If someone was to create a world in fantasy where the author created the world's own classes of men and wrote the history,mythology,language and glossary of them do you think they would be recognized as a imitater of Tolkien?... even if they have their own storyplot.
No. Frank Herbert did the sme with the Dune series, and was in no way a copier of Tolkein. His work's philosophy is deeper in my opinion.
Unistate
28-03-2005, 02:21
I don't do language - I don't have a good enough understanding of how it works - but the fantasy/sci-fi world I've created (Indeed none of the ones I create) is not meant to imitate Tolkein in any way. The fact that I've created a non-Earth reality for stories to take place in doesn't mean I'm imitating anyone, it means I'm using a particular device to tell stories I would not be able to tell about Earth as it is today, or has been in the past.
This is not to say I don't respect Tolkein's work of course, or even that it doesn't influence me, but I have no desire to imitate him and I have no intentions of doing so. Indeed, it's far more likely my writing would bear similarties in subject and style to Lem, Asimov, Dick, Le Guin, Heinlein, and Aldiss than to Tolkein, and that's not taking into account the things I learn from people such as Bradbury, Orwell, and Huxley.