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Originally Posted by bilbo_baggins
So, the question is, can their be a story that is enjoyable, wonderful, eucatastrophic, and yet not lead to a foreseeable end?
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The question to me is whether that kind of story is any good. A story can have moments of eucatastrophe, but then if it keeps having such moments, then it starys dangerously close to being an interminable saga, a soap opera. That's where many fantasy series fall down for me; they just go on and on and on. LotR does not, it has a finality. Obviously, things must be tied up, and there is much which preceeds it, but the core story of LotR is effectively over once the Ring is destroyed. It isn't a shaggy dog story, it's perfectly plotted and ends when it must.
Tolkien realised that this had to be the end of the stories from Middle Earth - he tried to write of the fourth age but found that he could not produce anything
remotely as satisfying. In fact, the experience of trying seems to have disheartened him more than a little. When I read what he had tried to write, I too felt a little depressed. It drew a line under any notions I might have had about more stories from the fourth age; I realised that LotR really
had been the ultimate story as far as Middle Earth was concerned.
It made me think, what is better? More Tolkien or the best Tolkien could offer?