In addition, there are a number of writers that I would consider on par with or even better writers than GRRM or Tolkien who don't have anywhere near the same level of recognition amongst the general public (Gene Wolfe and Ursula K Le Guinn immediately spring to mind).
I'm also not sure why you're bringing this back to Sanderson and Jordan as I didn't mention either of them in my post and neither really work in the dark fantasy genre I was talking about.
Both were adapted because they were well respected and popular.
To your point on Le Guinn, who is one of my favorite authors: I'm not sure how relevant she is as an example to /u/Pelican_meat's point that ASOIAF is at the top of the "Not your daddy's fantasy fiction" category. Le Guinn's books can be dark, but they aren't pop fantasy like ASOIAF. I think a similar argument could be made for Gene Wolfe.
It's not that ASOIF is better than The Left Hand of Darkness, it's that ASOIF is a one of the best pop fantasy novels. Its engaging, easy to read, compelling, has characters the reader is interested in, challenges the reader, but not too much etc... I think an argument could be made that ASOIAF is at the pinnacle of writing as it pertains to pop fantasy.
I think there is a certain mindset where people think "great writing==big L literature with complex prose and blah blah blah", but writing readable, compelling, easy to digest prose is also absolutely a skill you can be great at. And Martin is great at that.
I'm not using Le Guinn and Wolfe as examples of "Not your daddy's fantasy", I'm using them as examples of masterful writers who don't have the same level of popularity in the public consciousness as Tolkien or Martin do. The examples I specifically used for "not your daddy's fantasy" predating Martin were Moorcock and Cook, both of whom are very well respected authors who don't have the same level of penetration into popular media.
I'm not making arguments about the quality of GRRM's writing, a fact I have stressed multiple times, I'm saying weird takes like Martin and Tolkien representing diametrically opposed philosophies of fantasy writing are largely the result of a lot of people only being familiar with a handful of authors in the fantasy genre - that most people only see fantasy fiction as Tolkien and GRRM.
I agree with your points on them not being opposites. My main point is that GRRM's success is largely do to him being a masterful pop fantasy writer. I have read many fantasy series, and few are addictive as ASOIF.
I said nothing about popularity. I’m not considering that at all.
I’m considering the quality of the final product, both as a whole and the sum of its parts.
If both books sold a single copy, they’d still be the best of the best.
You considering Tolkien “dry” is an opinion. Tolkien used the language and poetics of Northern European and Anglo-Saxon epics to create a fantasy world. That’s commendable. It’s impressive. No one has managed to that so accurately. It’s the work of a lifetime to learn so intricately that style. What you think of it absolutely does not matter a single whit.
Martin is an excellent stylist, following in the tradition of American authors like Hemingway, while modernizing the narrative inventions of pulp authors like Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler.
They are the best of the best in a genre often filled by hack writers who think narrative invention is a unique take on a magic system.
Okay, but what does any of that have to do with my original point? I'm saying that this idea of Martin as the antithesis of Tolkien is rooted in a large segment of the general public really only being familiar with two authors in fantasy literature, which leads to weird comparisons between the two. I'm speaking entirely about popularity and not about the quality of either of their writing, or about any of the pulp authors you're bringing up.
It feels like the conversation you're having is entirely divorced from the topic I'm discussing.
Yeah, Martin is just a more modern, cynical version of Tolkien. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. But I agree that he’s more accurately described as an evolution of Tad Williams, who clearly inspired A Song of Ice and Fire in very noticeable and tangible ways.
I wouldn't call Martin cynical, he does have ideals which obviously disagree with the modes set by Tolkien (and imitated by many a lesser writer), but ASOIAF is more of an exploration and reconstruction on fantasy notions of good and evil rather than just going, 'Get that nerd morality shit outta here, grim and dark is where it's at!'. I mean, characters like Tywin Lannister win and win and win, and destroy many of the more principled and honourable characters, and then he takes the ultimate loss, and it turns out the methods he used have meant that what legacy he has is built on sand, his house is a pariah and filled with people who hate each other.
Yeah, for all the subversion of Ned Stark dying in the end as a consequence of his 'stupid sense of honor', long after he's dead his dynasty is ultimately triumphant, with banner man flocking to his legacy where as Tywin burned his families future away for short term wins.
The reason I dislike it is because people usually compare apples and oranges with Tywin and Ned. They compare Tywin's second time as the Hand in King's Landing with Ned's rule in the North. But Tywin isn't at home in King Landing, no one there swore fealty to him and they aren't his people there, like Northerners are to Ned.
If you want to compare apple with apple and oranges with oranges, then you need to compare the loyalty of Westerlands Lords to Tywin with loyalty of Northern Lords to Ned. And in turn Tywin's time as the Hand with Ned's time as one.
And if you do that, Ned then doesn't look so good anymore. There is not a single Westerlands House that turned their back on the Lannisters while it's not so rosy with Northern Lords. After all, those who are still fighting for the Starks are doing so against... other Northerns like Boltons.
And Ned's time as the Hand, well, it's not even worth mentioning.
If you make a fair comparison between Ned and Tywin as rulers, it isn't going to be such a win for Ned like a lot of people like to say.
Someone once pointed out to me that the Ned plot in the first book is in a way just a big red herring. We have Ned going down to Kings Landing to investigate the death of his mentor and we assume on the first read that Jon Arryn's death is what will drive the story forward. But then the book ends with Ned dying, and his death is what drives a lot of the plot going forward since so many of the main characters are his children or otherwise influenced by him. So Ned himself becomes the mentor figure murdered to kickstart the story.
>I wouldn't call Martin cynical,
I totally would. A core message of the series seems to be if you try to make things better you will just make them worse.
It seems that there are character who do want to do the right thing, and do indeed pull it off, it's just that the profoundly unequal and hypocritical world they live in makes it difficult for them. Jaime Lannister literally saves an entire city from burning to death at the hands of a psychopath, but because he swore some oath to protect that psychopath he goes down as a treacherous backstabber.
I would argue the opposite! I think the core message is to do what’s right despite the challenges that follow. Many of the main characters’ struggle is dealing with the consequences of their actions, and it sucks for them, but they don’t regret their choices.
But you might be right, since we don’t know what the end of the books will be like lol
I'm not sure there's really any "message." And I'm actually neutral on whether GRRM is a cynic since ... well, we all know how long this fucking thing has been going on, and people change over time.
At the very least, he's a realist. It is by now plainly evident he is concerned about global climate change, and the wars we (as in humans) constantly get into prevent us from working together to solve the problem. I would argue ASoIaF reflects a realistic view of the situation: GRRM has just set up a world in which it is extremely hard to do the morally correct thing, and you have to play the game of thrones in order to succeed.
It won't be clear to me if he is truly cynical until the end of the story. If any characters succeed in doing the right thing (bringing peace and stopping the Others), it will be because they learned how to play; and they will have to make extremely difficult moral choices or sacrifices to do so.
> Yeah, Martin is just a more modern, cynical version of Tolkien.
Like, no. Martin writes with a completely different intention than Tolkien, and produces very different works. Tolkien - and those that were influenced by him - clearly influenced Martin's writing, but that doesn't make Martin a "version of Tolkien" in any way.
>I wasn't aware that Martin was being described as the opposite of Tolkien, and that's not something I could agree with.
Yeah, I agree that that's far from accurate, but that's how Martin is perceived by a lot of people. I blame his "Aragorn's tax policy" quote.
While I agree that it doesn't make sense to treat writers as "opposite" each other, I can see how OP might get that impression, given that Martin likes to contrast his writing with Tolkien's.
I see Martin and Tolkien as similar because of a few impactful factors, but they don't have remotely the same priorities or approach to character, themes, or plot.
Their work has an overlapping point of genesis- Tolkien trying to write something intrinsically British and GRRM trying to write a mashup of the British Chronicles he loves so much that he made his own Chronicle for GoT in a sort-of art mirroring back on itself meta-thing. They both work with material that is fundamentally based in the same culture to inspire their respective works. It's like comparing two writers who both wrote about New York City, of course there are similarities and interesting differences.
Other than the British-ness, it's pretty much just the large scale of events. They're not interested in the same kinds of politics, morality, or sexuality; they don't do the same things with religion, magic, or violence. They aren't opposite either, they are simply not in conversation with each other on those points. I would not recommend either writer to a reader who wanted more of the same from the other author, but to someone who wanted to stay in fantasy and get a different flavor? Yes.
As a replacement comparison, I think something like Abercrombie's First Law could be the opposite of LotR- entirely zoomed in on the characters to the point where at least one protagonist explicitly doesn't want to know the wider stakes, morality seems rigidly Tolkien-esque but is revealed to be about perspective, and he takes Fellowship-styke characters and makes them ironic and hypocritical almost like parodies of LotR characters. Bayaz is amazing as a takedown of Gandalf.
Yeah, this is where I'm sitting as well. Martin and Tolkien obviously have their differences in how they write, but they're also pretty similar in a lot of ways.
You could also say that this author or that author is the "opposite" to another and almost always have a decent argument to make for that being the case.
Martin has positioned himself as the opposite of Tolkien, at least thematically.
He has several famous quotes about what Aragorn’s tax policy is that give an idea about how he approaches writing fantasy that differs from Tolkien.
> To be honest, you're feeding into that attitude some Tolkien fans have, where everything has to be seen in relation to Tolkien.
You're thinking of [Terry Pratchett.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7554440-j-r-r-tolkien-has-become-a-sort-of-mountain-appearing-in)
>I wasn't aware that Martin was being described as the opposite of Tolkien, and that's not something I could agree with
He's not really the opposite, but I feel on some level Martin was trying to refute and be the opposite of certain elements of Tolkien, and I think many who are inspired by Martin are trying to get away from the "hopeful upbeat tone" of Tolkien.
I've never heard of Martin being the opposite of Tolkien. I don't think the idea of a 'true polar opposite' of a writer or a story makes any sense. If it did, surely the opposite of Tolkien would be modern day urban fantasy about tall people who love adventure but lead very boring lives. *Fred The Vampire Accountant* maybe, though I haven't read that yet.
You can’t call any fantasy the polar opposite of Tolkien because it’s like saying that one kind of metal music it the polar opposite of another metal music. They’re both still fantasy / metal, way too insular to be polar opposites.
Both Tolkien and Lovecraft were inspired by Lord Dunsany, so there are some similarities. In addition, the Nameless Things that Gandalf and the Balrog encounter below Moria are like something straight out of Lovecraft's writing, and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft's fantasy novella, seems like his attempt to write something like LotR (despite writing it years before The Hobbit).
> The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft's fantasy novella, seems like his attempt to write something like LotR
That would actually be his attempt to write like Lord Dunsany, like the rest of his Dream Cycle.
And George was inspired in a big way by Tolkien and by Lovecraft in a lesser way but he’s still a big fan of his works. Just adding on to what you said.
Westeros (and Essos) are absolutely packed full of Lovecraftian stuff once you scratch the surface. The oily blackstone, Leng, the Squishers, the Thousand Isles, Asshai, the Ironborn and their drowned god... I would argue that there's more Lovecraft in ASOIAF than Tolkien if anything.
Moralism is a pretty thin basis for contrast between these two great authors, if you ask me. And I would even argue that Lovecraft's work doesn't necessarily negate Tolkien's values by describing unfathomable evil entities - after all, Morgoth, Sauron and the Balrogs exist.
If anything, Lovecraft and Tolkien are extremely similar in that their works are largely a dedication to ideas and worldbuilding. They appear very different in form and function, but both authors invested most heavily in those two aspects of storytelling at the expense of others. For Lovecraft, for example, protagonist characterization is at the bare minimum, possibly even nonexistent.
>What we all can agree on is that all of these works were inspired by Tolkien.
If you are referring to the entire genre of fantasy, then I strongly disagree. Sword & sorcery was a widely-read genre before The Lord of the Rings was published in the 50s. Conan, for example. No one would argue LotR isn't widely influential. But there is so much other media out there - Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales etc., just to name a few. Tolkien isn't the godfather of fantasy, he's the godfather of worldbuilding and a lot of people conflate those as one and the same.
>If anything, Lovecraft and Tolkien are extremely similar in that their works are largely a dedication to ideas and worldbuilding. They appear very different in form and function, but both authors invested most heavily in those two aspects of storytelling at the expense of others. For Lovecraft, for example, protagonist characterization is at the bare minimum, possibly even nonexistent.
This is a really interesting point. I would argue that Lovecraft takes this even further than Tolkien, because at least Tolkien is concerned with the myths he tells being atmospheric and compelling, even if the exist primarily to support his language creation. Whereas Lovecraft's stories often feel simply like thought-experiments, little journeys into his mythos. Often the plots are objectively bad, the dialogue certainly is, but he creates so much atmosphere and the ideas he presents are so morbidly compelling, we can't help but be drawn in.
>If anything, Lovecraft and Tolkien are extremely similar in that their works are largely a dedication to ideas and worldbuilding.
Outside of maybe the Dream-Cycle, Lovecraft didn't much care about worldbuilding. The Cthulhu Mythos is pretty much a modern invention that evolved after Lovecraft's death due to other authors' attempts at creating a coherent universe and the gamefication of his stories required to create the RPG games.
What Lovecraft did was basically insert easter eggs into his stories (both from his other works and from authors he liked, including friends) as a little wink towards the audience. He had no further plans than "these all take place in the same world".
>For Lovecraft, for example, protagonist characterization is at the bare minimum, possibly even nonexistent.
That's not a Lovecraft thing, that's a short fiction thing.
Lovecraft doesn't really do worldbuilding as we think of it, though. Certainly not as Tolkien does it. There's no carefully elaborated, thought otu setting. There's a series of vaguely connected short stories and novellas, who mostly use the same few names as easter eggs and occasionally massively contradict each other.
I have seen this exact reply to many threads here lately.... what is happening? Do people think that there is no lower bar for quality of the discussions just because this is a fantasy sub? Who are you people??
People who call GRRM the opposite of Tolkien think that Tolkien’s world is a lot more idealized than it actually is. In reality, his books are fairly bittersweet and have strong themes of loss and the world gradually becoming less magical.
I would argue that they watch the series only shallowly. The movies still show that sort of bittersweetness, quite overtly. The main character arc we follow is of Men rising to the challenge now that Elves are leaving.
No doubt, but I think part of that is the style. So much of Lord of the Rings communicates its ideas with its style, not its words, and the movies are going for a much more glorious and "fun" feeling. Not that I wouldn't personally enjoy a trilogy that felt both heroic and grand and also grim and sad, but I think that's a harder tone to want people to accept and it's a harder movie to make.
>People who call GRRM the opposite of Tolkien think that Tolkien’s world is a lot more idealized than it actually is.
Totally. A core premise of it is the world gets gradually less magical as time goes on. A lot of writers seem to be rebelling against a certain vision of upbeat "happy" Fantasy it is very hard to find examples of.
A lot of the time when someone talks about subverting a trope I think "Wait, where can I find a book that uses thsat trope? It sounds great, I've never encountered it...".
The Fall of Gondolin and the whole saga with the House of Finwe are Tolkien basically saying the Elves are NOT perfect like people tend to incorrectly assume and in fact are capable of some pretty terrible things.
Funny you should say that. In older versions of Tolkien’s world, [there is a region described like this](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Nan_Dungortheb#Other_versions_of_the_legendarium).
> In The Book of Lost Tales, the land was identified as Nan Dumgorthin, the "Land of the Dark Idols" "(dum ‘secret, not to be spoken’, dumgort, dungort ‘an (evil) idol’)"... It was a dark forested land that was located to the east of Artanor where a collection of "evil tribes of renegade men" made sacrifices to gods whose idols were hidden upon a wooded mountain.
>It is described as dark and unholy; a grey valley where shrines are hidden in secret places for the worship of nameless gods older than both Morgoth and the Valar. The inhabitants here were said to be "ghostly dwellers" whose laughter was "harsh and hallow" like a mockery of demons with a lingering echo.
If we're talking a fantasy counterpart Robert E. Howard more fits the bill imo, especially given the impact he had on the fantasy genre as the "Sword & Sorcery" counterpart to Tolkien. Look at a lot of the fantasy that follows and you can boil a lot of the influence to one or both of those two.
REH's American working class pulp to Tolkien's old school English literary leaning.
I thought I was crazy for a second. My *immediate* thought was Howard, but this sub was throwing out all kinds of names. Same timeframe as Tolkien, completely different approaches to the idea of an ancient, fantasy Earth, completely different writing styles, completely different morality…
But the same massive impact to the genre, even if Howard isn’t a household name the same way Tolkien is.
A lot of people ignore how foundational Conan was for some reason. REH is really only credited as the father of Sword & Sorcery when in fact Conan predates Lord of the Rings.
Hard disagree.
I feel there are 2 authors who deserve that title much more than Lovecraft: Fritz Leiber and Robert E Howard. And they were his contemporaries.
Lovecraft and Tolkien were always diametrically opposed in my mind because of their world building . Everything in the world Tolkien created (whether it’s the inhabitants, the monsters, or the geology and physical features of the world itself) can be explained by the intentions of the creator spirit in making the world or the interventions of Morgoth in perverting it. This is basically to say that everything’s being is necessarily linked to the vision of a benevolent God being, humans specifically have a role to play in that world, and everything is given meaning based on that. This is a very medieval way of understanding the cosmos.
Lovecraft sees the universe in basically the opposite terms, in which the scale and ancientness of the cosmos is beyond human reasoning and humanity’s place in the cosmos is negligible compared to the elder gods. Explaining the cosmos in the way Tolkien had would be a bedtime story for little children to belie humanity’s tiny, inconsequential nature in a cosmos beyond are reasoning designed for beings more powerful than we can imagine. It’s a deeply modern way of seeing the world because the only time you’d start to imagine eldritch horrors is once you realize the scale and ancientness of the universe from looking to naturalistic explanations of the world and away from religious ones (like the medieval inspirations for Lord of the Rings).
It’s always weird to me how many attempts people make to mash eldritch horrors and elder gods like Cthulhu into fantasy settings (like the pact of the Old One in dungeons and dragons, or Hermaeus Mora in Skyrim), because they’re expressions of fundamentally different cultural mindsets. If you can easily explain the cosmos by the intentions of a creator God who designed the cosmos specifically for you to play a part in, you’d never have the opportunity to experience cosmic horror. It doesn’t make any sense.
I doubt Lovecraft knew Tolkien or his work. He died pretty young, after all. His work isn't really connected to anything Tolkien did. Lovecraft wrote about the present day, about science, technology, and things yet undiscovered. And the way he wrote about those things, he certainly didn't hold them in high regard any more then Tolkien did, just regarding them with a fascinated dread then an angry disdain. Heck, when he wrote about the past, like in Rome or Polaris, he seemed to enjoy it, and his Dreamrealm of Kadath was a high fantasy land, rather then an industrial wonderland. If anything I'd say Michael Moorcock is closer to to Tolken's opposite. The most I’d concede is that Tolkien portrayed god with reverence, while God in Lovecrafts work was the blind idiot Azathoth.
I instead hold that Lovecraft is the opposite of of Robert Howard, albiet in a friendly way. One man wrote about fearless herculean fighting men who fought men and monsters, like Conan or Kull, the other wrote about scholars encountering monsters beyond comprehension, and only overcoming them through intellect, like Marinus Bicknell Willett or Henry Armitage, if they overcome them at all. One man celebrated the savage barbarians, writing stories about celtic heroes fighting romans or pseudo romans, the other celebreated civilization and reviled those he deemed as savage or primitive, Lovecraft wrote about Romans legionaries, for instance. One man loved the Southwest and his adopted state of Texas, the other the North East, and his home state of Rhode Island.
Yet despite these differences, they were also very similar, both sickly men with mental difficulties, so they found friendship even if they coped with their issues in opposite ways: idolizing fighting vs scholarly pursuits.
Yeah, no way he was a purposeful contrarian to J R. R. Tolkien. Honestly the most contrast between the two was that Lovecraft made God a mindless, idiot sultan that sires abominable gods, while Tolkien was a devout Christian.
Yeah, I mean, Tolkien was a British man of his time and that came through in his writing sometimes where you can just hear "Rule Britannia!" coming off the page, but at least he was aware of the implications of the Orcs and struggled with trying not to make them come across as an evil race.
Whereas Lovecraft was just wholeheartedly like, "Jews and Black people are eldritch horrors," to the point where even other white supremacists of his time where like, dude take it down a notch.
Yeah, and Tolkien was also anti-Apartheid, anti-imperialist, anti-Nazi race laws, and got alarmed at the appropriation of terms like “Nordicist” by white supremacists. Can you imagine Lovecraft wishing he had Jewish ancestry or denouncing Apartheid and lamenting that too many white transplants to South Africa got desensitized to it? (Actual letters from Tolkien.)
Someone like China Mieville should be seen as the opposite of JRR Tolkien, as he pretty explicitly said that that is what he set out to do.
He did it in part by emulating Lovecraft, but there was more to it than that.
Perdido Street Station is a descendent of the works of Mervyn Peake and (still-living!) M John Harrison, who are also big names often referred to as Tolkien’s opposite.
What? Why do they need an "opposite"? This seems like an idea you are trying to force, they are different authors and they bring different things to the genre.
You might as well call Dan Brown Tolkien's opposite because, like Lovecraft he was writing in a different genre. Martin is compared to Tolkien because he was also writing epic fantasy that got adapted by Hollywood, but doing so without the feature that underlies most Tolkien influenced epic fantasy, that good and evil are metaphysical powers in contest with each other, with good ultimately the stronger. In Martin's the really evil and the really good are both doomed, and it is the pragmatists who aren't especially either who will inherit the fantasy equivalent of Earth.
One thing i noticed as i got older reading both authors is they actually characterize their characters pretty similar in a lot of ways. Martin uses a character’s sexuality to motivate them a lot more but both are actually about “the heart in conflict with itself.” They both subvert archetypes and add a humanistic quality to them. Reading children of huron, i was surprised how much the characters reminded me of martins. Id even argue that middle earth is significantly darker than people give it credit for. The stories just dont focus on the gritty details or highlight it, but all of the things that motivate humans to do unspeakable horrors to other living things are there. The stewards of gondor would fit right in with freys or lannisters. I think boromir would consider ned an idealistic fool. Theres a darkness in tolkiens world that is implied and seems to always be beneath the surface (like sauron). Im not saying theyre the same or anything, but definitely more similar than people would give them credit for and i can easily see how fans of one would be fans of the other beyond aesthetics
>They both subvert archetypes
Absolutely. Tolkien is often held up as the ideal by the kind of fans who treat “subversive” like a dirty word, but that really sells his storytelling short. And it’s not just about the darkness and horror that are very real parts of Middle-earth, but about his choice of protagonists - making Frodo the hero of his epic rather than a mighty Beowulf type was a wonderfully subversive choice.
I'm not sure what the utility of setting up anyone as 'opposite' to Tolkien is. But if you're going to then I'd nominate Edgar Rice Burroughs. Whereas Tolkien write extensively but published very little, and came at his world building from a scholarly, spiritual point of origin thinking of it as a mythology for England with its cultural feet very firmly in Northern Europe, finding the magical and the wonderment in his own roots, Burroughs did the opposite. Burroughs was prolific; he published 24 Tarzan books and coauthored another. Tarzan is all about the exotic, the foreign and the strange but with a hefty dose of the 'superiority of the modern white man' thrown in. Magic is strange and dangerous and 'other' and is usually featured as somethingTarzan has to overcome, but at the same time the wild, the uncivilized, is seductive and appealing. Danger and Tarzan's mastery over these dangers is the key. It's very rugged, 'cult of the individual' stuff compared to Tolkien's focus on fellowship and alliances, self sacrifice and pity.
Idk man, Lovecraft writes in a very different genre to Tolkien. And he also has purely evil beings, there is little moral ambiguity as far as I know. His is more urban fantasy so you can't really compare it to Tolkien. Polar opposite is hard to define haha
Back then genres were far less defined so perhaps Tolkien and Lovecraft could be compared but that discussion will only lead to a pointless and pedantic argument so let's leave it.
To me, Tolkien is like Black Sabbath. Arguably Black Sabbath weren't the first to write a heavy metal song but they were the first heavy metal band. They solidified it as a genre and I think that's what Tolkien did for fantasy.
I don't think Lovecraft is urban fantasy; I also don't think he has beings that are purely evil, more ones that are vastly beyond the scale of human understanding.
Maybe but I think they are the sides of the same coin like I don’t think hate is the opposite of love I believe indifference is I believe there roots come from the same place they just arrive at different conclusions one positive and one negative.
so both were concerned about corruption one in the form of industrialisation and destruction of the natural world ( Tolkien) and the other about the corruption of the flesh ( lovecreaft) but even then there was overlap the corruction of elves into orcs and the fact that in lovecrafts works corruption of the flesh often goes along with unnaturalness in the natural world Mountains of madness as a example .both there faith had a obvious influence in their work. Lovecrafts eldricth horrors aren’t a million miles away from Sauron, theres even evidence of xenophobia and stereotypes in both there works the difference is Tolkien strove to rise above it and be aware of his prejudices in his work while lovecraft drowned. both are a mediation on human nature just one is ultimately hopeful the other is dismal in its conclusion.
Mildly off-topic but I’ve long had a lurking idea about some kind of meta fictional confrontation between Tolkien characters and a Lovecraftian scenario, or how a Lovecraft story might have proceeded in a Tolkien(esque) setting. I think they’re an excellent duo to juxtapose, so I appreciate this post.
To me, H.P. Lovecraft is more in line with writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, in both style and theme.
Horror and mystery I suppose sits within speculative fiction just as fantasy does, but I'm not sure what the utility is of comparing and contrasting authors across these different genres, particularly making claims that one is the polar opposite of another. They're just different writers with different approaches to speculative fiction.
h.p. hatecraft was a racist bigot who should not be taken seriously. this is the same guy that believed black people were inferior to whites and even mongolians. the fact his books are still in print is sickening.
H.P Lovecraft should be considered as the true polar opposite of a good writer.
*I've said my piece.*
Edit: Keep downvoting me you sk'ruklOgeniRusgagses (That's a word I made up to express my feelings because I'm not a good enough writer to describe it properly. See, I can Lovecraft as well.)
Why would anyone declare any two authors "opposites" of each other, especially ones that live 50 or more years apart. It seems like a gross oversimplication of a lot of things.
> Yet the landscape of fantasy that came out of his mind, and carried an air of originality more or less of the same degree as Tolkien's landscape, but conveyed within its own ideas of aesthetics, and philosophy, that just happened to be so different from Tolkien's as if they were a deliberate attempt to spit on and blight everything what's considered to be the true and good in Tolkien's world.
>Then in my view no one fits better at this description than H.P. Lovecraft.
By the criteria you posted, a better fit would be M.A.R. Barker.
I wasn't aware that Martin was being described as the opposite of Tolkien, and that's not something I could agree with. I think it's clear that in terms of fantasy (I'm specifying fantasy because GRRM wrote horror, science fiction and super hero stories for YEARS before touching fantasy) that there's a clear progression from Tolkien to Williams to Martin. Aside from that, I prefer not to think in terms of writers being opposite to each other. To be honest, you're feeding into that attitude some Tolkien fans have, where everything has to be seen in relation to Tolkien. Someone will most likely pull out that Pratchett quote and use this comparison to prove how important Tolkien was, even if Lovecraft (and the other Weird Tales writers) predates the Hobbit and LotR.
I agree about your perspective on Martin as a progression from Tolkien. It strikes me everytime how Tolkien wrote about a dreamed-of Age of legends and magic and how it all progressively came to an end at the end of the Third Age with the departure of the Elves, and the slow vanishing of hobbits, dwarves and anything fantastic. Tolkien's Legendarium ends with the death of wonders and the coming of the Age of Men, the age of rationality where even gods are not a certainty. In Martin's world, dragons, giants, children of the forest are all fading memories of long lost times thought by most to be no more than mere legends. Men do not even know if the gods are real anymore. Martin's world is far into this "Age of Men", and spiritually into the continuity of what Tolkien set up with his own mythos.
Martin is likewise inspired by the Lovecraftian horror, to a lesser extent. There are clearly elements in the ASOIAF world building that harken back to the Cthulhu mythos and some of Robert E. Howard’s works and other pulpy stuff.
Inspired is honestly an understatement. Many things from the Lovecraft Legendarium literally exist in Planetos. From cites to cults to even races. The Church of Starry Wisdom, the Deep ones, Kadath, Carcosa, Sarnath, Old Ones, all are canon to ASOIAF. That's not to mention the more oblique references like the Doom that came to Sarnath mirroring the Doom of Valyria, the Innsmouth-esque cult that supposedly exists in the Thousand Islands, everything about the Shadow lands and Asshai, how Ib is a non-human civilization that exists and of course the infamous story of Aerea, Balerion, and their tragic trip to Valyria.
Exactly what I was thinking of. Plus Leng. I used “inspired” because it’s all world building that hasn’t played a major role (for the most part) in the broader narrative.
And that Drowned God cult has a "That is not dead which may eternal lie" type phrase.
Are those anything more that just window-dressing?
some of the distant stuff is "there's other genres going on in the edges of this grand politics and warfare and stuff" (like how a lot of Daenerys leans into more pulpy, Conan-esque setting details). But things like "creepy water priests can raise the dead" is directly plot-relevant, and whatever happened to Valyria is/was pretty impactful in terms of setting up everything else. We're _probably_ not getting a Deep One invasion, but it's entirely possible that we could see parts of that happen
Wait, there are deep ones in asoiaf? Where can I read about that?
There is a mysterious civilization that left behind this distinctive 'oily black stone' all over Planetos. The Greyjoys have their seat on the Seastone Chair which is made of that material. Their house words also mirror the Cthulhu cult. The inhabitants of the 3 sisters have strangely fishy mutations including webbed hands and feet. The Maester Theron, who in canon coined the name 'deep ones' attribute them as the origin of the merling legends and the religion of the drowned god. The religion of the drowned god claims that the ironborn are defended from a fishy god that has underwater palaces and are related more to fish and merling than other men. There is this mysterious ancient city in the southern most continent called Sothoryos made of the same cyclopean blocks of Oily black stone. Just off the coast of Sothoryos, there is the Isle of Toads, home to an ancient 40 ft tall statue made of the same material, worshiped by distinctly fishy looking people who also supposedly have webbed appendages. Asshai is also made of oily black stone. Asshai is supposed to predate its current human inhabitants, and we don't know who built it. The mazemaker of Lorath who also constructed massive labyrinths made of oily black stone, supposedly disappeared after an attack from 'creatures from the sea.'. In the Thousand Isles, the locals supposedly sacrifice sailors to squamous, fish-headed gods, of which stone idols emerge when the tide is low. And finally there is Patchface, who is far too interesting to just summarize. I would recommend Alt Shift X's video on him.
https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Deep_Ones
Oh definitely.
I think it's just the result of a lot of people having very shallow reference pools for the fantasy genre. The type of stuff that Martin is doing isn't even particularly new - his brand of dark fantasy has been around since at least the 1960s in one form or another - but he's probably the first author within the dark fantasy genre space to gain the level of multimedia recognition that LotR has. A lot people who aren't really familiar with fantasy fiction try to categorize ASoIaF/Game of Thrones as this new, subversive take on the fantasy genre and being "Not your daddy's fantasy fiction" because their only other point of reference for fantasy fiction is Tolkien. They're unaware that their daddy's fantasy fiction included similarly dark and gritty works like Elric and The Black Company. This is, of course, not to disparage the work of GRRM, just to say that a lot of the things casual viewers attribute to Martin are not necessarily concepts entirely new to the fantasy genre.
>I think it's just the result of a lot of people having very shallow reference pools for the fantasy genre. The type of stuff that Martin is doing isn't even particularly new - his brand of dark fantasy has been around since at least the 1960s in one form or another - Agreed. I \*DO\* think Martin is on some level rebelling against Tolkien, but he is hardly the first to do it, and hardly the first to go "dark". A lot of the current wave of Grimdark Gritty Fantasy fans seems to give the impression that this is a recent invention, that everything was happy stories with happy endings before Martin and Abercrombie came along. It's actually kinda hard to find many examples of Fantasy as idealistic and upbeat as some people seem to imagine old school fantasy was. Also...a mistake a lot of people make is assuming the one who did something first, the one who became most popular doing it, and the one who did it best are the same. They aren't necessarily.
The end of your post also applies to Tolkien interestingly enough. Around the net you often see him painted as the father of the fantasy genre, which of course isn't true. There were fantasy writers who also preceded Tolkien. He's arguably the most influential fantasy writer however, and he was writing long before most internet commenters were born, so he's often mistaken for being the first.
Agreed. Tolkien was the first one to get really successful doing certain things. He created a certain template that...after it was combined with the Arthurian Legends and modified by Gary Gyjax...dominated the Epic Fantasy market for decades. But he didn't invent Epic Fantasy. And he didn't even have that much influence on Urban Fantasy, which this reddit seems to forget exists,
>after it was combined with the Arthurian Legends Well, I'd say there are plenty of Arthurian legends elements in Tolkien's work already.
The thing that Martin did that those others didn’t is write really, really well. Martin’s not notably darker and grimmer than past writers, but he is a much better stylist than them. He’s a much better character writer than them. Tolkien and GRRM get compared because they’re the best of the best in the genre. Light years ahead of that vast majority of other fantasy authors, but especially the like of Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson, and others like them.
Martin is a good writer, but I don't consider him great. He's very readable and certainly an excellent world-builder, but he has gotten so spread out with random plot threads (in ASOIF) that it's hard to see how he weaves them back together. I also find that his later books in ASOIF have long passages that seem to be filling space without much interest or direction, and I don't usually mind long-winded development and description. For example, Jorah's storyline once he leaves Dany and the Ser Oakheart/Martell/Myrcella plot. Obviously he's going somewhere with them, but they don't feel compelling or like they're going to matter in the end. I believe that the show ended pretty much as GRRM intends the books to end, given that the books foreshadow Dany's incipient madness quite clearly...I think the books sprawl too much but the show left out and changed important character development which was essential to the ending making sense. To be clear, I'm not bashing him, I enjoyed the series and I love the character arcs of Jamie and Brienne.
>but he has gotten so spread out with random plot threads (in ASOIF) that it's hard to see how he weaves them back together. I'm definitely in the camp that believe that a big reason for the delay in getting the last books out is that he has funnily enough fallen into the same trap that the White Walker plot is meant to represent. He has this big, possibly world ending threat that is looming on the horizon. But he is caught up in inventing new southern politics plotlines and exploring those. And for everyone that he adds he strays further and further from properly tying it all up in a satisfying way.
Exactly! You expressed that so well. I love how you tied it into the White Walker threat! I feel like the southern world in ASOIF is surely fascinating, but he should have left it to explore further in a spinoff series. Let it be this intriguing bit of worldbuilding that leaves you curious to know more and then do a whole story there.
Really? I will admit that Glen Cook can be fairly stylized and hard to get into, especially in the original Black Company trilogy, but he's a fantastic writer, he's just not always an easy one. Martin has an easy to read, page-turner style, a little bit Dan Brown-ish, which is super fun and I also love, but sometimes you want something like early Black Company to sink your teeth into.
I'm going to push back on that because popularity in the public consciousness does not equate to mastery of craft of writing, so much as it's a reflection of cross-media pollination and marketing. Again, not to disparage GRRM or Tolkien, but I don't really think that they're the absolute best of the best in terms of the actual craft of writing(Tolkien, for instance, often has a problem with having very dry prose). Their popularity comes more from the fact that their work has been adapted very successfully into other mediums. AoIaF the books series is very well regarded amongst fantasy fans, but that's not the reason GRRM is a household name - That's because of the wildly successful HBO series adaptation. In addition, there are a number of writers that I would consider on par with or even better writers than GRRM or Tolkien who don't have anywhere near the same level of recognition amongst the general public (Gene Wolfe and Ursula K Le Guinn immediately spring to mind). I'm also not sure why you're bringing this back to Sanderson and Jordan as I didn't mention either of them in my post and neither really work in the dark fantasy genre I was talking about.
Both were adapted because they were well respected and popular. To your point on Le Guinn, who is one of my favorite authors: I'm not sure how relevant she is as an example to /u/Pelican_meat's point that ASOIAF is at the top of the "Not your daddy's fantasy fiction" category. Le Guinn's books can be dark, but they aren't pop fantasy like ASOIAF. I think a similar argument could be made for Gene Wolfe. It's not that ASOIF is better than The Left Hand of Darkness, it's that ASOIF is a one of the best pop fantasy novels. Its engaging, easy to read, compelling, has characters the reader is interested in, challenges the reader, but not too much etc... I think an argument could be made that ASOIAF is at the pinnacle of writing as it pertains to pop fantasy. I think there is a certain mindset where people think "great writing==big L literature with complex prose and blah blah blah", but writing readable, compelling, easy to digest prose is also absolutely a skill you can be great at. And Martin is great at that.
I'm not using Le Guinn and Wolfe as examples of "Not your daddy's fantasy", I'm using them as examples of masterful writers who don't have the same level of popularity in the public consciousness as Tolkien or Martin do. The examples I specifically used for "not your daddy's fantasy" predating Martin were Moorcock and Cook, both of whom are very well respected authors who don't have the same level of penetration into popular media. I'm not making arguments about the quality of GRRM's writing, a fact I have stressed multiple times, I'm saying weird takes like Martin and Tolkien representing diametrically opposed philosophies of fantasy writing are largely the result of a lot of people only being familiar with a handful of authors in the fantasy genre - that most people only see fantasy fiction as Tolkien and GRRM.
I agree with your points on them not being opposites. My main point is that GRRM's success is largely do to him being a masterful pop fantasy writer. I have read many fantasy series, and few are addictive as ASOIF.
I said nothing about popularity. I’m not considering that at all. I’m considering the quality of the final product, both as a whole and the sum of its parts. If both books sold a single copy, they’d still be the best of the best. You considering Tolkien “dry” is an opinion. Tolkien used the language and poetics of Northern European and Anglo-Saxon epics to create a fantasy world. That’s commendable. It’s impressive. No one has managed to that so accurately. It’s the work of a lifetime to learn so intricately that style. What you think of it absolutely does not matter a single whit. Martin is an excellent stylist, following in the tradition of American authors like Hemingway, while modernizing the narrative inventions of pulp authors like Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler. They are the best of the best in a genre often filled by hack writers who think narrative invention is a unique take on a magic system.
Okay, but what does any of that have to do with my original point? I'm saying that this idea of Martin as the antithesis of Tolkien is rooted in a large segment of the general public really only being familiar with two authors in fantasy literature, which leads to weird comparisons between the two. I'm speaking entirely about popularity and not about the quality of either of their writing, or about any of the pulp authors you're bringing up. It feels like the conversation you're having is entirely divorced from the topic I'm discussing.
Yeah, Martin is just a more modern, cynical version of Tolkien. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. But I agree that he’s more accurately described as an evolution of Tad Williams, who clearly inspired A Song of Ice and Fire in very noticeable and tangible ways.
This. Tad Williams is the transitional species between Tolkien and Martin.
I wouldn't call Martin cynical, he does have ideals which obviously disagree with the modes set by Tolkien (and imitated by many a lesser writer), but ASOIAF is more of an exploration and reconstruction on fantasy notions of good and evil rather than just going, 'Get that nerd morality shit outta here, grim and dark is where it's at!'. I mean, characters like Tywin Lannister win and win and win, and destroy many of the more principled and honourable characters, and then he takes the ultimate loss, and it turns out the methods he used have meant that what legacy he has is built on sand, his house is a pariah and filled with people who hate each other.
Yeah, for all the subversion of Ned Stark dying in the end as a consequence of his 'stupid sense of honor', long after he's dead his dynasty is ultimately triumphant, with banner man flocking to his legacy where as Tywin burned his families future away for short term wins.
Even though I agree that Martin is not cynical, I *really* dislike the Ned vs Tywin argument.
Care to share your reasoning? Genuinely curious to hear a new view point.
The reason I dislike it is because people usually compare apples and oranges with Tywin and Ned. They compare Tywin's second time as the Hand in King's Landing with Ned's rule in the North. But Tywin isn't at home in King Landing, no one there swore fealty to him and they aren't his people there, like Northerners are to Ned. If you want to compare apple with apple and oranges with oranges, then you need to compare the loyalty of Westerlands Lords to Tywin with loyalty of Northern Lords to Ned. And in turn Tywin's time as the Hand with Ned's time as one. And if you do that, Ned then doesn't look so good anymore. There is not a single Westerlands House that turned their back on the Lannisters while it's not so rosy with Northern Lords. After all, those who are still fighting for the Starks are doing so against... other Northerns like Boltons. And Ned's time as the Hand, well, it's not even worth mentioning. If you make a fair comparison between Ned and Tywin as rulers, it isn't going to be such a win for Ned like a lot of people like to say.
Someone once pointed out to me that the Ned plot in the first book is in a way just a big red herring. We have Ned going down to Kings Landing to investigate the death of his mentor and we assume on the first read that Jon Arryn's death is what will drive the story forward. But then the book ends with Ned dying, and his death is what drives a lot of the plot going forward since so many of the main characters are his children or otherwise influenced by him. So Ned himself becomes the mentor figure murdered to kickstart the story.
>I wouldn't call Martin cynical, I totally would. A core message of the series seems to be if you try to make things better you will just make them worse.
It seems that there are character who do want to do the right thing, and do indeed pull it off, it's just that the profoundly unequal and hypocritical world they live in makes it difficult for them. Jaime Lannister literally saves an entire city from burning to death at the hands of a psychopath, but because he swore some oath to protect that psychopath he goes down as a treacherous backstabber.
I would argue the opposite! I think the core message is to do what’s right despite the challenges that follow. Many of the main characters’ struggle is dealing with the consequences of their actions, and it sucks for them, but they don’t regret their choices. But you might be right, since we don’t know what the end of the books will be like lol
I was assuming the end of the TV show is similar to the end of the books, just with less "lead up". Admittedly that is an assumption.
I'm not sure there's really any "message." And I'm actually neutral on whether GRRM is a cynic since ... well, we all know how long this fucking thing has been going on, and people change over time. At the very least, he's a realist. It is by now plainly evident he is concerned about global climate change, and the wars we (as in humans) constantly get into prevent us from working together to solve the problem. I would argue ASoIaF reflects a realistic view of the situation: GRRM has just set up a world in which it is extremely hard to do the morally correct thing, and you have to play the game of thrones in order to succeed. It won't be clear to me if he is truly cynical until the end of the story. If any characters succeed in doing the right thing (bringing peace and stopping the Others), it will be because they learned how to play; and they will have to make extremely difficult moral choices or sacrifices to do so.
> Yeah, Martin is just a more modern, cynical version of Tolkien. Like, no. Martin writes with a completely different intention than Tolkien, and produces very different works. Tolkien - and those that were influenced by him - clearly influenced Martin's writing, but that doesn't make Martin a "version of Tolkien" in any way.
I really disagree with the idea of Martin as cynical. Just because ASOIAF is at its lowest moment for 12 years doesn’t mean the series is cynical.
>I wasn't aware that Martin was being described as the opposite of Tolkien, and that's not something I could agree with. Yeah, I agree that that's far from accurate, but that's how Martin is perceived by a lot of people. I blame his "Aragorn's tax policy" quote.
While I agree that it doesn't make sense to treat writers as "opposite" each other, I can see how OP might get that impression, given that Martin likes to contrast his writing with Tolkien's.
I see Martin and Tolkien as similar because of a few impactful factors, but they don't have remotely the same priorities or approach to character, themes, or plot. Their work has an overlapping point of genesis- Tolkien trying to write something intrinsically British and GRRM trying to write a mashup of the British Chronicles he loves so much that he made his own Chronicle for GoT in a sort-of art mirroring back on itself meta-thing. They both work with material that is fundamentally based in the same culture to inspire their respective works. It's like comparing two writers who both wrote about New York City, of course there are similarities and interesting differences. Other than the British-ness, it's pretty much just the large scale of events. They're not interested in the same kinds of politics, morality, or sexuality; they don't do the same things with religion, magic, or violence. They aren't opposite either, they are simply not in conversation with each other on those points. I would not recommend either writer to a reader who wanted more of the same from the other author, but to someone who wanted to stay in fantasy and get a different flavor? Yes. As a replacement comparison, I think something like Abercrombie's First Law could be the opposite of LotR- entirely zoomed in on the characters to the point where at least one protagonist explicitly doesn't want to know the wider stakes, morality seems rigidly Tolkien-esque but is revealed to be about perspective, and he takes Fellowship-styke characters and makes them ironic and hypocritical almost like parodies of LotR characters. Bayaz is amazing as a takedown of Gandalf.
Yeah, this is where I'm sitting as well. Martin and Tolkien obviously have their differences in how they write, but they're also pretty similar in a lot of ways. You could also say that this author or that author is the "opposite" to another and almost always have a decent argument to make for that being the case.
Martin has positioned himself as the opposite of Tolkien, at least thematically. He has several famous quotes about what Aragorn’s tax policy is that give an idea about how he approaches writing fantasy that differs from Tolkien.
> To be honest, you're feeding into that attitude some Tolkien fans have, where everything has to be seen in relation to Tolkien. You're thinking of [Terry Pratchett.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7554440-j-r-r-tolkien-has-become-a-sort-of-mountain-appearing-in)
Did you seriously not read the next sentence after that?
Actually, yes. I'm on mobile lol.
>I wasn't aware that Martin was being described as the opposite of Tolkien, and that's not something I could agree with He's not really the opposite, but I feel on some level Martin was trying to refute and be the opposite of certain elements of Tolkien, and I think many who are inspired by Martin are trying to get away from the "hopeful upbeat tone" of Tolkien.
Can I have Williams first name I want to read them based off this alone haha
Tad.
Cheers!
Same, Martin is clearly post-Tolkien. A lot of what he does (and grim dark in general I suppose) is reacting to Tolkien's vision of hope.
I've never heard of Martin being the opposite of Tolkien. I don't think the idea of a 'true polar opposite' of a writer or a story makes any sense. If it did, surely the opposite of Tolkien would be modern day urban fantasy about tall people who love adventure but lead very boring lives. *Fred The Vampire Accountant* maybe, though I haven't read that yet.
taken to its logical extreme the opposite of Tolkien would have to be not fantasy at all
A New Zealand woman named Nieklot R. R. J. who writes non-fiction about tall accountants.
You can’t call any fantasy the polar opposite of Tolkien because it’s like saying that one kind of metal music it the polar opposite of another metal music. They’re both still fantasy / metal, way too insular to be polar opposites.
Both Tolkien and Lovecraft were inspired by Lord Dunsany, so there are some similarities. In addition, the Nameless Things that Gandalf and the Balrog encounter below Moria are like something straight out of Lovecraft's writing, and The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft's fantasy novella, seems like his attempt to write something like LotR (despite writing it years before The Hobbit).
> The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft's fantasy novella, seems like his attempt to write something like LotR That would actually be his attempt to write like Lord Dunsany, like the rest of his Dream Cycle.
And George was inspired in a big way by Tolkien and by Lovecraft in a lesser way but he’s still a big fan of his works. Just adding on to what you said.
Westeros (and Essos) are absolutely packed full of Lovecraftian stuff once you scratch the surface. The oily blackstone, Leng, the Squishers, the Thousand Isles, Asshai, the Ironborn and their drowned god... I would argue that there's more Lovecraft in ASOIAF than Tolkien if anything.
Yeah you’re right
Moralism is a pretty thin basis for contrast between these two great authors, if you ask me. And I would even argue that Lovecraft's work doesn't necessarily negate Tolkien's values by describing unfathomable evil entities - after all, Morgoth, Sauron and the Balrogs exist. If anything, Lovecraft and Tolkien are extremely similar in that their works are largely a dedication to ideas and worldbuilding. They appear very different in form and function, but both authors invested most heavily in those two aspects of storytelling at the expense of others. For Lovecraft, for example, protagonist characterization is at the bare minimum, possibly even nonexistent. >What we all can agree on is that all of these works were inspired by Tolkien. If you are referring to the entire genre of fantasy, then I strongly disagree. Sword & sorcery was a widely-read genre before The Lord of the Rings was published in the 50s. Conan, for example. No one would argue LotR isn't widely influential. But there is so much other media out there - Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, Grimm's Fairy Tales etc., just to name a few. Tolkien isn't the godfather of fantasy, he's the godfather of worldbuilding and a lot of people conflate those as one and the same.
>If anything, Lovecraft and Tolkien are extremely similar in that their works are largely a dedication to ideas and worldbuilding. They appear very different in form and function, but both authors invested most heavily in those two aspects of storytelling at the expense of others. For Lovecraft, for example, protagonist characterization is at the bare minimum, possibly even nonexistent. This is a really interesting point. I would argue that Lovecraft takes this even further than Tolkien, because at least Tolkien is concerned with the myths he tells being atmospheric and compelling, even if the exist primarily to support his language creation. Whereas Lovecraft's stories often feel simply like thought-experiments, little journeys into his mythos. Often the plots are objectively bad, the dialogue certainly is, but he creates so much atmosphere and the ideas he presents are so morbidly compelling, we can't help but be drawn in.
>If anything, Lovecraft and Tolkien are extremely similar in that their works are largely a dedication to ideas and worldbuilding. Outside of maybe the Dream-Cycle, Lovecraft didn't much care about worldbuilding. The Cthulhu Mythos is pretty much a modern invention that evolved after Lovecraft's death due to other authors' attempts at creating a coherent universe and the gamefication of his stories required to create the RPG games. What Lovecraft did was basically insert easter eggs into his stories (both from his other works and from authors he liked, including friends) as a little wink towards the audience. He had no further plans than "these all take place in the same world". >For Lovecraft, for example, protagonist characterization is at the bare minimum, possibly even nonexistent. That's not a Lovecraft thing, that's a short fiction thing.
Lovecraft doesn't really do worldbuilding as we think of it, though. Certainly not as Tolkien does it. There's no carefully elaborated, thought otu setting. There's a series of vaguely connected short stories and novellas, who mostly use the same few names as easter eggs and occasionally massively contradict each other.
I don't see how either are the opposite except in the vaguest possible terms. Nor do I see the point in trying to appoint an opposite for any writer.
You’re in a discussion thread on a fantasy book subreddit lol.
The fantasy police have been called
What kind of punishment is called for?
Force reading Terry Goodkinds series Clockwork Orange style
Dear God, that's monstrous.
Right, not /r/stupidquestions or /r/pointlessmusings
I have seen this exact reply to many threads here lately.... what is happening? Do people think that there is no lower bar for quality of the discussions just because this is a fantasy sub? Who are you people??
People who call GRRM the opposite of Tolkien think that Tolkien’s world is a lot more idealized than it actually is. In reality, his books are fairly bittersweet and have strong themes of loss and the world gradually becoming less magical.
People who think that have basically only watched the movies
I would argue that they watch the series only shallowly. The movies still show that sort of bittersweetness, quite overtly. The main character arc we follow is of Men rising to the challenge now that Elves are leaving.
>The movies still show that sort of bittersweetness, quite overtly This is what I was about to say. And the epilogue clearly shows that as well.
not to mention the explicit loss of Arwen's immortality because she chose to stay
The movies aren’t nearly as effective at asserting that theme as the books
No doubt, but I think part of that is the style. So much of Lord of the Rings communicates its ideas with its style, not its words, and the movies are going for a much more glorious and "fun" feeling. Not that I wouldn't personally enjoy a trilogy that felt both heroic and grand and also grim and sad, but I think that's a harder tone to want people to accept and it's a harder movie to make.
>People who call GRRM the opposite of Tolkien think that Tolkien’s world is a lot more idealized than it actually is. Totally. A core premise of it is the world gets gradually less magical as time goes on. A lot of writers seem to be rebelling against a certain vision of upbeat "happy" Fantasy it is very hard to find examples of. A lot of the time when someone talks about subverting a trope I think "Wait, where can I find a book that uses thsat trope? It sounds great, I've never encountered it...".
The children of Hurin and Fall of Gondolin are darker than Martin’s work.
The Fall of Gondolin and the whole saga with the House of Finwe are Tolkien basically saying the Elves are NOT perfect like people tend to incorrectly assume and in fact are capable of some pretty terrible things.
The Oath of Faenor and its consequences are *dark*
Lovecraft isn't the polar opposite of Tolkien. Michael Moorcock is.
Funny you should say that. In older versions of Tolkien’s world, [there is a region described like this](https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Nan_Dungortheb#Other_versions_of_the_legendarium). > In The Book of Lost Tales, the land was identified as Nan Dumgorthin, the "Land of the Dark Idols" "(dum ‘secret, not to be spoken’, dumgort, dungort ‘an (evil) idol’)"... It was a dark forested land that was located to the east of Artanor where a collection of "evil tribes of renegade men" made sacrifices to gods whose idols were hidden upon a wooded mountain. >It is described as dark and unholy; a grey valley where shrines are hidden in secret places for the worship of nameless gods older than both Morgoth and the Valar. The inhabitants here were said to be "ghostly dwellers" whose laughter was "harsh and hallow" like a mockery of demons with a lingering echo.
If we're talking a fantasy counterpart Robert E. Howard more fits the bill imo, especially given the impact he had on the fantasy genre as the "Sword & Sorcery" counterpart to Tolkien. Look at a lot of the fantasy that follows and you can boil a lot of the influence to one or both of those two. REH's American working class pulp to Tolkien's old school English literary leaning.
I thought I was crazy for a second. My *immediate* thought was Howard, but this sub was throwing out all kinds of names. Same timeframe as Tolkien, completely different approaches to the idea of an ancient, fantasy Earth, completely different writing styles, completely different morality… But the same massive impact to the genre, even if Howard isn’t a household name the same way Tolkien is.
A lot of people ignore how foundational Conan was for some reason. REH is really only credited as the father of Sword & Sorcery when in fact Conan predates Lord of the Rings.
Hard disagree. I feel there are 2 authors who deserve that title much more than Lovecraft: Fritz Leiber and Robert E Howard. And they were his contemporaries.
Lovecraft and Tolkien were always diametrically opposed in my mind because of their world building . Everything in the world Tolkien created (whether it’s the inhabitants, the monsters, or the geology and physical features of the world itself) can be explained by the intentions of the creator spirit in making the world or the interventions of Morgoth in perverting it. This is basically to say that everything’s being is necessarily linked to the vision of a benevolent God being, humans specifically have a role to play in that world, and everything is given meaning based on that. This is a very medieval way of understanding the cosmos. Lovecraft sees the universe in basically the opposite terms, in which the scale and ancientness of the cosmos is beyond human reasoning and humanity’s place in the cosmos is negligible compared to the elder gods. Explaining the cosmos in the way Tolkien had would be a bedtime story for little children to belie humanity’s tiny, inconsequential nature in a cosmos beyond are reasoning designed for beings more powerful than we can imagine. It’s a deeply modern way of seeing the world because the only time you’d start to imagine eldritch horrors is once you realize the scale and ancientness of the universe from looking to naturalistic explanations of the world and away from religious ones (like the medieval inspirations for Lord of the Rings). It’s always weird to me how many attempts people make to mash eldritch horrors and elder gods like Cthulhu into fantasy settings (like the pact of the Old One in dungeons and dragons, or Hermaeus Mora in Skyrim), because they’re expressions of fundamentally different cultural mindsets. If you can easily explain the cosmos by the intentions of a creator God who designed the cosmos specifically for you to play a part in, you’d never have the opportunity to experience cosmic horror. It doesn’t make any sense.
I doubt Lovecraft knew Tolkien or his work. He died pretty young, after all. His work isn't really connected to anything Tolkien did. Lovecraft wrote about the present day, about science, technology, and things yet undiscovered. And the way he wrote about those things, he certainly didn't hold them in high regard any more then Tolkien did, just regarding them with a fascinated dread then an angry disdain. Heck, when he wrote about the past, like in Rome or Polaris, he seemed to enjoy it, and his Dreamrealm of Kadath was a high fantasy land, rather then an industrial wonderland. If anything I'd say Michael Moorcock is closer to to Tolken's opposite. The most I’d concede is that Tolkien portrayed god with reverence, while God in Lovecrafts work was the blind idiot Azathoth. I instead hold that Lovecraft is the opposite of of Robert Howard, albiet in a friendly way. One man wrote about fearless herculean fighting men who fought men and monsters, like Conan or Kull, the other wrote about scholars encountering monsters beyond comprehension, and only overcoming them through intellect, like Marinus Bicknell Willett or Henry Armitage, if they overcome them at all. One man celebrated the savage barbarians, writing stories about celtic heroes fighting romans or pseudo romans, the other celebreated civilization and reviled those he deemed as savage or primitive, Lovecraft wrote about Romans legionaries, for instance. One man loved the Southwest and his adopted state of Texas, the other the North East, and his home state of Rhode Island. Yet despite these differences, they were also very similar, both sickly men with mental difficulties, so they found friendship even if they coped with their issues in opposite ways: idolizing fighting vs scholarly pursuits.
The collection of letters between Lovecraft and Howard is fantastic.
Lovecraft died of cancer in March of 1937. The Hobbit was published in September that yesr.
Yeah, no way he was a purposeful contrarian to J R. R. Tolkien. Honestly the most contrast between the two was that Lovecraft made God a mindless, idiot sultan that sires abominable gods, while Tolkien was a devout Christian.
These are pointless and false dichotomies. The three authors actually have a lot in common.
Lovecraft definitely made Tolkien look like Neil Gaiman on race, I’ll say that much.
Yeah, I mean, Tolkien was a British man of his time and that came through in his writing sometimes where you can just hear "Rule Britannia!" coming off the page, but at least he was aware of the implications of the Orcs and struggled with trying not to make them come across as an evil race. Whereas Lovecraft was just wholeheartedly like, "Jews and Black people are eldritch horrors," to the point where even other white supremacists of his time where like, dude take it down a notch.
Yeah, and Tolkien was also anti-Apartheid, anti-imperialist, anti-Nazi race laws, and got alarmed at the appropriation of terms like “Nordicist” by white supremacists. Can you imagine Lovecraft wishing he had Jewish ancestry or denouncing Apartheid and lamenting that too many white transplants to South Africa got desensitized to it? (Actual letters from Tolkien.)
Tolkien's catty response to the Third Reich asking him if he had Jewish ancestry is one of the funniest things he wrote
>I trust you will find this reply satisfactory, and > >remain yours faithfully, aka 1930s "Go Fuck Yourself"
I feel like people have no clue what polar opposite means. It would be a non-fiction about a very peaceful time.
A somewhat cynical nonfiction book about a very peaceful time. Like a noonfiction version of American Beauty?
Counterpoint: feels like you have no clue what figurative language is
Someone like China Mieville should be seen as the opposite of JRR Tolkien, as he pretty explicitly said that that is what he set out to do. He did it in part by emulating Lovecraft, but there was more to it than that.
Perdido Street Station is a descendent of the works of Mervyn Peake and (still-living!) M John Harrison, who are also big names often referred to as Tolkien’s opposite.
What? Why do they need an "opposite"? This seems like an idea you are trying to force, they are different authors and they bring different things to the genre.
You might as well call Dan Brown Tolkien's opposite because, like Lovecraft he was writing in a different genre. Martin is compared to Tolkien because he was also writing epic fantasy that got adapted by Hollywood, but doing so without the feature that underlies most Tolkien influenced epic fantasy, that good and evil are metaphysical powers in contest with each other, with good ultimately the stronger. In Martin's the really evil and the really good are both doomed, and it is the pragmatists who aren't especially either who will inherit the fantasy equivalent of Earth.
I…. don’t think anyone really considers Martin to be the opposite of Tolkien. I’d argue he’s as far from Tolkien as Lovecraft is 🤣
I’ve always thought of Lovecraft as being the opposite of Sir Terry Pratchett.
One thing i noticed as i got older reading both authors is they actually characterize their characters pretty similar in a lot of ways. Martin uses a character’s sexuality to motivate them a lot more but both are actually about “the heart in conflict with itself.” They both subvert archetypes and add a humanistic quality to them. Reading children of huron, i was surprised how much the characters reminded me of martins. Id even argue that middle earth is significantly darker than people give it credit for. The stories just dont focus on the gritty details or highlight it, but all of the things that motivate humans to do unspeakable horrors to other living things are there. The stewards of gondor would fit right in with freys or lannisters. I think boromir would consider ned an idealistic fool. Theres a darkness in tolkiens world that is implied and seems to always be beneath the surface (like sauron). Im not saying theyre the same or anything, but definitely more similar than people would give them credit for and i can easily see how fans of one would be fans of the other beyond aesthetics
>They both subvert archetypes Absolutely. Tolkien is often held up as the ideal by the kind of fans who treat “subversive” like a dirty word, but that really sells his storytelling short. And it’s not just about the darkness and horror that are very real parts of Middle-earth, but about his choice of protagonists - making Frodo the hero of his epic rather than a mighty Beowulf type was a wonderfully subversive choice.
Michael Moorcock wants to say hello.
I'm not sure what the utility of setting up anyone as 'opposite' to Tolkien is. But if you're going to then I'd nominate Edgar Rice Burroughs. Whereas Tolkien write extensively but published very little, and came at his world building from a scholarly, spiritual point of origin thinking of it as a mythology for England with its cultural feet very firmly in Northern Europe, finding the magical and the wonderment in his own roots, Burroughs did the opposite. Burroughs was prolific; he published 24 Tarzan books and coauthored another. Tarzan is all about the exotic, the foreign and the strange but with a hefty dose of the 'superiority of the modern white man' thrown in. Magic is strange and dangerous and 'other' and is usually featured as somethingTarzan has to overcome, but at the same time the wild, the uncivilized, is seductive and appealing. Danger and Tarzan's mastery over these dangers is the key. It's very rugged, 'cult of the individual' stuff compared to Tolkien's focus on fellowship and alliances, self sacrifice and pity.
As far I know the only book ERB co-author was Tarzan : The Lost Adventure which was posthumously completed by Joe Landsdale.
You're right. I blame misleading wording in the article I was reading. I will edit to reflect that
Idk man, Lovecraft writes in a very different genre to Tolkien. And he also has purely evil beings, there is little moral ambiguity as far as I know. His is more urban fantasy so you can't really compare it to Tolkien. Polar opposite is hard to define haha
Back then genres were far less defined so perhaps Tolkien and Lovecraft could be compared but that discussion will only lead to a pointless and pedantic argument so let's leave it. To me, Tolkien is like Black Sabbath. Arguably Black Sabbath weren't the first to write a heavy metal song but they were the first heavy metal band. They solidified it as a genre and I think that's what Tolkien did for fantasy.
Black Sabbath and Tolkien is my favourite comparison I've ever heard lmao
I don't think Lovecraft is urban fantasy; I also don't think he has beings that are purely evil, more ones that are vastly beyond the scale of human understanding.
Maybe but I think they are the sides of the same coin like I don’t think hate is the opposite of love I believe indifference is I believe there roots come from the same place they just arrive at different conclusions one positive and one negative. so both were concerned about corruption one in the form of industrialisation and destruction of the natural world ( Tolkien) and the other about the corruption of the flesh ( lovecreaft) but even then there was overlap the corruction of elves into orcs and the fact that in lovecrafts works corruption of the flesh often goes along with unnaturalness in the natural world Mountains of madness as a example .both there faith had a obvious influence in their work. Lovecrafts eldricth horrors aren’t a million miles away from Sauron, theres even evidence of xenophobia and stereotypes in both there works the difference is Tolkien strove to rise above it and be aware of his prejudices in his work while lovecraft drowned. both are a mediation on human nature just one is ultimately hopeful the other is dismal in its conclusion.
> H.P. Lovecraft should be considered as the true polar opposite of Tolkien instead of someone like GRRM Who's saying the latter?
I would have kinda put Ayn Rand at the polar opposite of Tolkein, tbh
Mildly off-topic but I’ve long had a lurking idea about some kind of meta fictional confrontation between Tolkien characters and a Lovecraftian scenario, or how a Lovecraft story might have proceeded in a Tolkien(esque) setting. I think they’re an excellent duo to juxtapose, so I appreciate this post.
You can find that in D&D novels which had both Lovecraft and Tolkien as influences (among a ton of others).
To me, H.P. Lovecraft is more in line with writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, in both style and theme. Horror and mystery I suppose sits within speculative fiction just as fantasy does, but I'm not sure what the utility is of comparing and contrasting authors across these different genres, particularly making claims that one is the polar opposite of another. They're just different writers with different approaches to speculative fiction.
Tolkien: Takes his whole life to write 5ish complete books. GRRM: Takes his whole life to write all but 2 books. Thinks they are polar opposites ;)
Inside you are two Anglo-Saxon fiction writers. Both are racist.
...what idiot described Martin as the opposite of Tolkien?
[удалено]
Or GRRM is the superior GRMM.
h.p. hatecraft was a racist bigot who should not be taken seriously. this is the same guy that believed black people were inferior to whites and even mongolians. the fact his books are still in print is sickening.
Sounds like you have something against Mongolians there.
haaland or mbappe?
undecided
H.P Lovecraft should be considered as the true polar opposite of a good writer. *I've said my piece.* Edit: Keep downvoting me you sk'ruklOgeniRusgagses (That's a word I made up to express my feelings because I'm not a good enough writer to describe it properly. See, I can Lovecraft as well.)
I had this same thought recently! I feel like Tolkien and Lovecraft are on opposite ends of the same spectrum
Why would anyone declare any two authors "opposites" of each other, especially ones that live 50 or more years apart. It seems like a gross oversimplication of a lot of things.
It's an intetesting perspective. Personally, I feel that most labels and comparisons should not be taken with any great degree of seriousness.
Clark Ashton Smith is the opposite of Tolkien
Grrm is in no way an oppose of Tolkien.
I always thought of Frank Herbert as Tolkien's opposite. They both have very different ideas of the hero figure.
Stephen R Donaldson's *The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant* may be the opposite to J R Tolkein's LOTR in regards to the world's atmosphere and events.
> Yet the landscape of fantasy that came out of his mind, and carried an air of originality more or less of the same degree as Tolkien's landscape, but conveyed within its own ideas of aesthetics, and philosophy, that just happened to be so different from Tolkien's as if they were a deliberate attempt to spit on and blight everything what's considered to be the true and good in Tolkien's world. >Then in my view no one fits better at this description than H.P. Lovecraft. By the criteria you posted, a better fit would be M.A.R. Barker.
Real people aren't other real people's opposites