Confession time. Writing doesn’t come easy for me. There, I’ve said it.

Oh sure, I’ve fooled publishers, readers and myself into thinking I can write well enough (as testified by my novels) and I can sometimes conjure word-counts from out of nowhere with enough coffee in my bloodstream. But those words are too often quickly sacrificed the next morning when I edit what I penned the day before and am forced to start over (I’ve re-written this blog entry three times already). The cold hard truth is that I’ve never kept a journal and my own authors blog is as dry as a bone when it comes to “regular” content. (Make that four…no FIVE times.)

So you can imagine my shock and surprise when asked to join as a regular contributor to the Speculative Faith blog. After all, I’d done nothing to prove myself worthy of this feat.

Don’t get me wrong, I love writing. I just don’t like being put on-the-spot.

With blogging, you don’t have the luxury of time to let ideas germinate and grow. It’s more raw and unpolished than writing a novel. Here, in the blogosphere, I can’t hide behind a story as easily. My words become instantly and permanently public (which may one day get me into trouble).

Blogging, like jazz, can’t be edited. It has no room for second takes. It’s raw, uncut and risky. In other words, all the things we novel writers detest. See, we are recording artists, by nature. We like to make our paintings in the sanctity and security of our own private worlds. When our masterpieces are finished – our children ready for the “real world” – we let them out and cry a little but are always glad to see them find their way and get the recognition they deserve.

“So,” you may ask, “why are you committing to a weekly post for SpeculativeFaith.com?”

Because blogging scares the boogers out of me, and that’s why I absolutely MUST do it. To be perfectly candid, it was a similar fear that convinced me to write novels in the first place. I didn’t think I had the chops to do that either.

In the end, I’ve decided to take up the challenge of weekly blogging because I’m a writer, after all, and we writers are fools, if nothing else. We con ourselves into believing lies about what we can and can’t do all the time. Writing is important to me and I think it’s high time I experienced more of it by adding a bit of this crazy-blogging-word-jazz stuff to my life. Who knows, I might end up liking it.

So this is your invitation to join me every Tuesday for a series of blog posts that are sure to knock your socks off (if I ever get the hang of it). Just one question remains…what on earth will I write about next week!?!

Since I haven’t had a chance to see The Hobbit yet, I decided to bring in someone who has–my nephew Paul D. Miller. He wrote a review of the movie for the website Patheos, specifically for their blog Schaeffer’s Ghost, which provides evangelical commentary on books and films: “We understand it to be part of our worship of God to examine the world around us, to discern what is true, noble, pure, and even ‘lovely,’ and to dwell on these things. That includes, we think, the cultural output of the world we live in.”

Paul D. Miller is an Assistant Professor of International Security Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He received his PhD from Georgetown and his Masters Degree from Harvard. His writing has appeared in Books and Culture, Foreign Affairs, the Washington Post, The City, and elsewhere.

And now, used by permission, Paul’s Review of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, directed by Peter Jackson.

I previously blogged about the surprising darkness and pessimism in J.R.R. Tolkien’s book The Hobbit. That book is often mistakenly called a children’s book, and even though there is nothing childlike about its tales of genocidal war and cynical realpolitik, it will continue to be considered beloved work of fiction no matter how it is labeled. However on second reading I found it to be uneven, episodic, and featuring thin characters with an abrupt end to the dragon.

Watching Peter Jackson interpret J.R.R. Tolkien is like watching a master jazz impresario play Beethoven. The original is classic; the interpretation as a new work is equally brilliant. Jackson’s new film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (the first in a projected trilogy) departs from Tolkien but gains from the divergence. Jackson’s Hobbit is a splendid film.

The film follows (as anyone not hiding in a hole knows…and, come to think of it, even those in holes ought to know too) Bilbo Baggins, a Hobbit of Bag End, on his unexpected adventure with Gandalf the wizard, Thorin Oakenshield the dethroned dwarf king, and his band of a dozen dispossessed comrades on their quest to slay a dragon and retake their homeland.

In Tolkien’s original, the dwarves are driven by greed, vengeance, and honor. They want their gold and they want to kill the dragon—and, as an afterthought, rebuild their lost kingdom. In the movie, Jackson wisely foregrounds the political motive, turning The Hobbit into a story of national liberation by an aggrieved and stateless people. Thorin utters “We must seize this chance to retake our homeland!” or some variation of it a dozen times or more during the movie. These dwarves are soldiers, not mercenaries; Jackson downplays the commercial motive–even suggesting that Thorin’s grandfather’s greed presaged his downfall.

Jackson’s Hobbit is thus a story of returning to a lost homeland. The dwarves are in the position of the heroes of faith of Hebrews 11:13-16. “They were strangers and exiles on the earth…they are seeking a homeland…they desire a better country.” Some of the more poignant moments in the film emerge from the dwarves’ sense of homelessness, of lacking roots, of not belonging. Home is a place of rest, belonging, and family. To lack a home is to be restless and alone—a universal experience that the Bible affirms is true and rooted in our spiritual homelessness in this world. For Christians, the only true home is heaven.

The other effective moments in the film arise from Biblo finding the courage and purpose to join and stick with the quest. Here Jackson is true to the spirit of the book, as Biblo’s growth is central to Tolkien’s original. There is, however, a difference: Jackson front-loads a few of Bilbo’s major crises—necessarily so, since he only handles the first third or half of the journey. In doing so, he actually improves on the book.

In the book, Bilbo pretty much stumbles into the quest with no moment of decision. The reader may be forgiven for thinking that Bilbo is on the adventure simply to please the requirements of the plot. The moment he shows agency comes later in the mountains and in Mirkwood. In the film, Biblo makes a very conscious choice to join the dwarves (after initially refusing to), and as a result we get a much better sense of why he does so and what it costs him. This yields the film’s best lines. Late in the adventure the dwarves complain that he is homesick and not really committed to the quest. He admits to missing home, and then says, “That’s why I’m helping you. Because you have no home. And I’m going to help you get it back.”

I’m stretching a bit here, but Biblo reminded me faintly of Ruth. Ruth was a Moabitess whose mother-in-law, Naomi, was an Israelite. After their husbands die, Naomi embarks on a journey back home to Israel. Ruth chooses to accompany her. She could have stayed home in Moab, but chooses instead to make a new home with Naomi. “For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you,” (Ruth 1:16-17).

Biblo doesn’t quite go that far. But he leaves home and risks his life to help Thorin and the others find a new home—a magnificent picture of loving one’s neighbor. His growing loyalty and friendship to the dwarves is the best part of the film.

If you liked the Lord of the Rings trilogy, you will like this movie. It isn’t quite as well paced (the first hour drags a bit, and the movie feels like it has two endings). Don’t expect pure fidelity to the book: Jackson takes almost as many liberties as his did with The Two Towers. And, if you want to catch all the nuances, it will help if you read Appendix A.III to Lord of the Rings, from which Jackson draws out (and embellishes upon) some sub-plots.

Finally, on a technical note, I saw the film in the full 3D, 48 frames-per-second format. The 3D didn’t do much for me, but the 48 fps was gorgeous. Find a showing in this format if you can.

Second of the Books of the Infinite series

Why speculative above all other genres?

Because speculative fiction tests our morals, ideals, and souls in “safe” yet exciting realms that are separate from our ordinary lives. Speculative fiction is a literary neutral ground. As spec-fiction readers, we can temporarily set aside our own cultures and experience other lives and spiritual mindsets with impunity—often emerging from our adventures with new perspectives. The cultural freedom readers experience in speculative realms adds to fiction’s already-recognized visceral impact as this article from the New York Times verifies.

When we read fiction—any fiction—all of our senses are involved and our brains’ activity is heightened, if the fiction is well-written and descriptive. Active writing loaded with verbs, colorful imagery, and adjectives, will evoke readers’ responses as if they are actually living the scenes themselves.

Seriously. Skillful authors can capture readers and verbally drop them into any scene, then pick at their emotions and senses, often changing their thought patterns, or even their life-long opinions. Scary, fascinating stuff! Am I advocating literary religious mind-control via a race of master-authors? Wow. Um…. No. But this neuroscience-insight ought to give every reader and author pause to reflect on the power of the written word. Simple “stories” have the power to change our thoughts and our lives.

Likewise, our spiritual outlooks can be equally affected by mere stories. If spec-fiction authors interweave faith elements naturally within their worlds’ civilizations and their characters’ hearts, allowing readers to step into the protagonist’s shoes, or even into the antagonist’s shoes, and experience their spiritual lives…the effects are potentially soul-changing, and eternal.

Speculative fiction’s cultural and spiritual mixes offer readers a shared mental playing field, allowing agnostics to evaluate their spiritual journey, while atheists can safely contemplate an “imaginary” Creator without feeling lectured (unless the author has indulged in writing lectures disguised as dialogue and heavy-handed prose), and lukewarm believers can experience their faith in fresh new ways, allowing them to look at “the same old stories” from new vantage points.

While we’re on the subject of lukewarm believers, I’ll just mention the startling numbers of biblically illiterate church attendees. Recent studies indicate that only 19 percent of church attendees read their Bibles daily. And between 30 and 45 percent of churchgoers open their Bibles once a month, or never, with the remaining percentages landing somewhere between the two camps.

Those numbers might seem startling, or incredible, but I’ve attended various church groups (not in my current church!) and watched instructors or pastors stump attendees to silence with basic questions regarding the Scriptures. Who was Ruth? How did God describe King David? Basic stuff. Yet the instructors had to answer their own questions, because their church-going students were shaking their heads in obvious bafflement. My childhood church—which shall remain unnamed—was a case-in-point: My Sunday School instructors handed out Bibles when I was thirteen, but never required us to use them. (Thankfully, I was hungry for the Word and needed no encouragement to read; I routinely borrowed my parents’ Bibles until I received my own.)

Perhaps I digress. However, given these percentages, the average church is a Bible-reader’s mission field, and our average church attendee is more likely to learn about the Bible from fiction than from the Scriptures.

Narnia, anyone?

To sum up: As devotees of speculative faith-based fiction, our genre’s cultural “neutral” ground should inspire us to literally move readers to consider their individual spiritual journeys. If, as readers, we find a great spec-fiction book that sends us digging through the scriptures, or pursuing a more active and honest relationship with our Creator, then we should share that book with our agnostic/atheist/lukewarm-believer friends. (If you are already sharing, keep going!) For those of you who happen to be authors, every word you choose has an eternal effect—therefore, wield your power judiciously and humbly whenever you sit down at your computer and prepare to enter the literary mission field!

Blessings, everyone, and thanks, Rebecca, for inviting me to stop by!

– – – – –

R. J. Larson is the author of numerous devotionals and is suspected of eating chocolate and potato chips for lunch while writing. She lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband and their two sons. Prophet/Books of the Infinite series, marks her debut in the fantasy genre.

To learn more about her and her speculative fiction visit her web site, Pinterest, or Facebook page and follow her on Twitter.

Yes, many science-fiction stories and most false religions — including some Christianity — seem to enjoy flatly contradicting the Bible’s plotline, only for fits and energy-being giggles.

Scripture says God first saves people’s souls or spirits, then their bodies, then the world.

Man says that we as “gods” ourselves can first save our physical world, then our souls by evolving into some kind of spiritoid entities — ignoring the importance of the body.

Last week, commentator D.M. Dutcher called this “transhumanism.” And that’s exactly what it is. Though such beliefs are common to many false religions, the notions we most often see in sci-fi (really they’re fantasy elements disguised as sci-fi) combine classic humanism’s “aren’t humans great” posturing — as seen in many Star Trek episodes — and the “one day we will become energy-based spirit beings” of New Age and “spiritual” religions.

It’s a bait and switch: Yes, humans are great, except for what makes us human.

Now for a more encouraging outlook. Many other stories do honor both the goodness of the physical world underneath the corruption of sin — and more helpfully, honor the idea of a hero who has originated in a higher status and instead deigned to dwell among man.

The most recent example may be the trailer for Man of Steel, the new Superman film series re-launch to release (in the U.S.) on June 14, 2013. If you haven’t seen this trailer, behold.

More than other heroes, Superman is often seen in this pose. I wonder why?

I’m intrigued. It seems the makers are not merely gritty-rebooting Superman. Instead they may be going the direction I’d hoped, not by angst-ifying our hero — which did drag down the otherwise promising Superman Returns in 2006 — but by assuming that he is a truly good man. How would the world see him? Put off by his goodness, would they reject him?

This is an echo of incarnation: a mighty hero becoming mortal, living as one, to save them.

With that as the film’s theme, even if not its main theme, the trailer didn’t even need to jump right into showing “the Christ-figure pose,” as author Jeffrey Overstreet observed.

Why does incarnation truth captivate us? How does it inspire real and imaginative worlds?

1. God-become-man is solidly Scriptural.

Christians are bound to accept that Jesus Christ is both God and man. Too many Scriptures confirm both His human origin and His divine nature. Too many heretics have immediately gone for the doctrinal jugular by challenging Jesus’s true humanity (the Gnostics) or His divine nature (the Arians, and also modern-day cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses).

For those who love Christ the Hero, we have no reason to doubt His words about Himself or the testimonies of those who met Him. “In him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” the Apostle Paul wrote (Col. 2:9). And we do not accept these words only out of some sense of obligation. If we say we love Him, why would we doubt His self-described origin? Why would we even want to divide His “natures,” or treat Him only as divine or only as a man?

2. God-become-Man means we can see the image of God.

For some reason, occasionally I get into more discussions about what a “graven image” is and whether Christians can, for example, make a movie about Jesus played by a human actor. Recently someone mentioned that a Nativity scene includes a “graven image,” versus the second of the Ten Commandments. To that I responded:

If that’s a “graven image,” so was the Face of Christ, the eternal God made flesh. The fact that Christ was, and remains to this day, a Man with an “image,” must be taken into account.

Some will say, “Well, that was a perfect representation.” Yet even after He was gone, the disciples would have tried to recall His physical “image,” and not recalled it “perfectly.”

[A nativity-scene Jesus is] an imperfect representation, [but] based on the precedent of He Himself being made flesh. One must not make a “graven image” of God [the Father] as He is Spirit and should not be reduced that way. However, Christ was a Man, a real Man, and remains so to this day. God all but invites us to imagine Him immediately and personal, while also reminding us of His power, transcendence, wrath, and mystery. He is all of these.

Don’t worship an image like this one. But Jesus really was the physical “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15).

It may be because some people, deep down, doubt that Christ was truly human and the very “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15), that the apostle John (1 John 4:1) told people to test spiritual influences by asking whether they accepted Christ had come in the flesh.

Jesus is both good and heroic, yet appears “flawed.” Just as any good story’s hero. This way He is “accessible.” But there’s a vital difference: Jesus only seemed flawed. He never sinned.

No, I wouldn’t worship a movie-Jesus or a nativity-scene Jesus. I also would not worship a fellow Christian, one who now bears the image of Christ! But if Christ stood before me, I could bow down and fully, unashamedly, and rightfully, with the Creator’s endorsement, gaze upon His Face and worship a Man.

3. Jesus remains God-become-Man to this day.

This is something we may not often speak about, possibly because it hurts our heads. Yet imagine the encouragement, the wonder! Jesus remains the God/Man even now.

Yes, somehow even in the present-day Heaven that could be an incorporeal realm. Even making intercession before the throne of God (Rom. 8:34). Even standing at the Father’s right hand (Acts 7:56). How does He do it? That part we don’t know. Which leads to …

4. Our Hero in the flesh is a Biblically true, God-endorsed mystery.

Pastor and columnist Jared C. Wilson phrased it like this:

When Colossians 2:9 says, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,” we know that the fullness of deity dwelled in fertilized ovum.

Will the Empire State Building occupy a doghouse? Will a killer whale fit inside an ant?

And here we are told that omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, utter eternalness and holiness dwelled in a tiny person. This makes Santa coming down a chimney seem a logistical cakewalk.

“The head of all rule and authority” (Col. 2:10) had one of those jelly-necked wobbly baby heads. The government rested on his baby-fatted shoulders (Is. 9:6).

Such a truth strains our corporeal minds. Have you wondered about how this later worked?

• Being fully God, did Jesus keep His omniscience? If so, how could His human mind keep all that knowledge? Or did He choose not to know some things (Matt: 24:46, Luke 2:52, 8: 45-46; or Heb. 5:8)? Was that part of the divine “emptying” (Phil. 2:7)?
• Did Christ choose to “turn on” some divine superpowers, such as watching Nathaniel long-distance (John 2:48), or knowing about the coin in the fish (Matt. 17:27)?

Scripture doesn’t tell us how. It only assures us, through Christ’s example and in later works of doctrine, that Christ was both fully God and fully Man.

Maybe that’s why Christmas over other holidays brings a unique wonder. Make no mistake, Good Friday and Easter matter. Yet only during Christmas do we celebrate the fact that, as Isaiah predicted in Isaiah 7:14, the Hero actually became God-with-us, Emmanuel.

A week and a half ago, Mike Duran provided a thought-provoking guest post. His contention that fiction is the wrong vehicle for theology generated a wonderful discussion, which I spent way too much of my writing time following. Rebecca LuElla Miller posted a rebuttal a few days later. But I didn’t enter into either conversation because I needed time to craft a careful response.

Which I’ll attempt today.

As Rebecca suggested, the issue might have been muddied, in part, by confusion over definitions. Christian fiction is a marketing label with no substantive use beyond determining a book’s target demographic. Terms like theology and body of doctrine, like beauty, seem to be in the eye of the beholder. So I’ll avoid the fuzzily defined and keep my feet on a solid, common ground.

When God used mortal men to record His supernaturally-breathed word, He chose a variety of personalities. Let’s start with Moses, a man of unrivaled humility (Numbers 12:3) who came to be the revered father of three major world religions.

The multi-faceted David wrote transcendent poetry with one hand and wielded a bloody sword with the other. A renowned leader of his nation, he could only watch, apparently helpless, as his family fell to pieces around him. He may have engaged in automatic writing (1 Chronicles 28:12, 19).

Ezra had the mind of a pragmatic lawyer. Nehemiah was a contentious, wild-eyed zealot (Nehemiah chapter 13, particularly v. 25). Solomon’s legendary wisdom was exceeded only by his monumental foolishness.

Jeremiah tended to cry a lot.

When he wasn’t hallucinating by the river Chebar, Ezekiel was a performance artist (Ezekiel 4 & 5). As a teenager, Daniel was kidnapped and taken to a hostile country, but never lost his cool until confronted by visions.

Amos was a simple country boy with no religious education. Micah, by some accounts, was a punster (Micah 1:10-16).

Luke, a Gentile doctor turned journalist, covered the Jewish Messiah’s shanghaiing of world events.

Peter was a brash fisherman who had to learn everything the hard way.

You get the picture: different personalities delivered God’s message in a variety of ways to various audiences—but the message was the same.

Did Ezekiel tell Jeremiah to man up? (“Dude. I didn’t even cry when my wife died!”) Did Isaiah lecture Hosea about his choice of marriage partner? (“No way, man. God would never tell you to hook up with a prostitute.”) Did Hosea suggest Amos quit being cutesy? Did Ezra take Nehemiah aside and advise him to lighten up?

If so, their discussions weren’t recorded in the Scriptures. Human nature being what it is, though, I expect all these guys caught flak for doing what they did. For being the people God created them to be. Which is probably one reason Romans 14:4 warns us against judging another’s servant.

We Christians aren’t writing scripture these days. Now, we have a different task: to be a city on a hill, a light of hope in a dark, scarey world. We’re lamps fashioned by God’s own nail-scarred hand. We’re made of everyday clay (2 Corinthians 4:6-7) so people will be drawn to the light, not to the receptacle. But not every lamp has the same design. They don’t all sit in one window or broadcast light in the same manner.

Again paraphrasing Paul, one person plants and another waters, but the fruit-production is up to God (1 Corinthians 3:7-8).

Seems to me the question is not whether fiction is the proper vehicle for theology. (Can’t God use any vehicle?) More pertinent, I think, is whether I’m a vessel fit for His use, filled with oil, wick trimmed, chimney clean, and ready to shine His light wherever, whenever, however, and toward whomever He wants to send it.

I’m not saying we can blithely sit at our computers and plink out whatever kind of drivel makes us grin. This is a labor, and we must approach it with diligence, sweat, and prayer. But if our primary focus is our relationship with our Lord and our fitness for His use, I’m pretty sure He’ll point us in the direction He wants us to go.

Here it is: the scene that marks a turning point in the careers of not only Bilbo Baggins, but author J.R.R. Tolkien. For this, unlike any other part of The Hobbit, is one the author himself chose to change — an author-originated “retcon,” to make it better fit The Lord of the Rings.

“Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn’t answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn’t answer, we gives it a present, gollum!”

Wait, what? Gollum actually offers Bilbo the Ring if the hobbit wins the riddle-game? Yes, he does. And readers before The Hobbit’s new edition might also have been confused to find:

• Bilbo still finds the Ring on the tunnel floor, and Gollum still finds that he has lost his precious. But the slimy creature is actually disappointed he can’t honor his bargain.
• Yes, Gollum doesn’t first offer to show Bilbo the way out as his reward if Bilbo wins; he actually offers Bilbo his precious ring as the prize. The alternative is still Gollum eating Bilbo. When Bilbo stumbles into a win, Gollum is more honorable of a loser!
• Fairly, Gollum shows Bilbo out, and Bilbo never even considers killing the creature.
• By that time, Tolkien was more sure that Gollum was an old, wasted hobbit himself, corrupted by his sin amplified by the Ring’s power, so Tolkien included more hints.

(One simple-looking website best shows the changes, with a side-by-side comparison.)

Imagine if a modern filmmaker had made these kinds of changes, as a “gritty reboot” of Gollum. What hue and cry might readers have raised? Rather, Tolkien beat any revisionist to the punch, and in a way that demonstrates something I have slowly realized about the classic fantasy author: in many ways, Tolkien is much more of a “modern” author than people credit him for — especially fantasy fans who like things classical and serious.

Either chapter version well shows Tolkien’s lighter side, even amidst a serious situation.

First, by the way, this also brings this reading-group series only one chapter away from the endpoint of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’s adaptation of the story. Originally the film as a two-parter would have ended with the company’s barrel-borne arrival in Laketown, a clear breaking point in the story (upon which Tolkien himself remarks). Now, however, the story will end at around the “Out of the Frying Pan into the Fire” chapter, coming next.

Oh, and second, expected mostly-positive reviews are rolling in like said barrels. As I had mentioned last week, even the negative reviews only serve to reveal critics’ ignorance or dislike for the story altogether — which can only serve to encourage lovers of Middle-earth.

Chapter 5: Riddles in the Dark

1. Read chapter 5, pages 68 (Deep down here …) to 82 (“… we hates it for ever!”).
2. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. (page 65) Why does the author make this observation? Does it seem to be a spoiler? Have you noticed how in some stories, authors would never say this, but Tolkien does and it seems okay? Why?
3. How does the author keep describing things in the cave, without the sense of sight?
4. Deep down here by the dark water lived old Gollum, a small slimy creature. (page 68) Just knowing “old Gollum” lives in a dark underground pond, what may we imagine already? Even without the movie version, why does Gollum seem so loathsome and well-known?
5. Despite the trolls and goblins, Gollum is arguably the first and most disgusting “villain” of The Hobbit. What do you think about slimy, nasty, tricksy, false “monsters” in stories? Do we need such villains in stories (even stories for children), or not need them — or does the answer vary? (“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” — G. K. Chesterton)
6. What does the Story say about seeing and confronting evil around us? Read Ephesians 5: 6-14. Does this passage seem to encourage not only rejecting sin, but avoiding anywhere sin is? What does it say about exposing the unfruitful works of darkness?
7. Some have said Gollum, or a creature like him, has an appearance of evil. If that’s the case, what about a verse like 1 Thess. 5:22, which says (in the KJV) “abstain from all appearance of evil.” Is this about something that only looks like it could be evil? (More: no, it’s about actual evil that appears — in this context, false teaching in the church.)
8. Does Bilbo fight Gollum in a way similar to how Gandalf recently slew the Great Goblin? Or is the battle fought in another way? Who is more evil, really — Gollum or another?
9. Have you been able to guess any of the riddles? How are they like ours, or different?
10. [Bilbo] must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. (page 82) But Bilbo decides to spare Gollum’s life. How come? Is this some anti-war line? Compare with the rest of the story. What’s different? (Answer: No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Gollum had no sword.) Yet also don’t forget Bilbo’s pity for Gollum.

We’re happy to announce that our new Tuesday columnist here at Spec Faith, starting a week from today, is Christopher Miller, co-author with his brother Allan of the Hunter Brown middle grade/young adult fantasy series (Warner Press).

You might remember that Christopher guest blogged for us not too long ago. If you missed those articles, take a moment now and read “You’re As Relevant As A Wimpy Mustache” and “Writers Slay Dragons (and you should too)”.

By way of reminder, Christopher is the balder half of the Miller Brothers writing duo, and is convinced that “his receding hairline is actually a solar panel for great ideas. While the science behind this phenomenon is sketchy (at best) one thing is undeniable – his mind is a veritable greenhouse of imaginative story ideas.” He’s also the co-author of the newly released novel based on a video game and of a pair of children’s books. He’s listed as one of the top 100 Twitter users in Washington State so you can likely find him there if you want to chat with or follow him – @millerbrother1. Or friend him on Facebook and follow him on YouTube.

J. R. R. Tolkien, 1916

Due to the common use of the same textual sources employed by Tolkien and [Richard] Wagner there are a large list of close parallels between The Lord of the Rings and the Der Ring des Nibelungen. Several critics have made the assumption that the novel was directly derived from Richard Wagner’s operas.

Despite the similarities of his work to the Volsunga saga and the Nibelungenlied, which were the basis for Richard Wagner’s opera series, Tolkien dismissed critics’ direct comparisons to Wagner, telling his publisher, ‘Both rings were round, and there the resemblance ceases.’ According to Humphrey Carpenter’s biography of Tolkien, the author held Wagner’s interpretation of the relevant Germanic myths in contempt.

In the contrary sense, some critics hold that Tolkien’s work borrows so liberally from Wagner that Tolkien’s work exists in the shadow of Wagner’s.

J.R.R. Tolkien, derivative? So those critics claimed.

I find that to be thoroughly ironic because the great accusation against writers of high fantasy today is that their work is derivative, a mere shadow of, you guessed it, J.R.R. Tolkien.

While Tolkien denied taking his ideas from Wagner, he did not hesitant to mention others who influenced him such as William Morris, H. Rider Haggard’s novel She, and S. R. Crockett’s historical novel The Black Douglas.

So what’s the difference between derivative work and that which has come under the influence of another?

Whether Tolkien mentioned it or not, his work bears clear markings of Finnish, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse mythology. Some think there’s even a dose of Celtic mythology, though Tolkien claimed a distaste for those works.

But “derived”? Only the similarities to Wagner seem to have stirred this accusation?

Maybe the easiest way to come at this would be to identify what did not illicit the derivative accusation.

1. Including mythical creatures such as elves and dwarfs.

2. A fictive world pitting good versus evil.

3. Similarities between Hobbits and the “table high” characters in Edward Wyke-Smith’s work.

4. Monsters apparently influenced by such works as Beowulf.

5. A paraphrased Anglo-Saxon poem as an illustration of the poetry of one people group in Tolkien’s fantasy world.

6. An adapted Shakespearean scene.

7. Intentional imitation of Morris’s prose, style, and approach.

8. Borrowed setting elements such as Mirkwood and the Dead Marshes.

If none of these earned Tolkien the accusation of derivative, what then, qualifies as such?

the accusation that a work is derivative seems to be leveled at fantasy more than at stories in other genres. When was the last time, for instance, that you heard someone criticize a romance for being derivative? Never mind that category romances, for years, followed a strict structure that was taught as necessary for the success of a novel.

I suppose, rather than “derivative” these works are considered formulaic, but didn’t they derive from one original work that contained the elements that have since become requisite to romance?

Still, I find it odd that fantasy similarly can’t fall into an easy formula and be acceptable, despite Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Rather, fantasy that cuts too close to an established work is labeled derivative, and this accusation is the kiss of death. It’s a wonder that Lord of the Rings became so successful once the derivative accusation began to swirl around Tolkien.

What exactly was it that brought the criticism, since it wasn’t setting, imaginative creatures, plot points, people groups, poetry, names, prose or style?

I suggest, in the case of Lord of the Rings, critics saw similarities with the central premise in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen:

The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world
– Wikipedia

Add to this that the ring was cursed, enslaving whoever would possess it, and you have strikingly similar central plot points. Discussion swirls around the idea that the similarities exist because Tolkien and Wagner drew from the same influences. Yet some scholars cling to the belief that Tolkien knowingly “borrowed” Wagner’s core concept.

Interestingly, some fantasy is intentionally derivative. I think of Bryan Davis’s Raising Dragons derives intentionally from the legend of King Arthur and Stephen Lawhead’s King Raven Trilogy from the Robin Hood myth.  However, both, in unique ways, twist familiar stories in such a way that they become unique.

The accusation of “derivative” is not used in such instances. Instead, it seems to be reserved for works that either model themselves after another work (which is what Christopher Paolini seems to be accused of) or those that utilize someone else’s unique development (science fiction that employs Star Trek technology and lingo, for instance).

In some cases, it seems as if critics are simply weary of stories with tropes such as good versus evil, at least ones that represent good as good and evil as evil. Normally bad vampires, as good seem to be all the rage, but then the Twilight books are hardly high fantasy.

I guess my point is this: the accusation of “derivative” has been around since Tolkien first made fantasy literature a thing of its own. Does the mere suggestion that a story is similar to some other source mean it does not have merit? I think millions of Lord of the Ring readers would say otherwise.

 
First posted at A Christian Worldview of Fiction November 2009