On the subject of Tolkein

I didn't join in with any of that ridiculous voting rubbish the BBC went in for recently. Popularity contests, pah, is what I say. As my old mate Ibsen once wrote, the majority is always wrong.

Anyway, given the hype surrounding the films and the general inability of people to see beyond the end of their noses, *thunk*...

Sorry, fell asleep there for a minute. I'm not against LOTR you understand. I mean, I've read it more than once (2001 was the last time). But, when I do read it, boy do I skip ahead. I skip huge chunks of it. And I was glad that they'd skipped chunks of it when they made the film. Except I'd have skipped more. I don't think it needs to have been a 9 hour film. Either it should have been a 26 week (19 hour) television series, going into great detail and really building up the story and the characters (as in the original radio broadcast of 1981, which was excellent); or it should have been one 3-hour film, bish bash bosh. Does that sound heretical? It's a different revenue model, the TV series, but given that they could have sold it internationally; given the repeat value; given the huge audience; given the potential DVD sales, it would have worked.

But going back to the cinema for the last installment, when you know the last bit is a bit of a yawn, feels like a bit of a traipse. Maybe it's just me. At least on DVD you can fast forward through the battles, and the treebeard bits. And the emotional scenes between Sam and Frodo. And the slushy bits with Aragorn and Liv Tyler. All of it really.

Anyway, apart from the aforementioned Tim Powers, I hear you ask, who is a good fantasy writer?

But you wouldn't really be asking, because, let's face it, fantasy is the most popular genre of fiction there is. Consider the evidentiary evidence. There's Tolkein, there's Harry H Potter, there's Terry Pratchett, there's *thunk*.

But the problem with fantasy is that people get into the stories, the characters, the worlds, get all involved in it, without really caring much about the writing. David Eddings, for example, is a fucking horrible writer. You know, there are some writers who stick to a particular style, in every book they write, and if it's not right for you it just irritates the hell out of you. Fantasy is like that. You have to skip through Tolkein, because he just droned on too much. With The Silmarillion, you have to skip through the entire thing.

So it's all very subjective, and you stopped reading ten minutes ago, but my favourite sort of swords n sorcery series is that of Katharine Kerr. I think it's brilliant. She spans generations with the storyline, but manages to keep the same characters in it through reincarnation and magical means. Now this would make a fantastic long-running television series. You could do about seven years' worth. She also branches out occasionally and writes other stuff, also good, like Polar City Blues and Snare.