Lord Of The Rings

This will be my only post on Lord Of The Rings. I haven’t seen any of the movies, nor do I intend to. I do not enjoy this type of fantasy adventure, and I’ll try to explain why. I’ll also try to explain why I enjoy a lot of science fiction, and why I feel the two genres are dramatically different.

I remember reading Lord Of The Rings in high school. My friends loved it. I read it and found it slow, there were too many characters for me to really get into, I didn’t see a lot of character development, and I couldn’t understand what my friends loved about it. However, the thing that I disliked the most about Lord Of The Rings was the introduction of new characters with new powers that dramatically changed the plot. I can’t recall specific examples now, as it has been 30 years, yet I still recall thinking that the plot was starting to get interesting and suddenly a being with new powers appears and the difficult task suddenly changes and morphs into something else. I found that very jarring and lowered my level of interest in the story.

I read and watch science fiction, and in general the above criticisms do not apply. The number of characters is normally a manageable number, and the rules of the science fiction story — the laws of nature, usually — are well established and don’t dramatically change during the story (although there are exceptions). I find plots that have these characteristics, especially ones with character development, to be much more enjoyable.

I don’t really remember talking with my friends in high school about why they found Lord Of The Rings so fascinating. I would love to hear comments about why you enjoy Lord Of The Rings. Try to put some thought into it, I don’t want to hear “Because it’s cool, dude!” Thanks in advance.