Tolkien's Fantasy World Too True To be Fantasy ?

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Originally Posted by doc_bean

Still the worst fantasy I ever read (I swear I read better videogame fanfiction than that) was the first book in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, it has to be read to be believed, but I won't recommend doing that to anyone.

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I guess you haven't read his last couple of books then ~D

I actually thought the first two books of the series were OK (although Goodkind seems to have a lot of - hopefully suprressed in real life - sadism).

Some of the later books in the series are actually just a 500+ page version of
"GAH! Communism! GAH!"

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Originally Posted by LeftEyeNine

And in newspapers, about a month ago or so, some British journalists (I think 3 of them) were answering questions from the readers. And some claimed that the Orc race was inspired by Turks.
Strange that we usually get "roasted" now we are claimed by some to be tasting worse than rubber.. Orc flesh? Yuck ! ~D

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I've never heard this before. On what did they base the idea that the Turks were Tolkien's inspiration for Orcs? Aside from both peoples living "in the East", I fail to see any parallel there.....


Oh, and about Tolkien: No, he was not the first author to write about elves, dragons, dwarves, and whatnot. But he was the first to weave all those elements into one grand tapestry to tell an epic story. The Lord of the Rings books were not the first works of fantasy fiction, but it is the benchmark against which all other fantasy pieces have since been measured.

Only the Bible has outsold it.
Sorta says something really. Move over bible. It is probably the greatest book of the 20th Century

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Originally Posted by Ser Clegane

I guess you haven't read his last couple of books then ~D

I actually thought the first two books of the series were OK (although Goodkind seems to have a lot of - hopefully suprressed in real life - sadism).

Some of the later books in the series are actually just a 500+ page version of
"GAH! Communism! GAH!"

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I agree the last one might as well been Gah! Liberals and socialists can't see the evil so they are evil too! Gah!

I actually enjoy the series, but I read it for fun distraction from reading Cisco documentation :dizzy2:

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

That is why I find nearly all fantasy so utterly boring. It isn't fantasy at all, just a watered-down version of some mediocre writer's idea of reality. Every dwarf, every robot, every elf is another testimony to the author's lack of talent and imagination.

Y'all may hang me now. ~:handball:

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keep in mind that Tolkien was not writing afaik a FANTASY book. rather he was trying to write something for the english people that was lacking in their history, that is, a mythological history filled with great deeds and legends.

also tolkien had a number of things in his life that affected his writing etc. one of these was a pet theory that is if the saxons had had horses they would not have lost the battle of hastings. therefore you have your saxon lookalikes (the Rohirrim) mounted on horses. you also have Tolkiens dream about a great wave washing over and sinking an island. this is referred to by numenor (read: atlantis) tolkien also had a theory that he was descended from some survivors (who had passed the dream down to him) of atlantis (read: gondorians). tolkien even references his dream directly in the LOTR with Faramir. (given in the movie to eowen). even shelob (etymological tangent she=female lob=spider not very creative really, but a very good feel and sound) had a real life counterpart, tolkien was severly frightened while he was a child in South Africa by a large spider (tarantula iirc).

thats all i can come up with off the top of my head i'll prolly post more later.

0ct

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

That is why I find nearly all fantasy so utterly boring. It isn't fantasy at all, just a watered-down version of some mediocre writer's idea of reality. Every dwarf, every robot, every elf is another testimony to the author's lack of talent and imagination.

Y'all may hang me now. ~:handball:

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True when you compare the talent and imagination that modern media and political spin doctors put into their output it does make fantasy writers look like hacks... ~:cool:

Martok,

This is the news from one of the most well-known and respected papers of Turkey :

http://www.milliyet.com/2005/07/07/dunya/adun.html

The headline says "The Most Racist Resemblance"

The full translation is :

" It is claimed that J.R.R. Tolkien's eternal trilogy of which screen adoption was a huge success - Lord Of The Ring's land of evil is Turkey and the servants of the Sauron the lord Of darkness - the Orcs are the Turks. The British newspaper Daily Mail chose an allegoric way by headlining the claim about the Lord Of The Rings -of which first one of the series was published in 1951 - as "Tolkien's Orcish Delight" referred as Turkish Delight.

The claim was published in the paper's page where the readers' questions were replied, upon a question about where Mordor was located. Daily Mail journalists James Black and Charles Legge indicated that the word "Mordor" was formed from the old English word "morthor" which meant "fatal sin" or "murder". The reply included the following claims :

Mordor - Turkey : When you overlap Tolkien's Middle Earth map and the map of Europe, you can notice the very close similarities between the signs of climate, fauna and the zoology of the two. Mordor, the reign of the lord of the darkness Sauron is the equal of Turkey in both shapes and locations. The seas around three edges of Turkey are swapped as mountains around Mordor. Harad is the Arab lands.

Black Language - Turkish : Above the fact that Mordor being really similar to Turkey and the Anatolia, the Orcs' language - the black language - has similarities with Turkish. The enslaved people around the Nurnen Sea may be the Armenians and the Nurnen Sea being the Lake of Van.

Pelargir - Istanbul : Shire where the Hobbits reside may be the middle of England. Gondor may be located in Italy and Greece which have borders to Mediterranean Sea and Rohan be in the forests of Eastern Europe. Minas Tirith - the capital of Gondor may be replaced with Venice and Gondor's second biggest city Pelargir may be Istanbul..."

That is the extract from Milliyet dated July 07 2005.

P.S. If there are wrong translations with according to the proper nouns used in the book (i.e. is the Orcish language called black language really?) . I did not ever read the book.

GC,

I did not cry out anything. In the first page I neutrally added in one of my posts about the news claiming Orcs being Turks - you may want to look at the topic again "Tolkien's Fantasy World Too True To be Fantasy ?"

I actually am totally indifferent with such things. Martok said that he did not see such news and I pointed the resource. That's all.

I should repeat that the topic's sole intention is only discussing about Tolkien's affections. Many dear patrons wrote down something - what he may have brought into action from reality. So that I wanted to add something by myself that was published in Turkey.

The probable affections of Tolkien presented by the patrons are quite interesting and I favor the idea that Tolkien is affected with the war times. The ring representing the Industrialization was a very good comment, for example.

You can not find me "demonizing" Tolkien's great piece of work in this topic. Here's what I said against some members thinking that Tolkien's works were sub-par :

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Well, LOTR fiction was the first one that was a seriously fantasy story, wasn't it ?

The common imaginary races like Elves, Orcs and so on are brought to life by Tolkien, aren't they ?

That's what I hear from the fans of Tolkien. And if that's true, at least he deserves credit for creation that lasts for a long time and usually used.

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If the news is true, only British friends can prove the news being true, then they are those journalists being pathetic, there is no need to demonize anyone. I must repeat, anyhow, I am indifferent with this news.

I sense no offense dear GC, but please distinguish me from nationalistic freaks who have no ground or idea for their cause. I am generally driven to explain intentions of every single one of my posts whether it is about Tolkien or about Islam. Please take my good temper in account from now on.

Regards..

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Originally Posted by AdrianII

That is why I find nearly all fantasy so utterly boring. It isn't fantasy at all, just a watered-down version of some mediocre writer's idea of reality. Every dwarf, every robot, every elf is another testimony to the author's lack of talent and imagination.

Y'all may hang me now. ~:handball:

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You may want to try some of the books inspired on Faerun, those are the best fantasy that i know. A whole world with all language story and characters just like LOTR, but it's far from being cliche, and no page tries to give a message, it only tells a story, though that's what i felt.

-> Haradrim - real- Hamitic People

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Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Early interpretations of the Bible led many Western scholars to believe that all of humanity was descended from Noah. Chapters 9 and 10 of the Book of Genesis deal with the branching off and splitting up of Noah's sons into the world, this is open to interpretation, but the name of Cush, Ham's eldest son, means 'black' in Hebrew. Noah curses Ham and Canaan, Cush's brother, saying that he and his descendants would be a "servant of servants". Hebrew scholars used this passage to justify the Israelite subjugation of Canaan. These scholars, working around the 6th century AD, introduced the idea that the sons of Ham were marked by dark skin.

In the middle ages Christian scholars picked up on the idea. Again, the depiction of the "sons of Ham" as cursed, "blackened" by their sins suited the ideological interests of the European elite; especially as the principal enemy of Christendom was Islam, which dominated North Africa. Despite the fact that Islam originated with the Semitic Arabs, European imagery often stressed the blackness of the Islamic Moors and associated them with the 'cursed' sons of Ham. Later, with the emergence of the slave trade, it justified the exploitation of a ready supply of black African labour.

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-> Orcs - real - Grendel / Fomorii / Tommies

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Originally Posted by Wikipedia

In Beowulf, ll: 112,the zombie-like Grendel's race is described as Orc-néas, which seems to mean "corpses of Orcus." Orcus, in Roman mythology, was an alternative name for Pluto, Hades, or Dis Pater, god of the land of the dead. The name "Orcus" seems to have been given to his evil and punishing side, as the god who tormented evildoers in the afterlife. Like the name Hades (or the Northern Hel, for that matter), "Orcus" could also mean the land of the dead. Tolkien derived his 'Orcs' from this passage in Beowulf. (See below.)

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With Grendel beeing the Prototype of the Orc as an individual, he created a whole species for the single Monster appearing in Beowulf. The society of Orcs is created by example of the Fomorians, as beeing hostile to the Gods and beeing organised in Armies to fight in Battles the second rally for Mag Tuireadh.

However with the social component of Orcs he created them after example of the Tommies. As beeing forced to keep up fighting and beeing somehow acting like Apparatschiki, he moved his negative impressions of the first worldwar into the Orcs.

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Originally Posted by Tolkien in 1937

"We were all orcs in the Great War"

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Orcs can't be Turks. No horse archers. Their military is totally different from them, they suck at fighitng (thus can't be Turks), and I think that they represent far more the evils of any group of people, rolled into one.

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P.S. If there are wrong translations with according to the proper nouns used in the book (i.e. is the Orcish language called black language really?) . I did not ever read the book.

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Eh, it might be mentioned somewhere in the appendices. It's not officially called "The Black Language", though.

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Originally Posted by LeftEyeNine

P.S. If there are wrong translations with according to the proper nouns used in the book (i.e. is the Orcish language called black language really?) . I did not ever read the book.

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http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/

-Orkish
-The languages of the Orcs

A general term for the jumble of languages used by the Orcs, composed from corrupted borrowings from other languages of Middle-earth. The variations in Orkish between different tribes and types of Orc were so great that it was often useless for communication, and so a standard language was necessary. Sauron devised his Black Speech for this purpose in Mordor, but in practice the Common Tongue was more normally used.

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Originally Posted by nokhor

one of my issues with the conventions of fantasy is that in every major work, the freedom-loving chivalric people with knights are always in the west, always bounded by a great western ocean, the 'boundless hordes' and darker skinned peoples are always in the east/south, the viking-esque peoples are always in the north. the steppe peoples are always in the east etc. which i just find silly.

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It's just like being in Britain then...

Ever wondered why the chivalric knights etc are generally on an island too?