Tennyson, Anyone?

I've elsewhere mentioned how I am alone in geekdom in not thinking that highly of George R.R. Martin's well-regarded "A Song of Ice and Fire" fantasy series, adapted by HBO under the title of the first book of the series, Game of Thrones.

Very little about the first book interested me, and the constant proclamations by its fans that the series was "fantasy for adults" and far more realistic in its depiction of things like incest, inhumane treatment of humans and political skulduggery did little to re-engage my interest. The ever-expanding page count of the series helped not a bit either.

Comes now one Ari Samsky, a writer and contributor to Splice Today, and points out that everything people seem to think is great about Martin was also a feature of Alfred Lord Tennyson's poetry, specifically his Idylls of the King, a retelling of the legends of King Arthur based on Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d' Arthur, done in a series of narrative poems.

Samsky compares several passages of Idylls to passages in Thrones, and with tongue firmly in cheek, pronounces Thrones superior, based on the observations of many breathtaken reviews singing its praises.

I would quibble with one point of Samsky's analysis and say there is an area in which Martin is probably superior to Tennyson. As a fellow Northwestern alum, I would suspect that Martin understands the evil of the menace to all that is decent, which lurks in Champaign, Illinois. Tennyson, to my knowledge, was neutral in the battle against Illini communism, and that is one fight on which, my friends, one cannot remain neutral and call oneself a thinking and feeling person.