The Quests of Middle-earth - Page 9
© Michael Martinez
Of course, one of the criticisms levelled at modern story-telling is that so much of it reads just like a gaming adventure. Heck, many of us have written down our adventures. One game I played in for about 7 years had a continuous log contributed to by many people (although it didn't occur to us to start one at first, so when I wrote the first chapter I had to figure out what had happened from bits and pieces which said things like, "Gwindor, 1 goblin"). You can find gaming logs on the World Wide Web. And you can find them in the bookstores. Literally. Remember Gary Gygax's Gord the Rogue books? They came straight out of an AD&D adventure, according to Gygax's own foreword in the first book.
TSR made quite a sub-genre in producing its Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books. I gave up trying to collect them years ago, there were so many. The Dragonlance books stated out very weakly, as the authors developed their skill. There were even sections where they described whole adventures as "interludes".
I would have liked to read about how the adventurers found the dragon and rider encased in ice, thank you very much. The weak writing wasn't as bad as, say, Terry Brooks' first big novel, The Sword of Shannara (when one of the twins goes over the cliff in the obligatory company sacrifice, many readers are about ready to hang the author -- never mind when the dwarf single-handedly routs a whole bunch of bad guys).
I have often advocated the idea of seeing Middle-earth expanded by new stories. And yet I have to admit that as much as I stand up for the principle of keeping alive the tradition of telling Middle-earth stories, the thought of seeing nearly any living author today write more Tolkien stories makes me cringe. And there are many very good authors whose books I've enjoyed. But I don't believe they would be able to refrain from introducing themes and character traits which don't even vaguely resemble Tolkien's heroic ideas.
So, Sam would be caught up in his personal problems with Rosie, Pippin would be dealing with the conflicts in his family, wondering if his sister Pearl would be beaten to death by angry mobs before he gets home, Merry's conflicts with his father would have to be resolved through his relationship with Theoden, Treebeard would have to control his raging hormones, there would be a lot of profanity and sexual innuendo rolling off the tongues of Eomer and his rustic soldiers, and the guys of Gondor would all be arrogant, mysterious proto-monarchs scrambling for power amid the ruins of their decaying empire.
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