Tekumel is a sci-fi/fantasy universe created by M.A.R (born Phillip Barker) that draws inspiration primarily from Aztec culture and medieval India. It languished in obscurity primarily because of the success of Tolkien's work and that of C.S Lewis , and partially because Barker preferred the RPG format which at that point had not reached popularity. If Tolkien had died during WW2, Barker might have decided that writing stories was the better option and Tekumel just might have become mainstream during the late 50s and early 60s. What would the possible effects have been?
Older thread, but... If there is no Tolkienian influence in this ATL, but many of the fantasy writers from the OTL early 20th century stay alive in the ATL, I could see modern fantasy fiction developing along the lines of their writing. Besides the author of Tekumel, writers like
Edgar Rice Burroughs,
Robert E. Howard,
Fritz Leiber,
Edward Plunkett (Lord Dunsany) and many, many others. You might even see some non-anglophone authors leading the charge in helping establish the modern genre as we know it.
I think a lot of "historical fantasy" and "planetary romance" fiction as we recognise it in OTL could really take off in a world without Tolkien's works. Especially if these ATL fantasy works would be written in the manner of swashbuckling adventure fiction, whether pulpier or more literary. Sort of a revival or speculative offshoot of existing adventure fiction (from the time or previous centuries), which develops its own conventions and sensibilities over time. These might vary wildly in content, style and level of seriousness, all the while sharing some of the same overall trappings. For some works, there would be some similarities to OTL heroic fantasy. I can also imagine the Arthurian Cycle and all sorts of mythologies could be plundered for inspiration by aspiring fantasy writers. Ironically, this might also create some loose equivalent of Tolkien down the line, though probably less focused and disciplined than the OTL author. (For one such example, from an AH.com timeline no less, see the paragraph between the two lines below.)
There might be plenty of science fantasy among softer science fiction, maybe even causing less of a strict, OTL-like distinction, in the vein of "This is fantasy, magic and monsters and myths, and this is science fiction, inventions, spaceships and rayguns.". Tekumel's SF elements would fit this more relaxed ATL definition like a glove.
"Mannerpunk"-fiction in the style of the OTL
Titus Groan books by
Mervyn Peake could also carve out a niche for themselves. Imagine some sort of genre developing around that style of fiction. You might see the emergence of a subgenre of fantasy that we'd be tempted to apply OTL labels like "dark fantasy", "steampunk" and "new weird" to, based on the tone, atmosphere, setting elements and themes. A subgenre like that might even start to overlap with detective fiction, crime thrillers, mystery thrillers and so on, with some works having similarities to OTL "urban fantasy".
With there being no Tolkien works to imitate, fantasy writers might be more creative in terms of taking inspiration from real history, real cultures, real geography. From this vantage point, Tekumel would be pretty fitting, with its unusual Mesoamerican inspirations. As a whole, there would be potentially less focus on "standard fantasy races" and more on differences between cultures or ideologies and so on. You might also get plenty of fantasy without conventional structures and with deliberately bizarre fictional settings. Including ones with strange natural laws and a complete absence of recognisable humans (look at the OTL series
The Edge Chronicles, that'a a good example of such originality). Meta-fictional fantasy, that has a deliberately varied and limitless setting, and comments on concepts like the "Hero's Journey", could also pop up among artier fantasy writers. Hey, Michael Ende pulled it off in OTL with
The Neverending Story, and
several other of his fantasy novels.
I could even see a greater influence of "geographic worldbuilding" types of fiction in this ATL. Hergé's
Tintin stories with its
Syldavia and
Borduria could be the more standard "travels and adventures" expression of that, with an Indiana Jones style sensibility. And utopian works, such as Austin Tappan Wright's
Islandia, could represent a more "yay, utopia !" expression of such a speculative/fantasy-ish genre.
I have a personal antipathy towards Lovecraft, so screw Lovecraft.
That said, the guy who wrote
The Night Land in the early 20th century, wrote that novel in a manner similar to the sort of horror fantasy Lovecraft wrote. Additionally, it's full of faux-archaic, quasi-Elizabethan English language in the narration (which would probably make Tolkien titter with bemusement over how overwrought it is) and is a "Dying Earth" type of science fantasy story, of the sort
Jack Vance and
Gene Wolfe tended to write decades later in OTL. If someone rediscovered and revived the popularity of
Nightland while Tolkien-less modern fantasy develops, you might see some weird subgenre, with post-apocalyptic far-future Earth serving as the setting for some Barsoom-style adventures and so on.
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In his older
Chaos Timeline here on AH.com, Max Sinister came up with the fantasy book series "Midworld", which was the closest equivalent of Tolkien's works in the popular culture of that timeline. To
quote Max's TL:
The most popular fantasy series is Midworld (twelve volumes), written by a royalist historian from New Albion (New Zealand), telling the tale of the rise of a former street urchin to the emperor of the world - not too dissimilar to the rise of Prince Alasdair. Unlike The Lord of the Rings, it's not set in a mostly wilderness world, but a more sophisticated environment with many great cities, sorcerer guilds and knights in their castles - and anachronistically, some newer elements too.
Based on the description, it was a more grounded, more history-evoking medieval fantasy setting than Tolkien's Arda. Perhaps something like Martin's or
Abercrombie's works, but nowhere near as gritty, and implied to be kid-friendly despite some grittiness. There was also
Sebastian the Wizard, but that was a lot more parallelistic, basically a
Harry Potter homage (so not counting that).
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Without Tolkien's influence, Tolkienian elves might be a non-existent concept, or at least utilised very differently to what we've seen in OTL. Far from a "default/generic fantasy race", due to the absence of ripoffs and homages. Elfs or elves could be more comical figures (basically, gnomes, imps, goblins, of the cheeky sort) or more sinister and mysterious creatures (alps, the fey folk, elf-shot and all that). In OTL, Tolkien's elves were a cultural blend of Germanic elf concepts and the Irish
sidhe. Maybe the closest equivalent to the OTL Tolkienian template would be some sort of "fairy-people" (i.e. like the aforementioned
sidhe), but they wouldn't be all that similar to what Tolkien "codified", in a sense.
Fantasy dwarfs could be quite similar even without Tolkien's contributions to modern fantasy fiction. The plural "dwarves", invented by him, would be unheard of, so only "dwarfs". (This is something I've also used in my own fantasy setting, since it's non-Tolkienian.) The good professor took inspiration for them from Germanic myths, such as dwarfs from Scandinavian legends, or the Niebelungs from the medieval German epic
The Song of the Nibelungs. That didn't stop him from also giving them Jewish and Arab cultural parallels, right down to a language inspired by Middle Eastern ones. Depending on which authors popularise fantasy dwarfs in the ATL - even just the authors in Europe - you might get a bit of a different template than what Tolkien popularised in modern fantasy. Dwarfs from Slavic myths, even the ones that share the "skilled miners and craftsmen" characterisation with their Germanic cousins, tend to be portrayed a bit differently. Maybe a popular author from a Slavic country will be the trend-setter for fantasy dwarfs ? Plenty of possibilities.
OTL hobbits wouldn't exist, with their hairy feet, love of tobacco, etc., etc. Especially not under that name. The word hobbit is quite old, and was originally some sort of equivalent to "hobgoblin" or similar small folkloric creatures. It was quite an obscure archaism before Tolkien resurrected it and the Tolkien estate eventually copyrighted it. Someone else discovering "hobbit" and adopting it for a race of diminutive people, or gnomes, or goblins, is possible, but not very probable. The word "halfling" would probably not be invented independently by anyone else, unless the coincidence was even greater than with the readoption of "hobbit" in the same ATL. Tolkien was a philologist, so he liked digging up forgotten terminology and giving it new life. Without an author of his scientific education, we might not see such a resurrection of more obscure terminology when an ATL fantasy author decides to come up with a name for a creature or race.
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P.S. Added more links.
