Tom Shippey
Tom Shippey
Thomas Alan Shippey is a British scholar of medievalism, of medieval literature, including that of Anglo-Saxon England, and of modern fantasy and science fiction. In particular he is widely considered one of the world's leading academic scholars on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien about whom he has written several books and many scholarly papers...
answer book books-and-reading cutting hours reckon three
I reckon it would take you 40 hours to read the first book out loud. Cutting that to three hours -- well, what can you do? The answer is, abridge, ... If you know the story, you can see them skipping.
concerns entirely instantly looking work
If we're looking back in 1,000 years time, his work will be instantly recognizable as 20th century, ... entirely characteristic of that period, and articulating the concerns of the century.
persistence giving luck
While persistence offers no guarantees, it does give 'luck' a chance to operate.
loyalty echoes filters
The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.
trying literature fiction
Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it.