From: djdaneh@pbhyc.PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Subject: Re: Epic fantasy novels
Reply-To: djdaneh@PacBell.COM (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 17:24:22 GMT

In article <1992Aug12.223237.24546@kakwa.ucs.ualberta.ca> aaron@space.ualberta.ca writes:
>Crawford_Kilian@mindlink.bc.ca (Crawford Kilian) writes:

>: I strongly recommend, to anyone with a taste for epic fantasy, going back to
>: earlier work--pre-Tolkien, that is. For example, Lord Dunsany's fantasy short
>: stories and vignettes (I still recall a lovely tale called "Lazy Days on the
>: Yan," about a journey down a highly mythical river). 

Even better, if you can find a copy, is THE GODS OF PEGANA, one of the strangest
collections I've ever read, about the cosmogony of a totally whacko universe.
Beware the awakening of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI!  I believe that most of the "Gods of
Pegana" stories were included in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series book,
BEYOND THE HILLS WE KNOW, along with other neat stuff (e.g., "The Fortress
Unvanquishable Save for Sacknoth," which I first encountered as a really nifty
D&D adventure -- but that's another story).  Nearly anything by Dunsany is good.

Or, if you want something with a connected plot, there's Lovecraft's pastiche
of Dunsany, THE DREAM-QUEST OF UNKNOWN KADATH, along with his several other
stories of Raymond Carter.  These are *not* the Lovecraft of the Cthulhu mythos,
but a kinder, gentler HPL. . .


>: Or Eddison's The Worm
>: Ouroboros, with prose so purple as to fade into the ultraviolet. A Voyage to
>: Arcturus, author forgotten, was nonetheless highly memorable.
>
>I got burned by the ultraviolet prose.  It's totally ruined me for Eddison's
>work, and I doubt if I'll ever read The Worm Ouroboros again.

Bah.  Eddison's prose isn't purple; it's archaic.  That is, he does right what
purple prose badly apes -- he writes in the ornate, mannered, but not overly-
descriptive and adjective-laden "high stile" of Days Gone By.  

Lay a passage of Eddison up against a passage of A.Merritt, or of Clark Ashton 
Smith, or even of Lovecraft at this worst:  they are purple; Eddison, by 
comparison, is clean.

Also (and this is just a quibble, really), Eddison isn't exactly "pre-Tolkien;"
he's "peri-Tolkien."  They flourished at roughly the same time.  Indeed, ERE
visited the Inklings on at least one occasion.

Another fantasist roughly contemporaneous with Eddison and the Inklings and well
worth mentioning is Mervyn Peake.  The Gormenghast books (TITUS GROAN,
GORMENGHAST, TITUS ALONE) are stupendously good.  They've just been reissued, in
an expensive trade paperback edition, which I intend to buy because they have 
for the first time in the US the "corrected" texts (the text of the third 
volume, in particular, is known to be badly corrupt), and the existing text of
a fourth volume which Peake died without completing.

>I read The Morte Darthur a while ago, and was surprised at how much was in it.
>If the events of that book were expanded to fit the style of modern epic
>fantasy, it would have been a dekalogy.  

And it's been done.  Repeatedly.  Alas.

Not to say it can't be done well; there are some damn good modern Arthuriads.
The best (imio) would be:
	T.H. White - THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING;
	Charles Williams - TALIESSIN THROUGH LOGRES and THE REGION OF THE
			SUMMER STARS;
and	Marion Zimmer Bradley - THE MISTS OF AVALON

The "compression," as you call it, is not really compression at all; it's the
result of having been written at a time when printed stories were still 
something of a novelty and a luxury.  In terms of lifespans, Malory could
have been Gutenberg's grandson, or even a late son.  So the style of written 
stories was still heavily influenced by two factors:
	1.  They were, by and large, spoken stories written down; and,
	2.  Any dissemination of a written work was copies by hand.
Both of these made for a degree of efficiency in moving from incident to
incident that, to modern eyes, looks "compressed."

(Later writers, discovering the freedom granted by print, developed an entirely
different sort of ornate style, which culminated in the awesome and entertaining
digressions of TRISTRAM SHANDY, a novel that obstinately refuses to advance its
alleged plot in any way, not even getting its protagonist born until the end of
Book 2, but manages to be entirely hilarious nonetheless.)


		My baby is a Martian,
		What can I do?
		I'm in love with a giant insect,
		I got them Exoskeletal Blues
			-- Visual Purple

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, Net.Roach
My opinions do NOT represent Pacific Bell,
Professional Development, or anyone else.
But I'm willing to share.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written