And a shoestring production could still do justice to them. But, my God, you’d have to get the perfect actors! What a challenge to portray!
Glen Cook and the black company books from the 80s are getting increasing respect as a major influence on the genre. Explicitly through Steve Erickson and the success of the Malazan books, where he enthusiastically talks about Cook as a pioneer, but also in general with the current popularity of all things grim [although Joe Abercrombie has apparently never read Glen Cook].
Cook’s a bit of an artisan writer (IMHO), but he has a very distinctive voice - the black company stuff was a superb counterpoint to the Tolkein factory product that was ascendent back then. Not sure he got a lot of credit at the time, but it’s good to see him being recognised for doing something different that influenced other writers.
Do you really think all the post-Tolkien fantasists would have been writing long, realistic, multi-volume works if it weren’t for Tolkien? I think he had a major influence on the how of writing fantasy, even if you can find the ingredients he used in other sources.
(And yes, that’s how influence works: the influencer does what he does because “that’s just how he wrote”; it’s the influencees who do things because of the influencer.)
Aside from both works having a certain type of archetypal journey at their center, I think it quite far-fetched to way that they are in any way equivalent.
I was going to mention the Pre-Raphaelites as well as many of the other mid-to-late-19th-to-early-20th representational art styles. Then I thought “hey, they were an influence on Tolkien but perhaps not on later fantasy.” But then I read the thread title and it says best influences, and the Pre-Raphaelites and others were a good influence on fantasy, moving away from heavy allegory and flashy mythology and concentrating more on tasteful aesthetic displays. Many Tolkien-influenced authors moved back toward the whiz-bang side of magic and fantasy, but those were not influenced by the good influence of the 19th and early 20th century.
One of my absolute favourite fantasy books, Bridge of Birds, has very little discernable Tolkien influence. It is instead inspired by the mythology of China. You couldn’t get much further from Middle Earth (although Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser would be right at home) I also don’t think enough people realise that the wuxia martial arts genre is fantasy.
Light vs Dark. Yin and Yang. Id and Superego. Fairies and Goblins. They used because they’re easy - people already have internalized their archetypes. Of course, perceptions can be changed - look at the Warcraft Orcs, how they’ve changed over time.
The gunpowder helicopter. 
LOL! I’ll vouch for him. He’s a regular poster, no worries.
I Think Frank L. Baum and CS Lewis are the only ones who come close as far as influence. For the next generation it’ll be George R.R. Martin, hands down, but he’s only just reached the level of popularity that he’s deserved for decades, so it’s too early to see a huge body of work influenced by him. And he’s obviously influenced by Tolkien. The same goes for JK Rowling. In twenty years’ time she’ll be a top name in a discussion like this.
As for orcs and elves and other mystical beasties, they are a method of distilling and narrowing various human characteristics and tendencies. It’s a way of providing clarity and reducing the required narrative. If the bad guys are human, you have to go through the whole process of stereotyping and dehumanizing them in order to build a clear-cut good-evil dynamic. If you invent an orc, and say “orcs are like this” then everybody just believes you and you can get on with the story.
Orcs in Tolkien are everything vulgar, greedy and brutish. So you can stab their King, whom you’ve just met, and who may in fact be the greatest and most benevolent orc-king in the history of orcs, but he’s just an orc, and orcs are horrible, so stabbing him makes you a hero, on to the next scene.
Elves are used in a great many ways. But I find them generally to represent feminine strength and reluctant but powerful aggression. Elves would generally prefer to be peaceful, but if you do rile them, may the Gods be merciful and take you early. They are nourishing, nurturing, tooth-gnashing nature personified.
Oh, I’d say Malory’s Morte D’Arthur belongs on the list. Almost every subsequent British writer in the fantasy genre was influenced by the Arthurian legends Malory popularized.
Yes, that is expressly what I said.
Good points; thanks, Ludovic.
Those authors who focus only on Tolkien–and worse, who try to clone his works–are missing a lot of subtle underlying elements that Tolkien himself took from earlier works. There is a reason that the Pre-Raphaelites and other nineteenth-century giants of literature (and the decorative arts, too) were fascinated by the medieval era; it wasn’t random. They found in that period something that spoke to their own needs. The best of that sort of thoughtful examination has come through to the fantasy being produced in our time.
Roger Zelazny deserves a place in this conversation for his original series The Chronicles of Amber. He was among the first to write fantasy in a modern voice. TCoA is typically a really big deal to fantasy readers in my demographic, as it was really out of the ordinary at the time. It’s sad that Zelazny took a huge steaming shit on his own greatest work with the later installments in the series, but whaddya gonna do?
You may also remember its retelling as the film “Appocalypse Now”.
Someone already sort of mentioned it, but orks being non-human makes them a great stand-in as evil humanoid cannon (trebuchet?) fodder.
Elves seem to serve a roll as an idealized version of humanity.
I’m not a literary historian. So to me, nearly all fantasy seems like a mishmash of Aurthurian, Norse, Celtic, Christian, Roman and Greek mythology to me.
Eh, they’re not horrible. They’re just not necessary and not great.
Those with Corwin as protagonist are. I do not like the ones with Corwin’s son as protagonist.
Lord of Light is a wonderful book. A Hindu friend of mine asked to borrow it for his friend, and I politely refused.*
Creatures of Light and Darkness* is not as good as LOL, and Zelazney reportedly became bored with the genre after writing it.
I’d hazard a guess that any fantasy story that features anthropomorphic animals - especially if they wear clothes - owes at least a bit of a debt to The Wind In The Willows.
Stephen R. Donaldson is kind of uneven, but his good stuff it worth reading, particularly the original Thomas Covenant trilogy. The Mordant’s Need books (all two of them) aren’t bad either.
Orcs are the enemy. They have no redeeming features, you can’t humanize them, they’re just big ugly evil, stompin’ around on two feet, burning villages and raping cattle until the good guys come and slay them. Interestingly, Tolkien himself is said to have had some misgivings about this. His religious background clashed with the idea of “irredeemably evil creatures.” Nevertheless, until fairly recently, when orcs and goblins were seen, it was “shoot on sight.”
Elves are just big Mary Sues, is all. Anything you can do, they can do better. If Tolkien were writing LOTR in the present day, they’d be sparkly vampires instead of pointy eared catalog models.
Reading some flavor texts on Warhammer 40 000’s orks, they reminded me of British soccer hooligans.
On the opposite end, I can see how elves could be used in an aspirational way.
In Freudian terms, the orks are the id, the elves the super-ego and the humans the ego.
Nicely put.
WH40K orks have undergone some retconning since their introduction. They started out in Warhammer as typical nihilistic battle monsters. Nowadays, they are the comic relief, albeit warlike, homicidal, maniacal, and cheerful about it, which tells you a lot about the grimdarkness of the setting.
I just saw a paperback of T. H. White’s final **Once & Future King **volume, The Book of Merlyn for 10p. Already got it but a spare is never a bad thing. Yet the print was so small as to be boring — and I have excellent near sight.
Paperback publishers are sick bastards.
Anyway, White’s works are nearer the Cabell wing of fantasy than the Tolkien Heroic Warfare; unsurprising since they are partially a paean topacifism.