Which fantasy series, do you think, has the most detailed world? Game Of Thrones, Harry Potter, or Middle-Earth

[Michael]

I personally think game of thrones is just flooding with detail and that the author really thought of everything for his world. What are your opinions?

[Dayton]

Well, Tolkien rewrote parts of the books just because the position of stars described did not really agree with the positions they would really have as time passed, so the winner is clear here.
Potter is out of the question that book is good and all, but sometimes very inconsistent...

[Michael]

Lily wrote: "Well, Tolkien rewrote parts of the books just because the position of stars described did not really agree with the positions they would really have as time passed, so the winner is clear here.
Pot..."

I do think Tolkien was very detailed, but the way George r r martin worked a whole world such as the varying name for bastards like snow and sand. I just find that very admirable.

[Vickie]

I go with George, simply because he has so many different locations, on different islands. (or maybe continents?) I loved Tolkien's Middle Earth as well but it seemed to me a smaller area, all on one continent or island.

Harry Potter is just set in England, which I also loved, but is less a description of a fantasy world than an overlay of a fantasy society on an actual place.

[Adam]

JRRT's Arda, hands down (Middle Earth is just one continent, like GRRM's Westeros and Essos).

GRRM's world building isn't really that detailed. Yeah, GRRM came up with seven surnames for bastards-- JRRT came up whole languages (Dothraki was invented for the show by linguist David J. Peterson).

[Michael]

thecryptile wrote: "JRRT's Arda, hands down (Middle Earth is just one continent, like GRRM's Westeros and Essos).

GRRM's world building isn't really that detailed. Yeah, GRRM came up with seven surnames for bastards..."

Westeros and Essos are two separate continents.

[Adam]

Michael wrote: "Westeros and Essos are two separate continents..."

Yeah, I know. I've read the books. I've seen the maps. Although if you want to get all nitpicky with it, they weren't always separate continents. Essos and Westeros used be joined by a land bridge that was magically destroyed by the Children of the Forest. Kind of like the land bridge that connected Valinor and Middle Earth until it was magically destroyed by the Valar.

The point is that comparing Middle Earth to Planetos is unfair. Maybe I should've said "Westeros or Essos" or just not mentioned Essos at all. Compare Middle Earth to Westeros, or compare Arda to Planetos-- then you're making a fair comparison.

[Peter]

I don't know if either one does everything better than the other.

JRRT created multiple written and spoken languages for his books and developed in depth cultures and political systems. I feel like the scope of the world feels vaster (at least middle earth to westeros) in the sense that the reader follows more of the journey of the characters and has fewer large gaps of time and travel than a lot of characters in GRRM's books.

That said, in my opinion, GRRM has created an equally complex political system as well as an interconnected family tree of major factions and characters within the series. I feel like even though there are sometimes large gaps of time of distance between events of his POV characters, his world feels more active and busier than JRRT. I think this is in part due to the higher number of POV characters but in a Song of Ice and Fire, it feels like there is way more going on at any one time. JRRT splits his group up and there are a number of story threads that eventually converge, but I think GRRM has many more threads and many more twists/turns/deceptions/faction changes and revelations than JRRT.

Again, I wouldn't say one is better than the other, just different and some things are better executed by each author. I think JRRT did a better job at creating an epic - following a small group of characters through the entire journey, big and small events alike. However, I think GRRM has done a better job at creating ambiguous characters and steeping the story with mystery and intrigue.

[Gianluca]

Tolkien's Arda is by far the most detailed fictional world I've encountered so far, but Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire is very impressive nonetheless. What I like the most about it is the history, which goes back thousands of years. A fact a lot of people tend to forget.
Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time is another very detailed fictional world, and definitely one of my favorites.

[Mitali]

Both Tolkien's fictional universe (of which Middle-Earth is only one part - though the most detailed one) and Martin's ASoIaF world are amazingly detailed, but they're not really on comparable scales. Tolkien's story stretches across thousands of years, and into the mythological past which cannot be measured in earthly years. His story is also more mythological in nature, so the focus is on large groups who have survived through the ages, such as the Elves (and the various factions within the elves), the Dwarves and the Men. He doesn't spend much time describing individual lives or small-scale events, except in the case of the hobbits of LOTR and The Hobbit. So, on one hand, there's a wealth of detail in terms of earth-shaking events (literally earth-shaking in some cases) of the past, but very little detail (except in case of the hobbits) of how people in this world live their day-to-day life. What does a typical resident of Minas Tirith do during peacetime? What is an ordinary day in Rivendell like? What is the dwarves' social life like? These kinds of questions are completely unanswered in Tolkien's work.

The ASoIaF world, on the other hand, despite the presence of magic, is based firmly on historical realities. So it's a lot easier for Martin to provide a wealth of minute detail about individual lives as well as general ways of living all throughout his world. The life of a typical resident of King's Landing is not that different from that of a typical resident of Medieval London, so Martin can easily provide realistic details for such things. Of course, he has created more exotic and original places, such as the Wall or the cities in Essos, or institutions such as the Faith of the Seven, all of which are described in a highly detailed way. There is a focus on history in his books too, but the actual historical details are given mainly for the past three centuries - anything older than that is mostly semi-mythological in nature, and only mentioned in passing.

In short: the two are not really comparable, as they deliberately focus on very different things on very different scales. And both are amazing in their own way.

[C. G.]

I'd agree with Mitali. Martin's greatest detail is his focus on heraldry. Presenting so many descendants and pedigrees and keeping the timelines straight must be exhausting, and it has to complicate his writing process, having to check his notes for every reference he makes to the past for a name and what year this or that happened, who killed who in the battle of what, and so on.

But what Tolkien does better, and I feel the Brits in general are better at, is the pastoral tradition. Landscapes and geological formations and the sheer size of Middle Earth overwhelm you as you read the tale, and the older you get, the emptier the world seems, and a very sad place, having gone through so many thousands of years of kingdoms rising and falling. There are more graves than living people, it feels, in Middle Earth, while Westeros is teeming with life, a medieval crowded Europe after the Black Plague, as it were.