[narfforc]

Without going too deep into this, I think that some of the early writers such as Lord Dunsany, The Brothers Grimm and later Lewis Carrol and Robert E Howard gave an otherworld feeling to their works. The stories of Edger Rice Burroughs(John Carter of Mars series) gave you the feeling that you were off this world. Then you have H.G.Wells and Jules Verne, these stories in their day were of the fantastic, out of this world, the idea that man could go beyond his natural boundaries. What Tolkien did was instead of looking at another writers format or blueprint, he re-invented one that was already there. He took us back to the tradition of the ancient bards, to Beowulf, to The Eddas and The Volsunga Saga, back to The Tuatha de Danaan and Tir-na-nog, to lands of wizards and druids. Tolkien brought us back home to our world, that world drifts at the edge of our memory. We recognize all the things our ancestors held dear, and the things they feared, we see a hope that mankind can be so much more. In the days before Video, Television and Radio, people talked to each other, they told stories, man is a communicator. Our ancient kin told these stories of virtue and vice, inventing Gods, Warriors and Demons to play their parts, these are what we now call Mythology, do you recognize the format. What Tolkien has done in fact is go full circle. I now have rows of books re-telling stories of Arthur, of Cu Chulainn and the heroes of yesteryear. What some of the weak copyists have failed to understand is, it isnt how long and boring you make a series of watered down myth or populating your world with copied (Middle-Earth) peoples that matters, it is how believable it is.


P.S When people are writing fantasy stories, they are not all copying Tolkien, they are doing what we a species has always done, look beyond.......................