The detachment we feel from an Aragorn is greater than that we feel from a Huck, but there's plenty in both cases. Especially in period pieces like the latter (Tolkien's conceit, after all, was that his was simply a much older period piece and, within that conceit, non-fiction.) If an author sugarcoats his analysis, even criticism, of humanity and its members by making them superficially inhuman while retaining everything essential, and then his reader fails to catch it, that's a failing in the reader rather than the author or genre. For a year or two I've played with the idea of a story whose meat is the various divisive bigotries trying to destroy this and other countries from the inside--but presented by demihumans in a fantasy world because no one will be offended if you use "digger" as a slur for Dwarves, but everyone will know the word you deliberately didn't use. There's even a quasi-political religion pushing it all because they've forgotten their own precepts, but I needn't fear any real religion complaining much because to call it an indictment requires they identify with it, which is self-indictment.

It's an idea, and one I've only broached due to time constraints: I am not Tolkien, even in my wildest dreams. But jh makes a very valid point, IMHO. Usually speculative fiction is little more than escapism (as famously alluded to in the introductory letter to most paperback copies of TLotR today.) Sometimes, however, you find a true master who does more than spin an engaging yarn: He has something worthwhile to say, to share. That's why they teach speculative fiction like The Once and Future King in schools, why the College Board didn't bat an eye when I wrote an AP English essay on TLotR, despite their clearly stated requirement that I could address the subject using any "work of recognized literary merit."

I agree, FWIW, that a dedicated OF Board would be good in future. I haven't been over here much (something slowly changing) but confess I was a bit confused when I saw a thread on Treasure Island (and let me hasten to add I thought the thread itself was fine, the location just struck me as odd): That's not really fantasy or SF, so what's it doing here? And then I realized it was kind of homeless and looking for any port in a storm. Yet you know better than I why it's like that for now. I was among those who feared moving away from a WoT focus would dilute RAFO's focus too much, make it a generic site indistinguishable from thousands of others, even as others feared WoT lacked the enduring interest to populate RAFO in the long term. It feels as if a compromise was struck, and if not everyone is entirely happy about that, that's how compromises usually work. You doubtless know better than I, but I strongly believe there will be an equivalent to OF one day and that encouraging that belief is more than a sop to those who crave one.

In the interim, there's nothing wrong with this. People aren't losing the SF/Fantasy threads in between the "straight" fiction ones or vice versa. There's plenty of room for both on one board right now, and when that ceases to be so I'm sure there will be at least one more board. A lot of speculative fiction is just pulp fiction, true--but y'know what? That's true of most fiction. SF/Fantasy doesn't get any more or less great writers than any other field. Remember there was a time barely a century ago when "novel" was a dirty word in literary circles, something your dowager aunt read (or so you told your friends. ) For my money we should be more concerned with content than genre.