Haven’t read any Parker don’t think. Will have to give it a shot while the weather’s still warm.

Yeah I don’t love Moorcock wholeheartedly – the idea that somehow everything he touches turns to gold is demonstrably untrue – but do believe he’s an icon of 20thC fantasy, and Epic Pooh certainly chimes several bells for me.

K J Parker is another writer who does collapsing systems. He/She – I can never keep straight the various theories/truths about Parker’s secret identity – is explicitly about finding the breaking point of everything and then applying the right pressure. And when the system is done being broken, there’s nothing better left for the protaganists and in at least one series there’s nothing left at all.

In a way I find them really depressing because I see in them a reflection of my own cynicism. There really is nothing better behind our broken systems, there’s no utopia and arguably we are already living in the dystopia; we just don’t realise it because somehow we lucked out and are sitting at the top of the food chain.

It didn’t help that I used to have this nasty, self-destructive habit of only reading Parker in the middle of winter when I was already stressed. It wasn’t a deliberate thing but it invariably came out that way and I’d spend a week or two half out of my gourd; wandering about like a lost soul wondering what’s the point of it all.

As for Tolkien being dated…there are two kinds of Tolkien readers in this world. Those who though Moorcock was onto something with the Epic Pooh essay and those that think he’s taken one too many tokes on the hookah. Actually, I guess I should be honest and count myself part of the third group who believe he’s right *despite* being a little nuts.

But in regards to not ‘fleshing out’ his story, you honestly couldn’t be any further from the truth – for example, read Howard’s The Hyborian Age here (if you like, to be honest it’s a bit of a slog). It’s his positioning statement for the world of Conan, if you will, outlining what happened for thousands of years before, and a hundred/two hundred or so after. Every bit as contextually rich as Tolkien.

I feel like you are judging Tolkien somewhat by only LOTR. He himself wrote a lot of shorter works, and also had a large range of posthumous publications. I do agree with you that a comparison between them as authors – as opposed to influencers – is unfair.

Howard was a working writer, with deadlines and editorial preferences governing his work. He never went to university, killed himself by thirty and never was never anything but a writer. Tolkien wrote primarily for himself, was a soldier, an academic, an historian and folklorist, lived to his eighties, I think.

As influencers though, I think that Howard’s style is a watermark underlying so much modern fantasy – almost omnipresent – whereas it is Tolkien’s concepts that remain: the elves, the hobbit-like creatures, the myth-y class-filled universe. The battle between good and evil. The stew.

Perhaps I’m not doing Tolkien enough justice because those ideas have been incorporated into some – thousands – of truly shitty novels consequently. And also because so much of his work reflects his background as a folklorist.

Gilmae – good call on the Mieville! You know he’s got a new one coming out this year? I do feel that in Mieville’s collapsing systems there is an implicit promise of a better system, but I don’t think we’ll ever see it, and I wonder if he does, too.

Howard ought to be more popular with the libertarian crowd, focussing as it does on the futility of empires and systems, not world building, but world destroying

What, the people who worship Heinlein? They’re not against civilisation–they merely dream of counter civilisation.

I do find it interesting, also. In that Howard – despite the influence – is still an antithesis of much modern fantasy also, which is at pains to build and consolidate empires or systems, or replace them with better ones.

Howard ought to be more popular with the libertarian crowd, focussing as it does on the futility of empires and systems, not world building, but world destroying. I’m trying to think of modern fantasists with such a bent. Hobb’s Liveship traders perhaps, but her Assasin’s books are the opposite. Martin perhaps?

To find Howard’s inspiration I truly think you would need to go back to Virgil, but also some of the less, hmmmmm, epic classcists, such as Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Livy, etc. Howard was apparently well acquainted with a lot of the classics.

By the way, I forgot to mention, but for those interested, WikiSource has virtually all of Howard’s work available for free, online, so all you have to lose is some time. I recommend Beyond the Black River. Really ticks a lot of typical Howard boxes.

I’ll have to have a look for this Patrick – I enjoy the Conan movies a hell of a lot, and there’s a richness there in some of the scripting and dialogue that you don’t normally get in Hollywood films. “Jewelled sands they trod,” for instance. Or “wore a troubled crown upon a troubled brow.” I suspect these may have been taken from the original Conan books (or at least one of the better written post-Howard books.)

As an added extra, some thoughts from several recent Conan illustrators. I particularly like the Gregory Manchess version.