You know, I try not to get involved in debates with people who announce at the outset that they have closed and bolted their brains and will not let mere facts get in the way of their beliefs, but some of this stuff just pisses me off.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>And I wasn't starting a debate, I was pointing out an interesting fact which people might want to notice.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
1) Your
assertion is
not a "fact".
2) No matter how many different ways you phrase it, or how willfully you refuse to understand it, you are accusing JMS of the worst crime possible for a writer - stealing the work of another. If you don't think this is serious, ask Stephen Ambrose.
And you have made this accusation with
zero actual evidence. You have a handful of story elements common to both works (and to a few thousand others) and one or two
deliberate tips of the hat from JMS. Nothing that shows that JMS intentionally copied from Tolkein - anywhere.
You may not understand this, but there is an
enormous difference between saying that one work was influenced by another and that it was
based on another. A movie may be based on a novel or a play. That means it is an adaptation of an existing work. The film
O is based on Shakespeare's
Othello - it is indeed a retelling of a classic story in modern idiom.
But Shakespeare wrote before copyright existed as a legal concept, and even if he hadn't, his works would have long-since passed into the public domain. Tolkein's haven't, and JMS knows this. As a professional writer who depends for part of his livelihood on royalties and residuals from his previous work, he would
not steal from another writer. He is not a thief. He also isn't
stupid, which he'd have to be to attempt such a theft and expect it to pass unnoticed.
Was
Lord of the Rings an influence on his approach to epic story-telling? Of course it was, almost unavoidably.
LotR revived the whole genre of epic fantasy and influenced generations of writers. But it was no more or less an influence than the Arthur cycle, Shakespeare himself (Lear and MacBeth both inform the character of Londo), Greek mythology (G'Kar as Cassandra, Sheridan as both Orpheus and Agamemnon), and the
Lensmen novels of "Doc" Smith.
But these attempts to "prove" that JMS "based"
B5 on
LotR are both ignorant and insulting. They also miss or paper over the obvious differences. Everybody seems to notice that both Gandalf and Sheridan fell from a great height to their apparent deaths. But they all seem to forget that Gandalf never
planned to die in Moria (though he knew there was a risk) and was
dragged to his death by his enemy.
Sheridan, by contrast, went to Z'ha'dum on a
deliberate suicide mission. While he had to
try to resuce Anna (Orpheus in the Underworld) he did not expect to succeed. He expected to die when the
White Star and its nukes crashed into the Shadow city. Sheridan
jumped into the Pit, at Kosh's urging, because it offered the only, slim, hope of
saving his life.
Somebody want to tell me again how these two incidents are "exactly the same"? Sheridan is
not Gandalf with the name changed.
B5 is not
LotR with the serial numbers filed off. It is its
own story, and not "based" on anything but JMS's own imagination.
Regards,
Joe
------------------
Joseph DeMartino
Sigh Corps
Pat Tallman Division
joseph-demartino@att.net
