An auction, eight stories and a tease in today’s Scroll.
(1) Attention collectors! Somebody’s flipping Ray Bradbury’s original caricature from the Brown Derby Restaurant today on eBay. Jack Lane’s portrait once hung on the wall at the famed Hollywood & Vine tourist trap with hundreds more of the artist’s sketches of Hollywood stars.
Ray Bradbury by Jack Lane. Once displayed at the Brown Derby.
(2) The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis will hold three special events next month celebrate Ray Bradbury’s 95th birthday, which is on August 22.
From Aug. 3 to 28, the center will present a free exhibit, “Miracles of Rare Device: Treasures of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies,” in the Cultural Arts Gallery on the first floor of the IUPUI Campus Center…. The exhibit will feature art, artifacts, books and rare magazines from Bradbury’s own collection, gifted to the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI in 2013 by the Bradbury Estate and by Donn Albright, Bradbury’s close friend and bibliographer.
Two related public events will coincide with the exhibition’s run.
On August 19, Jonathan R. Eller, Chancellor’s Professor of English and director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies will deliver the Second Annual Ray Bradbury Memorial Lecture in the Riley Meeting Room at Indianapolis Public Library’s Central Library.
The lecture, “Ray Bradbury’s October Country,” reveals the timeless creativity and somewhat controversial publishing history of one of Bradbury’s most popular story collections on the 60th anniversary of its original publication.
On August 27, the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies will host a reception followed by another Eller lecture, on the collection’s amazing journey from California to IUPUI and the importance of Bradbury’s legacy in the 21st century. Both the lecture and reception are free and open to the public.
(3) James Artimus Owen is offering for sale his illustrations for Diana Pavlac Glyer’s forthcoming book about the Inklings, Bandersnatch, and has posted the images on Facebook. [Note: Despite being set to “Public”, the material can only be viewed if you have a Facebook account.]
Each illustration is drawn on 11″ x 14″ Bristol board, and includes an appearance by the Bandersnatch somewhere in the picture. Prices are as listed, ranging from $450 to $750, although I am willing to entertain offers from people I like. First request, first choice. Message me to reserve your favorite and to arrange payment and shipping.
(4) Everybody knows Sharknado 3 airs today on SyFy. But it came as a surprise for me to read that George R.R. Martin plans to show the movie at his Jean Cocteau Theatre in August.
“Check it out,” writes Martin. “Next year’s Hugo favorite, for sure.”
William Reichard says in honor of that crack, the movie should be renamed, “Snarknado 3.”
(5) SF Signal’s latest Mind Meld proposes this interesting premise —
A recent Guardian article about Tokyo awarding Japanese Citzenship to Godzilla got me to wondering: If you could pick a genre fictional character, from any media, and offer them honorary citizenship and residence in your city, county, state, country, who would it be, and why?
Responses from — Kelly Robson, Jenny Goloboy, Galen Dara, Anne Leonard, Patrick Tomlinson, Julie Czerneda, Alyx Dellamonica, Django Wexler, Jesse Willis, Diana Pharoah Francis, Mikaela Lind, Rhonda Eudaly, Gillian Philip, Ardi Alspach, and Laura Anne Gilman.
(6) Interested in stories read aloud? Open Culture has found another seam of the motherlode, 88 hours of free audio fiction original aired on Wisconsin public radio.
Listen to enough episodes of Mind Webs, and you may get hooked on the voice and reading style of its host Michael Hanson, a fixture on Wisconsin public radio for something like forty years. Back in 2001, just after wrapping up his career in that sector, Hanson wrote in to the New York Times lamenting the state of public radio, especially its program directors turned into “sycophantic bean counters” and a “pronounced dumbing down of program content.” Mind Webs, which kept on going from the 70s through the 90s, came from a time before all that, and now its smart storytelling has come available for all of us to enjoy.
The playlist above will let you stream all of the stories — roughly 88 hours worth — from start to finish. Or you can access the audio at Archive.org here.
(7) Of course they knew those comic books were stolen! The Verge has the goods on the great Texas comic book heist.
Whoever was after the Sub-Mariners and All Star Comics at the Heritage Auction wasn’t a collector. Their bids were too erratic, they didn’t know the market, and chances were, they weren’t terribly smart. It was also clear that they had a lot of money on their hands — too much money, maybe — and they were eager to spend it. Through months of interviews and hundreds of pages of public documents, The Verge reconstructed what they were seeing: a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme that would ensnare a crooked lawyer, a multinational corporation, and some of the most sought-out comics in the world….
$40,000 split between nine checks. The investigator said he was going through a nasty divorce, and was worried his ex-wife might raise trouble over any checks for more than $10,000.
But what about that foxing? When the buyers took their comics home, they noticed something strange: the All Star #3 that had sold in February had the same imperfections. In fact, it was the same book. But that book was slabbed — it had a barcode and provenance, sold to a private buyer who wouldn’t have deslabbed it without a reason. Had they bought stolen property?
It was worse. They had bought stolen evidence. The book had come direct from Chiofalo’s storage unit, smuggled out under the nose of the Harris County DA — and according to prosecutors, Blevins and Deutsch worked together to smuggle them out. More than $150,000 in comics had disappeared from the storage unit, and Blevins had spent the summer selling them at comics conventions across the country. The books were deslabbed to throw investigators off the trail, but even without the barcode, the cover gave it away. Collectors search for flawless comics, but it’s the imperfections that give them an identity, and this imperfection placed Blevins at the scene of a crime.
(8) Did Tolkien visit the Bouzincourt caves while on Army service during the Battle of the Somme?
In 1916, a 24-year-old British soldier named J.R.R. Tolkien went off to fight in World War I. He was stationed near the village of Bouzincourt, took part in the nearby Battle of the Somme and writes about the area in his diaries.
Jeff Gusky, an explorer and photographer who maintains a site called “The Hidden World of World War I,” believes Tolkien may have visited Bouzincourt’s caves, places where hundreds of soldiers took refuge during the Somme — and that some of his impressions ended up in “The Lord of the Rings.”
“I feel that this is the place,” Gusky said. “It’s so raw and unchanged from a hundred years ago.”
Tolkien scholar John Garth isn’t so sure.
“On the Somme, he certainly spent time in deep trench dugouts, and he would have been aware of the subterranean world of the army tunnelers — all of which would, I believe, have given his descriptions of Moria and other Middle-earth underworlds some of their vitality,” Garth, the author of “Tolkien and the Great War,” wrote in an email….
Regardless of whether Tolkien knew of the caves, there’s no question that the author’s experience at the Somme influenced “The Lord of the Rings.”
“The Dead marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme,” he wrote in a letter, according to a story on the Green Books portion of TheOneRing.net.
(9) “Stick a fork in the pup’s Tor boycott because their hushpuppy is done” says Jason Sanford.
Earlier this month I tracked the sales of a sample of ten book titles published by Tor Books. My desire was to see if the puppies’ boycott of Tor was having any effect on the publisher’s sales.
You can see the titles I tracked, and how I tracked the sales, in my original post or by looking at the endnote below.
But the flaw in my analysis was that I could only present two weeks of sales data since the boycott began on June 19. As a result, some people rightly said it was too early to tell if the boycott was failing or succeeding.
After examining two additional weeks of sales data it appears my initial analysis was correct. This new data shows that for the five weeks prior to the boycott starting on June 19, the weekly sales average for these Tor titles was 1652 books sold per week. For those same Tor titles, their weekly average sales for the last four weeks of the boycott has been 1679 books sold per week.
So on average, Tor’s sales for these titles are up slightly since the boycott started.
(10) Vox Day’s “Hugo Recommendations: Best Professional Artist” post is up. Don’t try and kid me, you know you want to read it.
[Thanks for these stories goes out to Dave Doering, Michael J. Walsh, William Reichard, Jim Meadows and John King Tarpinian as the Beaver.]
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My intention was indeed for the bracket to be taken as referring to specific works. The reason I allowed for substitutions is that the initial list of 32 was selected by an individual, and therefore was subject to potential flaws from ignorance or bias. In general, I tried to pick “iconic” works rather than my particular personal favorites (I actually prefer Doorways In The Sand to Lord Of Light, for example), but there was naturally still big potential for disagreement. So I wanted to leave it possible that if a majority of people looked at the list and said, “You selected The Stars My Destination?! Only an idiot would put that over The Demolished Man!” or what have you, there was a way to correct my judgement.
Anyhow. In a bit, I’ll post some statistics from the bracket that might be interesting.
Am I the only one who can never see the name Ray Bradbury without thinking of this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1IxOS4VzKM
Thinking of this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBTrUx46b8I
comes in a distant second.
1. BUDDHA AND VISHNU VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
2. A SONG OF SMOKE AND SNOW
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Statistic 1) The general trend towards an increase in the percentage of women each round continues.
Round 1:
Men 75% (24)
Women 25% (8)
Round 2
Men 62.5% (10)
Women 37.5% (6)
Round 3
Men 50% (4)
Women 50% (4)
Round 4
Women 75% (3)
Men 25% (1)
If Frankenstein beats Lord Of Light (as currently seems more likely), then the trend will continue and the final round will be Women 100% (2), Men 0% (0). If Lord Of Light beats Frankenstein, the percentage in the final round will be 50/50.
@MaxL Her Smoke Rose Up Forever is available as an ebook.
http://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Rose-Forever-S-F-MASTERWORKS-ebook/dp/B00L2DBANK/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437654012&sr=1-1&keywords=tiptree
The Female Man (Russ) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (Tiptree) are both available in the Google Play Store for me.
Personally, despite splitting my time between the UK and Asia I still prefer physical copies, although due to travelling quite frequently and being addicted to Humble Bundles I’m reading more and more on my tablet these days.
I can honestly say I’m far more interested in the artistic opinions of just about any regular commenter on File770 than I am in VD’s.
Statistics 2) By era
Round 1
Books written in the 60’s/70’s: 46.875% (15)
80’s/90’s: 21.875% (7)
40’s/50’s: 18.75% (6)
Before the 40’s: 12.5% (4)
Round 2: The relative percentages stayed fairly consistent from Round 1 to Round 2. (Note — I forgot earlier that there had been 17 in this round; the percentage in Round 2 in the previous post should have been 64.7% Men / 35.3% Women, although that makes no change to the overall trend noted.)
Books written in the 60’s/70’s: 41.2% (7)
80’s/90’s: 23.6% (4)
40’s/50’s: 17.6% (3)
Before the 40’s: 17.6% (3)
Round 3: Works from the 40’s and 50’s drop out.
Books written in the 60’s/70’s: 50% (4)
80’s/90’s: 25% (2)
40’s/50’s: 0% (0)
Before the 40’s: 25% (2)
Round 4: Works from the 80’s and 90’s drop out.
Books written in the 60’s/70’s: 75% (3)
80’s/90’s: 0% (0)
40’s/50’s: 0% (0)
Before the 40’s: 25% (1)
If Frankenstein beats Lord of Light, the final round will be 50/50 for the 60’s+70’s and Before the 40’s. If Zelazny beats Frankenstein, the final round will be 100% from the 60’s+70’s.
1. Shelley
I’m torn again. Lord of Light is the funner of the two and the one I am more likely to re-read (again!). Having set aside prose, last round, as the primary criteria though – I have to give the tip to Frankenstein. If the defining criteria of SF is: the genre that asks ‘What If?’ then one of the key questions has to be what questions the book asks. While Lord of Light is not vapid fluff I don’t see it really asking fundamental questions either. Frankenstein, too, is culturally pervasive in a way few other books are. Dear lord, it even inspired a breakfast CEREAL! Also, it’s frawnkinsteen 🙂
2. Abstain
Statistics 3) By country
Round 1
U.S.: 65.6% (26)
England: 21.9% (7)
Other: 12.5% (4)
Round 2:
U.S.: 64.7% (11)
England: 23.5% (4)
Other: 11.7% (2)
Round 3:
U.S.: 75% (6)
England: 25% (2)
Other: 0% (0)
Round 4:
U.S.: 75% (3)
England: 25% (1)
Other: 0% (0)
If Frankenstein beats Lord of Light is, will be 50/50 U.S./England in the final. If Lord of Light beats Frankenstein, it will be 100% U.S. in the final.
1. Abstain (but now I must go read Shelley!)
2. LeGuin (that hurt, you know)
1. Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
2. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Easiest round so far.
Talk about tough! But…
1. BUDDHA AND VISHNU VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
2. A SONG OF SMOKE AND SNOW
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Linking today’s bracket back to yesterday’s discussion of great books – amongst our four books is one that was critically panned as poorly written, derivative, and probably ghosted ( because, you know, girl cooties). Two hundred years later we’re still debating the merits of it. Mr. Wright is free to stare in his tea leaves (as am I and as is any man) but knowing what works will still ring true against the cultural matrix of the future is not ours to know. I hear the smart money is on Valley of the Dolls though…
I have to admit to a certain amount of curiosity when it comes to Beale and his opinions. Not because anything he says or does will ever change my mind about anything or anyone. It’s more like watching an animal in a zoo, learning to interact with its environment.
This is the most difficult one yet.
1. It hurts me to vote against Zelazny, but
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
and
2. It hurts to vote against Tiptree, but
Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
1. BUDDHA AND VISHNU VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
2. A SONG OF SMOKE AND SNOW
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Following the crowd, it seems.
Bracket:
1. Pass, still unqualified, but happy to see all the Frankenstein love.
2. Le Guin. It’s easy to vote for her, in general and for Left Hand . I am emphatically not voting against Tiptree.
My love of Left Hand aside, though, I suspect I would always find it harder to vote for a collection, even a really great one, than an (equally great) novel. Collections are usually uneven I don’t remember (most things most of the time, actually, and so) all the stories as well as the gestalt of a novel. It helps that I’ve reread this one so many times.
@ Stoic Cynic: Knowing what works will still ring true against the cultural matrix of the future is not ours to know. I hear the smart money is on Valley of the Dolls though…
“Ah — the giants.”
ROUND 4 – THE PENULTIMATE SHOWDOWN
1. BUDDHA AND VISHNU VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
2. A SONG OF SMOKE AND SNOW
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
1. BUDDHA AND VISHNU VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
Oh! Oh! I love Lord of Light, but Frankenstein is so important.
A tie for me.
2. A SONG OF SMOKE AND SNOW
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Le Guin because I reread it and find more each time.
1. Frankenstein
The significance of this book cannot be overstated — plus I like it.
2. The Left Hand of Darkness
The significance of this book cannot be overstated — plus I like it.
So what am I going to do next round? (whimper)
@Camestros
Well… have you ever noticed the way “Bible fundamentalists” completely fail to object to the sex, violence, weirdness and general bad behavior on display in the Bible itself?
I think people have a tendency to see “great works” through a kind of high-culture veil — you know, it’s PLATO or it’s SHAKESPEARE or it’s THE BIBLE, so it can’t possibly have any dirty jokes in it.
Old-timey language and setting help. But also I think it’s that people often aren’t engaging the same part of their brains when they read THE BIBLE as when they read a modern novel. That doublethink seems to come naturally.
Hello, gracious host, the link to the Bandersnatch illustrations isn’t working for me (“Sorry, this page isn’t available,The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed”). This could be from my lack of a facebook account.
Also, thank you for hosting this marvelous shindig and for all the great posts!
Round 4, my choices:
1)-Lord of Light. Frankenstein will no doubt win, which is fine, but LoL is still my favorite.
2)-Left Hand of Darkness I wish this was the final round pairing.
Susan S.P. Sorry about that. I experimented with logging out of Facebook and encountered the same problem. Even though the album is set to “Public” it evidently can only be viewed by people who are logged into FB.
Mike Glyer: ah. I suspected that might be it, but thought I’d give a heads up, in case it wasn’t.
‘(9) “Stick a fork in the pup’s Tor boycott because their hushpuppy is done” says Jason Sanford.’
Some complaints towards: Jason Sanford’s analysis.
1) There is hardly any market that would not be affected by seasonal deviation. Thus to truly determine whether a boycott is successful or not, you need compare the boycott with the sales of the same time period from the previous years.
2) Bias in the selection of products. In other words; are the observed products truly what the boycotters are known to purchase? For example if a group of people that purchases red cars decides to boycott a car manufacturer, then a noticeable drop in the sales of red cars is to be expected, while a noticeable change in the sales of blue cars is to be unexpected.
3) Miss representation of the sales data. What we are shown is the daily sales averages for all selected works instead of showing the results for each of the selected individual works. For example there might have been a sales campaign that noticeably boosted the sales of a single work, and hence skewed the average sales.
4) The omission of electronic book sales altogether.
5) Publication dates of the selected works were not revealed.
6) Generally, when selecting what popular works were to be followed, I would have referred to the results of the Goodreads Choice Awards for 2014. There is a very large body of voters, and therefore in theory it should be easier to follow the results of any boycott.
Links:
Best fantasy: http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-fantasy-books-2014
Oh, for got this link from the above:
Best science-fiction: http://www.goodreads.com/choiceawards/best-science-fiction-books-2014
And away I go.
1. Lord of Light
2. Left Hand of Darkness
Could it be Light versus Darkness? Maybe…
Some complaints towards: Jason Sanford’s analysis.
Your “complaints” might look a little less silly if you had actually read Sanford’s posts about his analysis before you decided to jump in. But reading isn’t really your strong suit, is it?
1. BUDDHA AND VISHNU VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light(Sorry, dude.)Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
2. A SONG OF SMOKE AND SNOW
James Tiptree Jr.: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (collection of stories)
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness(So, so, sorry ma’am.)Tuomas flouncing by; it’s like old times! *sighs nostalgically*
1. Mary Shelley: Frankenstein – Lord of Light is one of my favorite books, but Frankenstein is still a great read, a cornerstone of the genre, and whose influence is still strong today. Hard to top that.
2. Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
Hey those still reeling from Delany’s elimination, I really enjoyed this:
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/07/interview-samuel-r-delany-three-novels-launched-career-part-1/
McJulie: I think people have a tendency to see “great works” through a kind of high-culture veil — you know, it’s PLATO or it’s SHAKESPEARE or it’s THE BIBLE, so it can’t possibly have any dirty jokes in it.
And boy can that veil be thick at times (to be fair, a lot of the responsibility for this attitude comes from education, i.e. the way Shakespeare is taught). And even more I’d argue that there are cultural narratives (how I think about them) about texts and genres–the more famous/canonical/important etc., the thicker the veil/the more weight the cultural narrative is given (though it can change).
One of the best assignments I had in graduate school was to pick one of the Renaissance plays (not Shakespeare) we were focusing on and track the history of cultural criticism, i.e. the arguments made by readers, and how they change. (Another way to see shifts in the cultural narratives is what is put in the textbooks–especially in the context of college, in the Norton Anthologies, i.e. when I was an undergraduate the American Literature Norton Anthology started with the Puritans — by the time I was teaching multicultural literature decades later, the same anthology started with translations of Spanish and American Indian works (the first printing by Europeans in the “New World” was done by Spanish colonizers, not the English laggards, heh).
But you have to look at change over time (one of the most fascinating changes is despite all the shrieking and anguish about how the SJWs in the Culture Wars in American literature would “throw out Shakespeare and replace great universal literature with Alice Walker” is that scholarship and teaching approaches to Shakespeare have increased in the last fifty-sixty years (tracking the number of publications in the Modern Language Association’s Bibliographic database).
(When I was teaching Shakespeare in my intro to lit courses, I told my students all the dirty jokes were explained in the footnotes–they were shocked at how different the plays were from the texts taught in high school.)
Scalzi’s ‘Lock In’ was runner up in the Goodreads SF poll, ‘The Martian’ being the runaway winner with more than twice as many votes; I’m pleased to see ‘Ancilliary Sword’ in there. Marko Kloos’ ‘Lines of Departure’ made it at number 20; I’m delighted that he has this recognition as an up and coming writer. He behaved honourably in withdrawing when he was slated, and allowed ‘Three Body Problem’ onto the final ballot
The fantasy poll also has a runaway winner: Deborah Harkness’s ‘The Book of Life’ with almost twice as many votes as the runner-up, Brandon Sanderson, who in turn is >6,000 ahead of Jim Butcher.
I found the beginning of the first volume in Harkness’ trilogy amazing, but by the time I reached the end I found it difficult to care; something went wrong for me, and I didn’t bother to read volume 2 at all. Again, good to see ‘The Goblin Emperor’ but urban fantasy dominates the Goodreads poll, as it does in volume of books sold, so I’m somewhat surprised – in a good way- that it made it at all…
Re: Facebook and “public.” As far as I know, yes, one has to be logged into Facebook to see the public posts (as opposed to other social platforms where they are open to the public without accounts/without logging in). I haven’t quite worked out all the things about yet, but that’s been my experience.
There is a troll who does not read
For reality’s not of his screed
We do but see him flouncing by
Twice gone and with relief we sigh.
So I was thinking about ways it might be possible to do a fantasy bracket. I am not committing to doing one, at least not at the moment, just wondering how it might work, because the fantasy field is pretty … vast. I think to get to any reasonably sized list, some arbitrary distinctions would have to be made.
I think almost certainly such a list would need to be restricted to “modern fantasy” and start somewhere around MacDonald’s Phantastes, or maybe at furthest back Hans Christian Anderson and E. T. A. Hoffman, because otherwise the list of Great Works can potentially stretch on to infinity.
I’d also think about maybe making children’s fantasy a completely separate category that gets its own bracket. This is again frankly for purely practical reasons, because however fun it might be to see Alice in Wonderland go up against The Fellowship of the Ring, names in children’s fantasy my mind immediately tells me it’d be hard to leave off any bracket include Alexander, Barrie, Baum, Bellairs, Carroll, Dahl, Ende, Garner, Grahame, Juster, Kipling, Le Guin, Lewis, Lindgren, Lofting, Milne, Nesbit, Norton, O’Brien, Pierce, Pratchett, Rowling, Sendak, Tolkien, White and that’s 25 names RIGHT OFF THE BAT …
1. BUDDHA AND VISHNU VERSUS FRANKENSTEIN
Roger Zelazny: Lord of Light
2. A SONG OF SMOKE AND SNOW
Ursula K. Le Guin: The Left Hand of Darkness
How on earth would you see the effects of the Puppies’ Tor boycott at Goodreads? Would they withdraw the reviews they’d already written or something?
1. Dither, dither. I need to re-read Lord of Light, to see how the Suck Fairy treated it, but I just can’t not vote for:
But look around you. Death and Light are everywhere, always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon the Dream of the Nameless that is the world, burning words within Samsara, perhaps to create a thing of beauty.
2. The Left Hand of Darkness.
Light is the left hand of darkness, and darkness the right hand of light …
And now I notice that my two finalists are not only written in the same period, they have the same … theme? motto? conclusion? huh.
Anyway, I definitely think we ought to do a Younger Brackets set, with nothing before 1985.
Kyra:
I’d actually suggest having Fantasy be explicitly a Race for Second Place, with the Lord of the Rings just awarded the title by acclimation. Otherwise, all the other places will be too strongly affected by the point at which the work came up against LOTR.
I’m not saying LOTR would win *unanimously*, just inevitably.
If there’s a West Coast spike in book buying it’s because I’ve been driving from San Francisco to Seattle. Ah… Powell’s…
> “The fantasy poll also has a runaway winner: Deborah Harkness’s ‘The Book of Life’ …”
I … will admit to having made fun of that series in public places. I am not a fan.
Doctor Science; I agree; The Lord of the Rings was *so* important to the fantasy genre that it should be explicitly left off the brackets. It would be like putting the 1995-1996 Chicago Bulls up against a bunch of good, solid college basketball teams…
Hm. I can think of fantasy works that might be able to go toe-to-toe with Lord of the Rings, BUT off the top of my head, they are all in the children’s fantasy category. That may, in fact, speak to children’s fantasy being something of a separate genre with its own traditions …
I for one feel like it’s entirely defensible to describe Diana Wynne Jones as the best fantasy writer of the 20th century.
(To be clear, there are other works of adult modern fantasy that I personally would vote above Lord of the Rings, essential as I think it is. But I don’t think any of them would win against it in a bracket; the only works I can think of that might are ones like Alice In Wonderland — just as seminal and important, but not in Tolkien’s part of the genre.)