The Sword of Shannara
by Terry Brooks · first published 1976
30% recommend60% neutral10% critical
A young man and his brother set out on a journey to find the magical "Sword of Shannara". Only the mystical sword can defeat the evil overlord and his minions.
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Wheel of Time (Robert Jordan) Stormlight Archive; Mistborn (Brandon Sanderson) Belgariad and Malloreon (David Eddings) Discworld (Terry Pratchett) Sword of Shannara (Terry Brooks)
on “Amazon to Adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s Globally Renowned Fantasy Novels” ↗…stopped about 5 years ago? I guess life stress and short form social media taking my free time. But I managed to get free of all the apps, and I jumped back in by re-reading some books from my childhood (Sword of Shannara, some bad 60's/70's sci fi, etc), and really enjoyed them. It was enough to shake me out of my lull and now I have an active queue again. My commute and mornings are so much better than scrolling instagram…
on “The Age of Reading Is Over” ↗>Indeed, the mentioning of last year's suggestion of Sword of Shannara has been rendered less painful between us by the recent success. This made me smile. I had forgotten about that book and how much my young self enjoyed escaping into it. I'm guessing from your comment…
on ““Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow” ↗…with him. Player Piano was the only thing close to Hitch-Hiker's Guide I could think of, and his finishing it was how we got to Slaughter-House Five. Indeed, the mentioning of last year's suggestion of Sword of Shannara has been rendered less painful between us by the recent success. Anyway, he really dug Little Brother. So much so he made sure to take it to middle-school everyday and walk out to the bus stop "reading"…
on ““Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow” ↗…using that outline. Terry Brooks might be surprised to hear this, as he seems to have been safe from the notoriously litigious Tolkien estate. Try reading The Lord of the Rings sometime, then read The Sword of Shannara (accurately described as "especially blatant in its point-for-point correspondence" [1]). Again, though, all that's only relevant if you're interested in the actual state of the world. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara#Sword_and...
on “2,919 Movie Pirates Walk Free as BitTorrent Trolling Scheme Falls Apart” ↗It also didn't happen when Terry Brooks reskinned the lord of the rings as "The Sword of Shannara".
on “Cloudflare’s fight with a “patent troll” could alter the game” ↗When you say "ripoff of Tolkien" my mind immediately goes to The Sword of Shannara which even when I first read (and enjoyed) it in grade school had me constantly thinking how much it copied Lord of the Rings.
on “Tolkien’s Mythic Plan for England” ↗> Copyright generally doesn't cover broad plot structure or tropes Copyright doesn't cover specific plot structure either. Compare The Sword of Shannara to The Fellowship of the Ring. You can make a page-for-page copy of a book with the names changed and you're fine as far as copyright goes.
on “Nintendo Is Trying to Patent Some Broad Tears of the Kingdom Mechanics” ↗> A Canticle for Liebowitz for example mostly feels like some kind of fantasy but for the fact that the reader knows it's set in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland. You might compare The Sword of Shannara, which is a character-for-character, scene-for-scene copy of Lord of the Rings, but which is technically set in the postapocalyptic future (it's easy to read the book without noticing this) rather than…
on “My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before” ↗I mean, Terry Brooks did it with the Sword of Shannara. (/s)
on “Our next-generation model: Gemini 1.5” ↗…like it. I bridle a bit at the label "supposed imitation", though. Read them both -- they're exact copies. Even those parts of LotR that are utterly irrelevant to anything are faithfully duplicated in Sword of Shannara.
on “My Brush With a Patent Troll” ↗…reviews that say it's a transparent reskinning of Star Wars. Assuming that's true, the form of an analogy between Eragon and Lord of the Rings would be Eragon : Lord of the Rings :: Star Wars : The Sword of Shannara But that's one of those somewhat-malformed analogies where the relationships cross the :: instead of mirroring each other to either side of it. Like "Shakespeare : Tolstoy :: Romeo and Juliet : War and…
on “Philip Pullman: ‘I had to grow up before I could cope with Middlemarch’” ↗…students at a school for wizards battling great evil may be a not particularly imaginative rip-off and may even invite litigation if it's too close, but I'm guessing it wouldn't win in court. See also The Sword of Shannara and Tolkien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara Creators mimic styles and elements of others' works all the time. Unless an ML algorithm crosses some literal copying threshold, I fail…
on “Lawsuit challenging Stable Diffusion filed against DeviantArt & others” ↗…story arcs? I can see how it could end up as infringement, but also how one could avoid infringement. The issue would seem to be if the original author wishes to sue. As an example, compare Brooks "The Sword of Shannara" with Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings". It is widely accepted that the former is heavily derivative for the latter; in my view essentially being an example of the above broadly similar novel. Yet AFAIK,…
on “Why training AI can't be IP theft” ↗I never read Sword of Shannara but my brother did. It is a nostalgic title for me. :)
on “The Age of Reading Is Over” ↗