Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Influence is determined by far more factors than quality. LOTR was written by a man with enough means to write for leisure, who could spend time crafting his work and who would expect to see it published as a novel, an actual book, with all the prestige and availability that implied. Look at his contemporaries, such as Howard, Lovecraft, Vance, and, much later, Moorcock. Many of them were just as influential, if not more so, on the genre while their works were well known. However, they wrote on deadlines for magazines, and then their stories were lost for a generation or two in limbo before they were collected and reprinted. During that time, LOTR was the fantasy epic that was still available, that parents remembered from their youths and could still find to read to their children. Of course it was influential; it was early on the scene and allowed to linger longer than the competition. There just weren't many alternatives for imaginative children to read for three decades or so.


Now, I read LOTR as an adult, so I was relatively unimpressed with it. That's why I read it to my son while he was still young enough to enjoy it. But I am also reading a lot of other classic and modern fantasy stories to him. While I don't hate LOTR, I do hate what it did to the fantasy genre. When I go back and read an old collection, I'm always blown away by how varied the genre was in the age of magazines, before the creative sterility set in. Fortunately fantasy fiction has rediscovered its joy, but it sure took it a while.


As for Seinfeld, I recognize how influential it was, but man was that a painful show to watch. I'm convinced it only worked because the actors not named Jerry were talented enough to make Loathesome characters compelling. Everybody Loves Raymond is what Seinfeld looks like with a less talented cast.

 Togusa wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Had a similar moment a few years ago when two girls in front of me in the line at my local store complained that it was unfair that One Direction weren't getting as much media attention as the Beatles despite the former "being much bigger than the Beatles ever were".

Who the feth is "One Direction?"

In the words of their stylist, "the boy version of the Spice Girls." The irony of course is that the entire way the bad presents itself publicly is purposefully based on how the Beatles were marketed as individual members of a group, because the Beatles didn't just change the way music sounds they changed how it is marketed.

And I swear, didn't we just get two Beatles movie this summer? I'll lay down money right now that no one will be making a One Direction movie in 50 years or even remember who they were.

 LordofHats wrote:

Voss wrote:
Case in point. Eva is a latecomer to the genre. It barely squeeked in at the end of the century. The shapers of the genre were an entire lifetime before that.

IDK. The page itself makes a compelling case for Seinfield changing the shape of sitcoms if you scroll down. Law and Order is on there too, and for a reason I hadn't considered before (the shows willingness to tackle politically charged topics) and sure enough my recollection of pre-90s TV is that it generally went out of its way to be as apolitical as possible, whereas today trying to be apolitical will get accusation of political bias thrown at you from any number of directions.

ne.

There were definitely politically charged sitcoms that were popular: Murphy Brown, Designing Women, and the Golden Girls to a lesser extent. I fell like the rise of non-sitcoms political comedy shows pretty much took over that niche after the appearance of Politically Incorrect and The Daily Show.

I think we're underselling the task that getting LOTR published really was, namely that it only got published by feels and luck. Tolkien spent years shopping for a publisher, but the publisher of the Hobbit Allen & Unwin didn't want to publish such a long book. They didn't think it would succeed. Every other publisher said the same thing to the point Tolkien feared it would never be published so he finally caved and started looking at ways to cut the novel. Then Allen & Unwin decided to publish the books as was, at the urging of Rayner Unwin, who 20 years earlier was the 10 year old boy who read the draft copy of the Hobbit so his father could decide if it would sell well. The man literally influenced his own publisher into publishing the sequel to his novel.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Look at his contemporaries, such as Howard, Lovecraft, Vance, and, much later, Moorcock. Many of them were just as influential, if not more so, on the genre while their works were well known.

I feel like part of this is that culture is an enigma.

Lovecraft is known for being almost unknown during his lifetime. His correspondence and friendship with other authors is key to understanding how he could be so influential despite a tragically short career. His influence spread in the background through literary circles and absorbed via cultural osmosis well before he started to become more broadly known when I was young. Even now Stephen King is probably the more famous writer, but Lovecraft informs so many of King's most well known works, and by the man's own admission.

In the same vein, while Howard was well known I feel like he didn't actually have that much impact on the genre. The entire genre he's most known for died a slow death, largely supplanted by the ever increasing monolith of Tolkien's legacy. Sword and Sorcery today can almost be considered a dead genre. It's most significant modern legacy is limited to tongue and cheek comics and tabletop games shooting for retro fantasy on purpose.

For all the difficulties Tolkien had, writers for the pulp magazines had more difficulties. They had to sell their stories to eat.

Lovecraft was better known during his time than he was shortly after his death, as evidenced by the circle of admirers who wrote to him and imitated him. Similar story with Howard.

I would argue that Howard's stories opened the way for many of the adventuring heroes who came later, who in turn have their own legacies. His Solomon Kane stories shaped a lot the imaginary space around witch hunters and their adventures that you see in WH and 40k. His pacing and tone left their mark, too. Unfortunately, yes, the sword and sorcery subgenre seems to have petered out a while ago. Modern publishing trends also do not favor shorter, punchier, more episodic storytelling, either.

I admit I forget Howard wrote Solomon Kane. Normally when I think of him all that comes to mind is Conan

For Lovecraft, I mean that he wasn’t a very famous author and at least when he was alive he wasn’t. His extensive friendships and collaborations with other authors might well be the only reason he has a legacy at all. Compared to men like Howard, Vance, or Campbell he simply wasn’t a name most people knew.

I don't know. August Derleth made a career "collaborating" with Lovecraft after his death, and writers like Bloch got their starts writing in the Cthulhu Mythos.

I wonder if writers like Clark Ashton Smith would have been more influential than Lovecraft if they had had one more lucky break or write one more letter to a colleague.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I don't know. August Derleth made a career "collaborating" with Lovecraft after his death, and writers like Bloch got their starts writing in the Cthulhu Mythos.

Certainly, but that doesn't automatically translate to Lovecraft having fame. Certainly, he wasn't some lost author, but the literary world didn't quite hang on the man in the same way it did his contemporaries.

Personally, I often wonder if he'd get a kick out of the knowledge that he has a cult following

I wonder if writers like Clark Ashton Smith would have been more influential than Lovecraft if they had had one more lucky break or write one more letter to a colleague.

I think there's a tendency, maybe because of Tolkien now that I think of it, to see authors as individual monoliths. These days you rarely see professional writers openly talk about correspondence with other authors to talk about their craft, even though it still happens. In the past it was commonplace and much more open. Not necessarily to the degree of Lovecraft, that guy wrote to anyone and everyone who wrote anything he liked, but the relationship between writers seems to get downplayed today compared to the past. Or maybe that's just hindsight talking?

The problem with all of these is they FEEL derivative if you aren't aware of the pedigree beforehand, and sometimes even if you are. I only recently read Dune a few years ago and despite being fully aware of it's history and influence, I found it awfully boring and a real slog to get through. Far from capturing my imagination, I just had to muscle through it. I already knew all the main story beats just from general nerd culture and the movie/miniseries and the extra background and explanations from the novel didn't really add anything for me. I'm sure if I'd read it in my youth then it'd be a different story.

Robotech is the opposite, I read the novels as a young teen in the early 90's long after the show was off the air, I saw the books in my local library and remembered a friend's older brother always talking about it. I couldn't watch the show till I was an adult and had already read the books many times over, so the novels and comics are where my great love of the series truly comes from. The show is fine, and the original Macross is fine, but I actually liked Southern Cross the most and then New Generation over Macross because I didn't have to deal with annoying ditsy Dana Sterling voice actress as a book. In the show she just does annoying ditsy stuff, but in the novels you understand her reasoning for everything and she just comes off as a total badass who like to joke around with people in the novels. I've seen the show a few times over the years, but it honestly doesn't (and can't) compare to what I had in my head for all those years

Where and when you come into contact with a series will really shape your perception of it

Anyways, anyone else excited for Dune 2020?

Will it be a terrible movie, or will be really capture the spirit of the saga?

@Lord of Hats. At least we agree it made him influential.

As for writers' groups, they are still very much around. The Internet has probably made them even more expansive. When I was younger I remember the various author cliques you would see or read about at conventions (Niven and his friends were huge dorks), as well as seeing the same names in author acknowledgements. I wonder why they get downplayed so much whenever an article discusses an author instead of his or her works...

@Togusa, I expect it to be terrible and am really looking forward to it. Who knows, it might give me impetus to read the rest of the Dune books I never got around to.

I actually recall wondering what new and different directors would do with Star Wars once the inevitable remakes came out. I looked hopefully towards those times.

Be careful what you wish for......

As a Sad, 39 year old Grognard?

Again, This Is Nothing New.

To those of us with a Passion for certain things, it’s far easier to scoff at NooBs, and belittle them, rather than remember there are a great many things from our Rites of Passage that we ultimately didn’t realise were covers, homages or rip-offs.

Let’s take Simon Pegg. The immortal Simon Pegg. The Alpha and indeed Omega of Geekdom. The One. The one that managed to celebrate his passions on the big and small screen, without ever compromising or belittling the experience for others.

Spaced. Spaced is what I’m talking about folks. Co-written with Edgar Wright. A two season wonder of great significance. I was in my late teens when that debuted. And I effing loved it. Packed full of some many references and homages that to this very day, I’ll see a Cult Horror or SciFi film and go oooooooooh, now I get it

People mistaking the cover for the original is nothing new. At all. So why not collectively drop any kind of snobbery about it.

If someone says ‘Y was inspired by X’? Educate them. Politely. Help them see the wider picture.

Because if you don’t? What’s the bloody point?

Voss wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ah, the ol' "Seinfeld is unfunny" effect at work here.

No, that's a completely different thing. Things are new to people who never experienced them before.
Seinfeld just... isn't funny. Even when it aired it was bored people doing irrational things, just with a set and a studio's cameras.

Look, I know you might not want to get sucked into a TVTropes link, but maybe stop being an obnoxious individual and realise it is just a name of a trope. In this case where something that defined a genre now looks old hat and even a rip off as the things they did when it came out have been imitated by so many others that came after them. You know, like what the OP was pointing out.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The Alpha and indeed Omega of Geekdom. The One. The one that managed to celebrate his passions on the big and small screen, without ever compromising or belittling the experience for others.

On this side of the pond we call that person Wil Wheaton

 LordofHats wrote:
On this side of the pond we call that person Wil Wheaton

Ugh, speaking of things that make me die a little inside...

For somebody who's self-espoused rule is "Don't be a Dick", he's kind of a fething prick and I never liked that he bullied his way into being the "face" of nerd culture for so long. I'll take Simon Peg over Wheaton no matter which side of the pond we step on

First I'm hearing of it. What did he do exactly to bully his way? Most of the stuff I know of him doing since TNG is being a nice guy and playing dicks (including dick versions of himself) on TV.

 Togusa wrote:
Anyways, anyone else excited for Dune 2020?

Will it be a terrible movie, or will be really capture the spirit of the saga?

It all depends on how much the director will let the story of Dune tell itself, versus him telling his own vision/version of it.
Kind of like Lynch's version: it had it's good parts, but David Lynch had to go and be David Lynch with it. It's why I both love and hate season 3 of Twin Peaks: I loved getting more Twin Peaks, but I hated that David Lynch went and David Lynched all over it.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Anyways, anyone else excited for Dune 2020?

Will it be a terrible movie, or will be really capture the spirit of the saga?

It all depends on how much the director will let the story of Dune tell itself, versus him telling his own vision/version of it.
Kind of like Lynch's version: it had it's good parts, but David Lynch had to go and be David Lynch with it. It's why I both love and hate season 3 of Twin Peaks: I loved getting more Twin Peaks, but I hated that David Lynch went and David Lynched all over it.

I'm not really a david lynch person, what does he do that is so bad?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Anyways, anyone else excited for Dune 2020?

Will it be a terrible movie, or will be really capture the spirit of the saga?

It all depends on how much the director will let the story of Dune tell itself, versus him telling his own vision/version of it.
Kind of like Lynch's version: it had it's good parts, but David Lynch had to go and be David Lynch with it. It's why I both love and hate season 3 of Twin Peaks: I loved getting more Twin Peaks, but I hated that David Lynch went and David Lynched all over it.

In fairness you can't really fit Dune authentically into a single film very easily. His version runs fairly close in most areas, but even so has to rush certain segments. Eg a lot of the Fremen segments are rushed through with a montage of time passing simply because there wasn't enough time to flesh them out fully. Also whilst he did alter more things nearer the end I felt that he did like Jackson did with Lord of the Rings - captured the soul and feel of the original work. It felt like Dune, felt like the crazy insane world setting that was established.

A more authentic version I'd love ,but I'm also open to the fact that it would have to either make some serious cuts/changes or only tell part of the story in a single film. Trying to squeeze it all in in one go would likely result in a film that was "authentic" but also very fast paced to the point it would lose out on character development and setting the scene.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Anyways, anyone else excited for Dune 2020?

Will it be a terrible movie, or will be really capture the spirit of the saga?

It all depends on how much the director will let the story of Dune tell itself, versus him telling his own vision/version of it.
Kind of like Lynch's version: it had it's good parts, but David Lynch had to go and be David Lynch with it. It's why I both love and hate season 3 of Twin Peaks: I loved getting more Twin Peaks, but I hated that David Lynch went and David Lynched all over it.

I kind of wish the book had been David Lynched. I saw the movie first and was a little let down by how ...conventional... the book seemed in comparison.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@ Mad Dog Grotsnik, I agree. Unfortunately, a lot of my conversations end up bogged down by Classical Greek history.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Kalamdea, Have you been tempted to start any other series or movie by reading the novelization before watching it? How does that compare to reading original novels before seeing film adaptations?

Reminds me of the heartbreak from the Revenge of the Sith novelization hitting before the film did.

You have to get it right. Dune is a ripoff of 40k, with 40k in itself being a ripoff of the original Starcraft.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Ah, the ol' "Seinfeld is unfunny" effect at work here.

1. Different situation here.

2. Seinfeld is definitely unfunny. It was when it aired, it is today. Every generation has some completely terrible comedy that stays far longer than its quality necessitates. Seinfeld was that show for that generation.

3. The second I see someone quotes TVTropes I immediately invalidate that current post, every post they've ever made, and every post they ever will make.

Man, people always talkin' 'bout "40k ripped off dune", "40k ripped off starship troopers" "40k ripped off Alien" "40k ripped off Mad Max", I ain't never heard anyone talkin' 'bout how 40k ripped off Paradise Lost.

On another note, I think that part of the reason Dune failed to REALLY break into the mainstream is just the writing. It's a reasonably hefty tone, gets very waffle-y, and then has a really lazy Deus-Ex-Machina Paul drinks the funny water and magically is better than everyone else and also the fremen love him.

Star Wars ripped it off in a way that would sell pretty nicely, and it worked, especially for the audience of the time, but I think the exposition and worldbuilding at the start of Dune makes it hard to translate to film well, and that part is the part of the novel that I personally love the most. Kind of like Gormenghast, you'd need a really excellent director to have it break big into contemporary popular culture with the same impact, say LOTR had in the early '00s, while their thicc, tome-y nature keeps them firmly in the category of ultra-nerd material, between pacing, detail, setting and characters. I think part of the reason Tolkein because as popular as he did, was partly down to how most other pop-culture mediums at the time had yet to really reach maturity, thus he had far less media competing for his audience's attention, allowing for more widespread consumption of much denser work.

Kind of how like I feel Pratchett will never get the recognition he really deserves from literary circles, because he wrote stories about fantasy stuff (and good lord was he prolific), and academics seem to still be thumbing their noses at it, despite it actually being fantastically good.

To quote Sir Terry himself? ‘Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.'

And it’s a shame. Because his works are absolutely brilliant, full of charm and wit.

To go back to my previous post, I’d like to apologise for it being somewhat more forthright than I intended. Wasn’t meant to insult anyone or accuse anyone of snobbery. But it did. Sorry for an upset.

Homages and Covers are important to our culture. In the world of theatre, plays are forever being remounted and reinterpreted. Cinema tried it for a bit as well, such as Clueless being a modern retelling of Austen’s ‘Emma’.

It’s how the original keeps finding a new audience, and appreciation for the original author is maintained.

I think that’s genuinely a central part of just why 40k has been so successful. It’s a glorious hodgepodge of various SciFi sources, which somehow works as it’s own thing. So those discovering for the first time will find some reflection of their favourite SciFi, which serves as a hook to get them deeper in.

 posermcbogus wrote:
Man, people always talkin' 'bout "40k ripped off dune", "40k ripped off starship troopers" "40k ripped off Alien" "40k ripped off Mad Max", I ain't never heard anyone talkin' 'bout how 40k ripped off Paradise Lost.

To be fair, it kind of did. 40k is a giant amalgamation of every cool thing in Scifi thrown together with maximum tongue and cheek and then played completely straight. It's called a cliché storm, and it's not necessarily a bad thing cause you stack enough over the top ridiculousness together and it stops being ridiculous and starts becoming awesome. Warcraft is the same thing for fantasy more or less.

Technically everything rips off stuff that came before it, because that's how culture works. You build on what came before you.

Kind of how like I feel Pratchett will never get the recognition he really deserves from literary circles, because he wrote stories about fantasy stuff (and good lord was he prolific), and academics seem to still be thumbing their noses at it, despite it actually being fantastically good.

Really? I feel like Pratchett is one of the only fantasy authors to get real credit for his work. In our time it's basically just him, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, and maybe Iain Banks and Brandon Sanderson? I mean, those stuck up douches at the Nobel Prize of Literature committee are never gonna give them any credit, but those guys practically live on another planet. Even the snotty literati committee is regularly baffled by the people they pick for the prize, and it's practically a joke that no one anyone actually reads will ever win it. I mean Jesus, they gave the 2016 prize to Bob Dylan, to which everyone asked "the singer?"

Milton ripped off Dante.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Milton ripped off Dante.

And Dante ripped off LSD. Or, whatever drug he was smoking/injecting/snorting/ingesting...



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 posermcbogus wrote:
Man, people always talkin' 'bout "40k ripped off dune", "40k ripped off starship troopers" "40k ripped off Alien" "40k ripped off Mad Max", I ain't never heard anyone talkin' 'bout how 40k ripped off Paradise Lost.

On another note, I think that part of the reason Dune failed to REALLY break into the mainstream is just the writing. It's a reasonably hefty tone, gets very waffle-y, and then has a really lazy Deus-Ex-Machina Paul drinks the funny water and magically is better than everyone else and also the fremen love him.

Star Wars ripped it off in a way that would sell pretty nicely, and it worked, especially for the audience of the time, but I think the exposition and worldbuilding at the start of Dune makes it hard to translate to film well, and that part is the part of the novel that I personally love the most. Kind of like Gormenghast, you'd need a really excellent director to have it break big into contemporary popular culture with the same impact, say LOTR had in the early '00s, while their thicc, tome-y nature keeps them firmly in the category of ultra-nerd material, between pacing, detail, setting and characters. I think part of the reason Tolkein because as popular as he did, was partly down to how most other pop-culture mediums at the time had yet to really reach maturity, thus he had far less media competing for his audience's attention, allowing for more widespread consumption of much denser work.

Kind of how like I feel Pratchett will never get the recognition he really deserves from literary circles, because he wrote stories about fantasy stuff (and good lord was he prolific), and academics seem to still be thumbing their noses at it, despite it actually being fantastically good.

It wasn't the ripped off comet that got me. I've dated girls that had no interest in SciFi or the like before, and they still at least knew what dune was and who wrote it. I found it hard to believe these two were serious, but they absolutely were.

I've been working my way through the 'SF Masterworks' series and there is quite a large variation in quality, some are brilliant but some are a real slog ('City' by Clifford D. Simak being the worst so far).

It's hard to consider some on their merits though, for example I've avoided I Am Legend because of the rubbish Will Smith film but I was attracted to Greybeard because I liked the premise of Children of Men (talking of rip-offs )

LSD wasn't a thing in the 13th century.

Dante Aligheri ripped off Neil Hannon's seminal Il Mio Adorabile Cavallo.