Did Lord of the Rings Have a Negative Influence on Fantasy?

[Michal]

We weren't "forced to endure" any of the books. There was always fresh and original stuff in fantasy during any decade post-Tolkien, you just had to look for it.

Heck, you can fill up an entire library with Charles de Lint alone, and outside of his first few efforts, none of them read like Tolkien xeroxes at all.

[J.J.]

Ah, the 'central conundrum' of contemporary fantasy. I would separate the question in two: what happens with the stylistics and what happens with the plot.

As per stylistics, yes, the tolkienan mold became very hard to break, and very few fantasists have been able to get away from the depicion of a medieval Merry England. (try Scott Lynch and Guy Gavriel Kay for some interesting italianized fantasies). However, I think that such situation does not come from Tolkien himself, but rather from the ones that 'rediscovered' him in the 70s and created games such as D&D. As, if you realize, before that age there were no stylistical copies of Tolkien. Shannara was published in 1977.

Now, regarding the plot, you speak about the hero's journey, which predates Tolkien and goes back as long as humanity has existed. Joseph Campbell explained it very well in his seminal work The Hero With a Thousand Faces. And the matter of spawning several look-alikes is as old as literature itself: try thinking of the Eneid versus the Iliad and you get my point, or the paradigmatical case when speaking about medieval fantasy: The Amadis of Gaul is the first commmercial literature that spawned ripoff after ripoff after ripoff in the early 16th century.

I don't think that taking away the hero's journey, the dash, the dare, the playfulness and the sense of amazement is an achievement, or even is helpful to the genre.

Now, if you want to speak about truly breaking the mold, a knowledgeable person in Fantasy will usually redirect you to the The Gormenghast Novels or the Fafhrd books.

So, I can consider the old and venerable JRR acquitted.

[Rick]

Blaming LotR for the lazy writing and cut and paste plots of some writers seems silly to me. It's not on Tolkien's responsibility for that anymore than it's the responsibility of the Hunger Games author for the copycat novels that followed that series or the tons of zombie bandwagoning novels that are trying to cash in on that craze.

You know who's responsible for those authors (aside from the authors themselves)? The people who rush out and buy every 'Dark Lord Must Not Get Object of Power' novel. The people who buy the copycat "Plucky Teen Hero Who Opposes the Evil Government" books. The people who grab the latest "Zombie Apocalypse, no, really this is different" hack job.

There was a lot of LotR spam in the 70s and 80s because the series found a new audience in the late 60s and 70s and what happened then was not a whit different than what happens with zombies, steampunk, wizard schools etc now. A few quality novels in the same vein get attention, many more second rate writers submit their knockoff and because people all want to read about kids in a wizard school or zombies etc publishers shove them at us... because we collectively buy them.

[Ben]

LoTR and Star Wars have made a huge impact on many writers, readers and marketers and yet each represent only a tiny amount of the speculative fiction that has been written over the last 100 years.

There are many influences and origins of the fantasy genre and many important innovators such as William Morris, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance etc.

Most books are derivative, in-imaginative and not all that interesting. It is always the challenge, whatever the genre of seperating the wheat from the chaff.

Many writers and publishers push any trend to the point most of us get sick of it (tolkeinesque fantasy, zombies, distopias, urban fantasy/ paranormal romances focused around defanged vampires and domesticated weres etc.) but the field is much broader than is often credited and there are many quality writers and works to be found therein.

It is true that in the field of fantasy Tolkien is one of the most imitated but there has always been plenty of variety around. Also I see no harm in other writers working in similar settings that Tolkien does and doing different things with them. For all LoTR has its many strength it also has its weaknesses and limitations. Even aside from issues around the pacing and world building diversions there are just far more tales that can be effectively told in that type of fantasy world than Tolkien was able and interested in telling.

[Kevin]

Killian wrote: "I'm not saying that good, original books weren't published at this time. Great authors like Zelazny, Vance, Moorcock, de Lint as you mentioned and many others did write some really original stuff, but overall in the 70's and 80's there was a LOT of shoddy, LotR-esque books being churned out. Also, as a by-product of the poor characterization in these books (Sword of Shannara, Magician etc) we were bombarded with 2D heroes for years, even if the plot was totally different from Lord of the Rings. Examples of this include the Wheel of Time (which I love, but the characters, well, bar about three they are awful), Magician, Legend and the insanely awful Inheritance saga, among many others.
While good stuff was still written after Tolkien, I think that there was more really, really bad stuff.
"

There is always more mediocre stuff of anything in any creative field than there is truly good stuff. If something new catches on other creators will copy it; whether it's because they genuinely love the original and let it influence their own work or because they're just riding the wave to financial success. (IMO people are much to cynical towards motivations and the former is a lot more prevalent than the latter). This is true in music, in movies, heck the entire principle of "art movements" operates on this principle, so it's hardly something unique to epic fantasy, and as Rick pointed out it's also not any one person or thing's fault that that stuff rises to the top. Blame capitalism ;).

[B.E.]

I agree with Rick.

You can't blame LotR for the hordes of spam that followed. The spammers would have spammed whoever got successful. Everytime something draws an audience, people rip if off (whether consciously or not), and readers buy it because they're looking for a taste of that original feeling.

LotR didn't just show people how epic fantasy could be... It took a cult genre and made it widely popular. We owe everything to Lord of the Rings, imo, as much as I hate the knock-offs.

[Darren]

I blame Hitler for Dark Lord-itis. See what I did there?

[Scott]

Joaquin wrote: "Ah, the 'central conundrum' of contemporary fantasy. I would separate the question in two: what happens with the stylistics and what happens with the plot.

As per stylistics, yes, the tolkienan mo..."

Your answer, particularly bringing in Joe Campbell, is exactly what I was thinking as I was reading the OP and planning my own response. Tolkien was creating a new mythology, the fact that other authors attempt to do the same thing with varying degrees of success should certainly not be seen as a fault of the professor's.

[Scott]

Darren wrote: "I blame Hitler for Dark Lord-itis. See what I did there?"


Ugh, someone had to prove Godwin's law even here?:(

[Andrew]

To echo Kevin's comments, I don't think that this is about Tolkien or even about fantasy. It happens in every medium and every genre. As a British teenager in the 1990s I watched a glorious new wave of guitar bands inspire a tidal wave of repetitive,tedious knock-offs since lost to the depths of the bargain bins.

Tolkien inspired people to create vast worlds, to portray epic journeys. Though some writers had taken fantasy seriously before him, he's probably made the biggest difference in getting academia and publishing to treat it seriously. It may have created a lot of mediocrity, but it's also inspired much awesomeness, and I consider that a win.

[Pat]

I stopped reading fantasy in the 80s because I was sick of reading the same story over and over again and have only started reading it again because writers like Abercrombie, Lynch, Martin etc...

We shouldn't be blaming JRRT for that though... we should be blaming the lazy writers and publishers who's main focus was shifting copies.

[Gene]

I respect the seriousness of Killian's question, but Tolkien's "negative effect" is no worse that that of any other writer who had a seminal effect on a genre. By the same token you could blame Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler for hundreds of rote mysteries and detective stories, or blame STAR WARS for dozens of mediocre space-operas influenced by its popularity.

I'm not sure there's any great influence that doesn't breed a lot of imitators, good, bad, and indifferent. I must admit that probably most of Tolkien imitators are less interesting than, say, the writers who tried to emulate Doyle and Chandler. At the same time, IMO there's nothing wrong with enjoying an occasional D&D fantasy. Not every story was meant to re-define the whole genre.

[[deleted user]]

Whether Tolkein had a negative effect on fantasy depends on how you look at things, in my opinion.

It depends on how you approach it. If you look at it from an intellectual or academic approach, many would claim it's negative because Tolkein is not only an interpretation of the Eddas, but he inspired hundreds of ripoffs, that fantasy should be all about creativity, imagination, you get the drift. There's many that would cite works from authors like Mervyn Peake and Lord Dunsany as true pioneers of fantasy compared to Tolkein. This is all stuff I've read on various posts by self-styled intellectuals, mind you, I'm just using it to make my argument.

I'm a simple guy, and my view on things is quite simple. LoTR, whatever it's academic negatives, did something that no fantasy novel did before it: it captured the imagination of MILLIONS of people. It took those people to a whole new world, and every one that read it came away from it taking something, whether they loved or they hated it. In addition to that, it inspired many grand epics that had similar effects on readers, even if they're complete ripoffs, the "negative" effect you're referring to. The way I see things, ANY novel that can capture the mind of a reader and transport them somewhere, make them forget about their life, their stresses, their problems, is a novel that not only has a positive effect, but does its job well. Even books like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey would be covered under this, no matter how much I think they sucked. But I stand by it.

[Stephen]

I actually think that Tolkein and the other top writers have had a very positive effect. In sports we love the idea that their are all levels of players and people can get involved but for some reason here we seem to be saying unless you are really good they keep your writing to yourself. Yes it means I need to be more discriminating as a reader but there are a number of times that I am surprised by someone I have never heard of that just comes up with a fresh take.

Having more biomass trying their hands at writing overall means more new ideas and more great tales.

[Rich]

I know that JRRT didn't invent trilogies, but I'm blaming him and his greedy publishers anyway.

[Michael]

I loved Sword of Shannara, and that was after I read LOTR. In fact, I was hoping for something similar. Sometimes a reader wants to re-experience that feeling he got when he first entered that magical realm, and re-reading the same book just doesn't do it. And those books are successful exactly because it's a story outline that readers like, same as I might like music that is a "cheap knockoff" of The Beatles or Pink Floyd. There's plenty of room on my shelf for cleverly disguised fanfic.