It has been said of Tolkien that "most subsequent writers of fantasy are either imitating him or else desperately trying to escape his influence", while "his hold over readers has been extraordinary".
Inspired by Tolkien The immense success of Tolkien's works started a publishing rush.
Lin Carter edited the
Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from 1969, reprinting Morris, Dunsany, MacDonald, and Mirrlees, alongside some new works. Many authors wrote "Tolkienesque" books, with stories rooted in folklore, myth, and magic, set in a medieval countryside. Yolen comments that while some of the writing was good, "what began in grace and power easily degenerated into a kind of mythic silliness", with "pastel unicorns, coy talking swords, and a paint-by-number medieval setting with the requisite number of dirty inns, evil wizards, and gentle hairy-footed beings of various sexual persuasions. Tolkien ... would have been horrified." Despite this, it gained the sort of breakthrough success that Del Rey had hoped for;
Guy Gavriel Kay, who had assisted
Christopher Tolkien with the editing of
The Silmarillion, later wrote his own Tolkien-influenced fantasy trilogy,
The Fionavar Tapestry (1984–86), complete with dwarves and mages. Fantasy series such as
Terry Pratchett's
Discworld and
Orson Scott Card's
The Tales of Alvin Maker were "undoubtedly" influenced by Tolkien. In 1992,
Martin H. Greenberg edited a
festschrift collection of short stories by 19 fantasy authors including Yolen,
Stephen R. Donaldson,
Terry Pratchett,
Poul and Karen Anderson, and
Peter S. Beagle on the centenary of Tolkien's birth. Yolen, commenting that "sometimes it is difficult to remember that there were fantasy books written before J. R. R. Tolkien's work", stated that the stories were not imitations, "for none of us are imitators—but in honor of his work". Further, Rowling explores the Tolkienian themes of
death and immortality, and the nature of evil and how it arises, with
Lord Voldemort taking the place of the Dark Lord
Morgoth. S.M. Stirling's
"Emberverse" series includes a character obsessed with
The Lord of the Rings who creates a post-apocalyptic community based Tolkien's Elves and
Dúnedain. The world that Covenant visits might resemble Middle-earth, as might his quest, but the book's approach, a "dark counterpoint to
Tolkien's shining heroism", is entirely different. Pullman states that he disagrees with Lewis's answer to questions about the existence of God and the purpose of life, and asserts that Tolkien "doesn't touch at all." Pullman has further criticised
The Lord of the Rings for
not having any strong female characters; in his view "There is absolutely no awareness of sexual power and mystery in the book." The modern subgenre of
grimdark fantasy has been described as an "anti-Tolkien" approach to fantasy writing, which British science fiction and fantasy novelist
Adam Roberts characterizes by its reaction to Tolkien's idealism even though it owes a lot to Tolkien's work.
George R. R. Martin, the author of
A Song of Ice and Fire, cites Tolkien as an inspiration, while also stating his aims to go beyond what he sees as Tolkien's "medieval philosophy" of "if the king was a good man, the land would prosper" to delve into the complexities, ambiguities, and vagaries of real-life power."
Using Tolkienian sources The scholar of folklore
Dimitra Fimi suggests a third group of Tolkien-influenced authors, the British fantasists
Susan Cooper,
Alan Garner, and
Diana Wynne Jones. In her view, all were, like Tolkien, prompted to fantasy by war; all three attended Tolkien's lectures at the
University of Oxford; and all admitted being influenced by "British myth and folklore", the sorts of medieval "intertexts" that Tolkien had used. While Wynne Jones wrote high fantasy, about secondary worlds, Cooper and Garner wrote "intrusion" fantasy, in which the
supernatural or fantastic intrudes into the ordinary world.
Reworking Tolkienian conventions In 1968,
Ursula K. Le Guin published the high fantasy
A Wizard of Earthsea, followed between 1970 and 2001 by her other
Earthsea novels and short stories. It was one of the first fantasy series influenced by Tolkien. Among the Tolkienian archetypes in the Earthsea books are wizards (including the protagonist,
Ged), a disinherited prince (Arren in
The Farthest Shore), a magical ring (the ring of Erreth-Akbe in
The Tombs of Atuan), a
Middle-earth style quest (in
The Farthest Shore), and powerful dragons (like the dragon of Pendor, in
A Wizard of Earthsea). Fimi writes that Le Guin's secondary world, along with its mythology, is "very much un-Tolkienian". It has its own culture, languages, and history, but, she notes, Earthsea does not share the British "flavor" of Middle-earth; Earthsea consists of an archipelago not a continent, has
brown-skinned protagonists, and
Taoist philosophy. Le Guin stated that Tolkien's wizard Gandalf was the "germ" for
A Wizard of Earthsea; the character led her to wonder how wizards learnt "what is obviously an erudite and dangerous art? Are there colleges for young wizards?", resulting in the young Ged's going to the island of Roke to study at the School of Magic and ultimately to become the Archmage. In Fimi's view, Le Guin "has navigated her way around Tolkien's legacy with care and a real creative flair." == Tolkien-influenced fantasy media ==