/lit/ - Literature

Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 150 years ago and perfected cave exploration, dungeoneering, pirateering, and a whole host of other things which people to this day struggle to write about in a compelling way. What a difference a good author makes. I just wish there were fantasy authors who tackled these subjects with as much skill as Twain, but really when you separate the wheat from the chaff, all you're left with is a couple Robert E. Howard and N.C. Wyeth stories, here and there a story by Vance, one story by Wolfe, and of course Tolkien. Why is one of the most fundamental aspects of fantasy (exploration) so largely skipped over? Everybody just seems to assume writing about it would be a bore, but all that really says about these authors is that they're just not good enough to make it interesting. I will say I'd rather not read a bad author's attempt at writing exploration, so I guess I should thank them for sparing me.