But they aren't though.
Ther aren't thousands, hundreds or even dozens of minds engaged in telling Tolkien's stories. There is one. Tolkien.
The only way you can start thinking along that track is if you accept the following:
1. That fan-fic is 'telling Tolkien's stories' - no matter how cruddy or how many Princess Tippy Toes characters childish minds chuck at you.
2. You believe post-modern/structuralist/insanity theory that nothing has any meaning apart from what people decide to give to it. And if you do, beware! For the Four Horsemen of Theory Change are saddling up and ready to go in the form of Remodernism (see Stuckism, Tracy Emin, Billy Childish and Franz Ferdinand etc for further info) which reasserts the place of Meaning.
3. There's some vague chance that somewhere along the line, Tolkien fans will ever agree on how many Balrogs it takes to change a lightbulb. News. This will never happen. Why? We are nerds. Nerds by nature do not agree. They love nothing more than pedantry and feed on it like Ungoliant sucks on Light.
4. You must entirely suspend your sanity to think that Tolkien's work was written by davem, by me, by whoever reads it.
Oh yes, and a mythology does not need to be religious either, it can be based on history but the important thing is that it is not written by one mind, and I have not got such need of Lithium yet that I have the delusion that I had any hand in writing Tolkien's stories. I read them, I interpret them, I imagine them. I do not, did not and cannot write them.
Cut to the chase - lots of folk here write fan-fic and stuff like that. Perhaps they are being driven by their own daydreams of one day seeing that stuff in print?
