The Null Device

Moorcock on Tolkien

Michael Moorcock on the poor state of English fantasy literature, and the similarities between Lord of the Rings and Winnie the Pooh, being steeped in the moribundly conservative values of restraint and conventionality of a nation in decline:

I sometimes think that as Britain declines, dreaming of a sweeter past, entertaining few hopes for a finer future, her middle-classes turn increasingly to the fantasy of rural life and talking animals, the safety of the woods that are the pattern of the paper on the nursery room wall. Old hippies, housewives, civil servants, share in this wistful trance; eating nothing as dangerous or exotic as the lotus, but chewing instead on a form of mildly anaesthetic British cabbage. If the bulk of American sf could be said to be written by robots, about robots, for robots, then the bulk of English fantasy seems to be written by rabbits, about rabbits and for rabbits.

(via bOING bOING)

There are 1 comments on "Moorcock on Tolkien":

Posted by: Graham http://grudnuk.com Tue Dec 24 02:36:55 2002

Yeah, but both were written prior to 1960. What does this prove?