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Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age
If the Legendarium is nothing more than a number of specific, finite pieces of literature (however well crafted), then it would be inappropriate for anyone to try and write another story and say that it is a legitimate extension of Tolkien's Middle-earth. But if Middle-earth is more than that, if it comes to be regarded as myth or the creation of an alternate world, why can't we have other people continuing the same story some 500 years from now?
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I think you have put the question in a true light,
Child, thinking not now of fanfics and Estates and canonicity questions, but ruminating on how people might respond a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years from now. I don't think the question can be absolutely determined ideologically, by saying either yay or nay to definitions of mythology, copyright, etc. It will be determined by how the stories themselves take life in the mind of readers and tellers. If the stories do come to ressemble our Arthurian legends, or the Greek ones, or the Norse ones in their status as stories told and retold, then in fact Tolkien will have encouraged new ME stories, through the inspiration of his stories, rather than through any prose edict or letter.
The elder myths were oral tales which were then collected and written down. Who is to say that whatever lies ahead for this planet, the reverse cannot happen, that written tales come to have life as oral tales. That scenario may or may not depend upon the eradication of books and reading, but even now it is amazing to hear what tales be retold and reshivered around summer campfires in my part of the world.