ll right, I'm guilty.
For years, I refused to read Lord of the Rings. I couldn't even claim lack of opportunity: The trilogy was all around me, in every bookstore I visited from the age of 10 or so. Even the infamous "pirated" Ace Books edition, the one that triggered the use of the word "authorized" on the Ballantine (now Del Rey Books) volumes all these years.
Almost 30 years ago, a beautiful young woman even gave me a copy of the trilogy, a handsome box set of trade paperbacks. That box went with me from my college dormitory to a series of dismal apartments in two states, to several houses.
Without being read. Without being opened.
It wasn't until the summer of 2001 when, faced with a short family vacation and the growing awareness that the feature film version of book one, The Fellowship of the Ring, was headed my way, that I took volume one out of the box, stuck it in my suitcase, and started reading it while listening to the waves crash on the island of Catalina.
I was entranced. I was engaged. I was lost in Middle-earth, just like millions of other readers going back to the 1950s.
Why had I deprived myself of this wonderful adventure? What kept me from reading The Lord of the Rings for all those years? Why had I resisted?
Because I am a sci-fi snob.
When sci-fi was still the real deal
See, the problem with Tolkien's work was this: It was fantasy. It was about magic and fuzzy creatures that lived in a world that never was.
Sci-fi, on the other hand, was about engineering and politics and astronomy, and human beings dealing with realistic aliens in a world that might be.
Mandatory sidebar: We have already discussed the undeniable truth that much of what looks like sci-fi is really fantasy, or even that all sci-fi is really fantasy. Nevertheless, I approach a movie about aliens from Arcturus with different expectations than one dealing with trolls from under the olde bridge.
That is, to me, fantasy was made-up crap while sci-fi was the real deal.
It didn't help that as I read my way through Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Niven, Sturgeon, Le Guin, Herbert and company, that the bookshelves began to groan under the weight of books that were explicitly identified as "in the tradition of Tolkien."
Which is to say, more dang elves or trobbits and magic whatchamacallits on quests across medieval England—excuse me, a fantastical landscape.
No, I would rather have watched the 10th re-runs of any episode in the Irwin Allen collection (why isn't that on DVD, hmmm?), from Lost in Space to Land of the Giants, than waste my time on elves.
I also resented fantasy.
I watched my good friend, the noted sci-fi, horror and fantasy novelist George R.R. Martin, return to writing books (after a sojourn in Mordor—I mean, Hollywood) under these circumstances:
George had three novels he wanted to write. One was a historical horror novel much like his chilling Fevre Dream (1982), one was a sci-fi novel, and the third was the beginning of a fantasy trilogy.
He showed the proposals and samples to his agent, asking the question: Which of these will sell? Or, in a way, which of these has an audience?
The agent didn't hesitate. The fantasy trilogy was chosen.
The agent sold that trilogy in the U.S. and U.K. for a lot of money. When the books began to appear—and they are A Game of Thrones (1996), A Clash of Kings (1999) and A Storm of Swords (2000)—they also began to sell.
Publishing and fantasy being what they are, the trilogy has morphed into a story stretching over six books—no doubt to the enjoyment of George's readership.
Happy as I am for George, it was yet another reminder of the fact that fantasy readers outnumber sci-fi readers at least 10 to one.
The lingering lesson of filmed fantasy
It gets worse. Some years ago, at the very beginning of my career as a pundit, I looked at the landscape of sci-fi and fantasy television and opined that a heroic fantasy series wouldn't work. I forget the reasons now, and I'm not inclined to re-examine them. The point is, I was pretty dismissive.
The first Hercules TV movies starring Kevin Sorbo were being filmed as I wrote those words. And I knew that.
I just ignored the likelihood that if the reading audience for heroic fantasy was several times larger than that of "pure" sci-fi, the potential television audience for a Hercules or Xena would dwarf that of Star Trek.
Now, this audience may not have been five times as big or even twice as big, but there was no reason for me to conclude that it would be smaller.
I was such a complete sci-fi snob that I lost the ability to think clearly.
I enjoyed Peter Jackson's Fellowship of the Ring. I enjoyed The Two Towers (I read the novel, too) even more. I'm looking forward to reading and seeing The Return of the King with great eagerness.
What happened? Well, maybe I'm older and mellower. Over the past few years I've found myself reading and watching all kinds of things I wouldn't have tolerated in the past.
Or ...
My sci-fi mind (which is like the reptile mind, only less useful) has grown fascinated with the idea that in millenia past there were a number of human-esque races. You and I are descended from the Cro-Magnon, who, we now suspect, actually co-existed with the Neanderthal for several thousand years. There is also archaeological evidence of a third distinct race that fits neither Cro-Magnon or Neanderthal, but also seems to have been alive at the same time. And then you have tantalizing quasi-historical bits like this from Genesis, chapter 6, verse 4: "There were giants in the earth in those days."
Which days? Tolkien's days, maybe.
Tolkien's vision of Middle-earth—minus the magic rings—seems more and more plausible as a mythological portrait of a world that actually existed just after, or possibly just before, the most recent Ice Age.
So, yes, somehow I've managed to recast a fantasy concept as sci-fi. That's one way sci-fi snobs adjust to stubborn reality.
Oh, that girl who gave me the gift of Tolkien? I married her.
I may be a snob, but I'm not stupid.
Michael Cassutt recently finished writing a novel (Tango Midnight, forthcoming from Forge) that not only isn't fantasy, it isn't even sci-fi. Just this morning he was thinking that maybe his next prose work should be a trilogy in the tradition of Tolkien.
