[Aiwendil]

We cannot be confident that this is true of most DMs.

True. Nor can we be confident that all authors are meticulous.

So excluding these obviously scientifically based 'hard' science fiction works, my statement still holds.

All right, I will agree that the same impulse that drives fantasy is present in many works of science fiction. The line between hard and soft science fiction is not, however, completely distinct, and I think that, as well as the fantastic element, much 'softer' sci-fi also has something of the 'hard' sci-fi element. But I guess that's really beside the point.

Postmodernism's reaction against modernism is in part disillusionment that modernism failed to deliver the goods it claimed it could by means of its science and its machines.

I think it's a mistake to make too much of postmodernism's reaction against modernism. For all the reaction there's been, the great works of the 'modern' period are pretty much still considered great by postmodernists. And I wonder in what way modernism promised to deliver goods by means of science and machines. Science and machines were never supposed to improve art. As for the real world: there have been both positive and negative effects of technology. But I don't really see a huge change in attitude toward technology between modernism and postmodernism.

The issue of motive and function in art is quite naturally an important issue for anyone with a conscience - the "as long as it's beautiful" argument is arguably both naive and dangerous.

But I don't equate art with morality, in any way (unless a specific work of art deals with morality). You seem to presuppose that I think that it's all right to produce art that causes evil, as long as it's beautiful. This is not my position. Such a work would be good art but it would not be morally good, and it therefore should not be produced.

An example might be the output by some of the talented artists who provided propaganda for the Nazi regime.

There are two very different cases I can think of, as well as two different questions. The first question is: is the artist right to produce this work? The second is: is this good art?

First case: a work is produced that propounds, say, Naziism. The answer to the first question here is clearly 'no', the artist is not right to produce it, because it supports evil. The answer to the second question is also probably 'no', because the political element makes the work non-beautiful.

Second case: a work is produced by a Nazi for the Nazi movement, but the work itself does not propound Naziism. The answer to the first question is still 'no', because the work is being used to support evil. The answer to the second question, however, could very well be 'yes', because the work taken alone is not in any way evil. Now, many people (including me probably) would not be able to appreciate its aesthetic beauty, because we are ill predisposed to it due to non-artistic factors. But it could still be good art.

So I agree that the role of art (if it has a political role at all) is important for the artist to deal with. But art is art.

Even more straightforward is the issue of how to spend your time - to fiddle while Rome burns, as it were, in a timeless bubble of artistic purity, while there are battles to be fought with words and deeds, or to act.

You're assuming a very powerful role for art in terms of politics, and I think you overestimate its capabilities. Very, very few works of art have actually changed the way the world works. Art alone cannot end wars; it cannot heal feuds; it cannot effect political change. It may indeed have a role in doing these things, and if an artist works for a cause, that may be morally good. But it does not necessarily make good art.

But there is nothing wrong with art that is not political, and you cannot condemn a non-political artist for producing non-political art. Many people consider Beethoven's 5th symphony the best or second best piece of music ever written. Yet it has no extramusical meaning; it is merely beautiful.

it seems to me that the fact that another human being uses craft and conscience to create a work of art is absolutely central to art itself.

Suppose (to take an absurd but informative example) it were discovered that Hamlet had been accidentally typed by a monkey. Would you then deem it 'not art'?

. If it is just "the end result" that matters, then you might as well say that a mountain is art, or a cloud.

You might. But personally I think that human artistic achievements tend to surpass natural ones. I find The Lord of the Rings more beautiful than a cloud, for example.

But in effect this takes you to the very postmodern view that 'everything is art', and renders any concept of aesthetics meaningless.

No. There is a huge jump between 'a cloud is art' and 'a can of pepsi is art'. It has to do with aesthetic beauty, the thing that makes art art.

As I said before, the complaint of falling standards and despair at 'how bad things have got' is a pretty consistent feature of cultural commentary since civilisation began!

Very true. But there certainly is force in nostalgia - as seen in Tolkien.

No matter how thoughtful and talented the DM is, taking what are culturally significant archetypes of myth and narrative out of their original setting and mixing them up according to one's personal taste in the context of a points-scoring game - with none of the original (and important) moral aspect or any real spirituality - is in the end a superficial exercise.

Yes, mixing various myths and narratives points toward the 'lowest common denominator'. But this is not necessarily what AD&D (or plain old D&D) is. It is perfectly possible, for example, to take have a campaign set in ancient Greece, and completely consistent with Homeric mythology. It is also completely possible to create one's own world populated with one's own deities that has its own archetypes and spirituality. This is (minus the role-playing) what Tolkien did. Or should we condemn him for mixing up dragons and Dwarves and Elves and pagan deities and Catholic theology?

We stopped reading the classics of literature and started reading - ahem - William Golding's Lord of the Flies.

I see no reason not to study modern literature, nor why such study cannot exist alongside study of the classics. What's wrong with Lord of the Flies? I thought it was actually one of the better pieces of modern literature.