Re: Patrick O'Leary's _The Gift_


James Nicoll wrote:
In article <1139907939.203476.222700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
htn963 <htn963@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

sigidunum@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

Tolkien opened up a deep vein of ore, and it
hasn't been played out yet.

That's a bizarre comment in an otherwise smart (if wordy) review.
Tolkien's mine has long tapped out, and fool's gold run rampant. The
only field where his schtick is still viable is Dungeons and Dragons.

Although there were enough elements lifted from JRRT to get
the attention of JRRT's lawyers, the material that is closest to
Gygax's heart is from this side of the Atlantic, printed on pulp
paper. It's fairly clear that his library had books by Fritz Leiber
and Jack Vance in it (The D&D magic system is clearly very closely
modelled on the one in DYING EARTH).

I am aware that D&D was heavily influenced by other sources than
Tolkien. I'm just saying that D&D is the place now where Tolkien
themes aren't tiresome and self-parodying. Heck, the review
exemplified that even ironic takes on subverting Tolkien are tiresome.


Interestingly, although Gygax's own books are awful, the
worst novels from TSR weren't his fault but a peculiarity in the
Random House system and some odd policies at TSR after Gygax*
was ousted. Random House apparently forgot to return unsold
TSR books for quite some time, allowing them to build up in their
warehouse. This looked to TSR like they had close to 100% sell-
through, so there was no incentive to avoid odd policies such
as dropping any author whose fans asked for them by name**.

Of course, what eventually happened is that RH returned
all the unsold books at once, at which point TSR fell over dead.

I'm surprised TSR didn't sue Random House. You would have thought
there would be an obvious clause in their contract that books not
returned within a certain time are deemed to be accepted as
sell-throughs.

--
Ht

.