A J.R.R. Tolkien Fan Website
J.R.R. Tolkien defined fantasy fiction for the 20th century. He invented stories unlike anything else anyone had written before him. I think he is the greatest fantasy author to ever live. I know people who think George R.R. Martin is great but he doesn't get fantasy. He wants everything to be about sex and murder. That isn't high fantasy. Tolkien wrote about a lost golden age and how it ended in tragedy. It's supposed to be our world and a mythology for us.
Middle-earth is one of those places where you keep learning about it over and over again. There is just so much great detail that you never stop finding new things. I know a lot of writers try to be like that now but they really don't do it the way Tolkien did.
I think the best reason why Tolkien was so great at creating stories was that he was a philologist. He didn't just make up stupid words and have no history behind them. He started out with a small vocabulary for his languages and invented new words as he went along, using the older words. His stories were closely associated with his invented languages so they have histories.
As a philologist Tolkien was well-read in history and literature. His love for Greek myths is obvious in a lot of his stories because they end so tragically. When you think about how so many of Tolkien's heroes die because of their failings like Boromir and Turin you have to think about the Greek myths.
One of my favorite Greek myths is the legend of Troy. Gondolin is so obviously connected with Troy you have to imagine Tolkien reading Homer over and over again to get his ideas togethers. But I also love the scene where Aragorn and Eomer meet in Rohan. That is so much like some of the heroes meeting in battle in "The Iliad". Why don't more people see that?
And Tolkien had the coolest dragons too. People have written whole books about dragons but they take the mystery out of these beasts. Tolkien's dragons are mysterious and hard to understand. That is the way dragons should be.
As a writer Tolkien was pretty good. He knew how to keep the reader in suspense and how to include some humor. His characters are well thought out and full of surprises. You will never see another fantasy writer like J.R.R. Tolkien.