Did JRRT encourage new ME stories?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by davem

The point is most fans, & no students, of JRR Tolkien, will accept works by any other author as having any relevance, or even much relation, to Tolkien's Legendarium. You could dress such works up how you wanted, stampt the JRRT monogram on the cover, & even include a talking hologram picture of CT saying 'This is far, far better than anything my father wrote about Middle-earth' & still most of us would not consider them to have anything more to do with Tolkien's Middle-earth than one of the DragonLance Chronicles, or volume 9,856 of The Wheel of Time.

As I said earlier, what you would end up with is M-e turned into a franchise like the Star Wars universe. The effect would be to cheapen & trivialise Tolkien's work.

Personally, I have a deep loathing of what is currently churned out under the lable 'Fantasy' & there are no more than half a dozen writers in that genre whose work I can be bothered with. I don't want Robert Jordan or Margaret Weiss churning out 'Extruded Fantasy Product' full of 'cute' Hobbits & ethereal Elves.

Actually, it's already been done.

Anyone remember George Lucas' Willow

I grant the sad aspects of franchise and serialisation--one reason why I've never taken up either the SW or the ST novelisations. Still, I can't help but note that no matter how derivative people felt Lucas' Willow was--it has garnered a better rep now through posterity--Lucas' own imaginative involvement with Tolkien clearly helped propel Lucas into his own vision. That is a different topic than the one here--did JRRT encourage new M-e stories--yet I cannot help but think that to condemn all writing done in the spirit of Tolkien is in fact to lessen the great inspiration which Tolkien provides, both to fans as well as to those writers who would do their own thing.

This thread seems to be arguing two things--the business aspect of franchising and the inspirational aspect of Tolkien's influence. Tolkien does whet the appetite for writing.