WI: J.R.R. Tolkien dies in October 1916?

From wikipedia:

In 1914, the United Kingdom entered World War I. Tolkien's relatives were shocked when he elected not to immediately volunteer for the British Army. Instead, Tolkien entered a programme wherein he delayed enlisting until completing his degree in July 1915. He was then commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He trained with the 13th (Reserve) Battalion on Cannock Chase, Staffordshire, for eleven months. Tolkien was then transferred to the 11th (Service) Battalion with the British Expeditionary Force, arriving in France on 4 June 1916. Tolkien served as a signals officer at the Somme, participating in the Battle of Thiepval Ridge and the subsequent assault on the Schwaben Redoubt.


Of course, he survived all of this and went on to write The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as well as a number of other works, but what if he'd been killed during the assault on Schwaben Redoubt?
 
Among other things, it would affect CS Lewis, who might never convert.
No Middle Earth probably means no Narnia.
 
You Bastard!

You've killed Frodo!


...and butterflied about the Narnia stories, as Tolkien was C.S. Lewis' uncredited sounding board and literary partner for those. And quite possible Game of Thrones as well.


I am now going to go into a dark corner and cry.
 
Would HP Lovecraft have become more prominent, filling the void? On the other hand, the fantasy genre didn't become more respected until the '60s and the Tolkien Renaissance. You might still get Isaac Asimov's rise to prominence, as the 50s-60s were a time of optimism and exploration, and the rise of hard science fiction, but fantasy would have been even more left out than it was OTL.
For that matter, who else knew Tolkien OTL? Lewis & Charles Williams, but who else?
 
Would HP Lovecraft have become more prominent, filling the void? On the other hand, the fantasy genre didn't become more respected until the '60s and the Tolkien Renaissance. You might still get Isaac Asimov's rise to prominence, as the 50s-60s were a time of optimism and exploration, and the rise of hard science fiction, but fantasy would have been even more left out than it was OTL.
For that matter, who else knew Tolkien OTL? Lewis & Charles Williams, but who else?

Led Zeppelin would be just another band....hmmm. D&D would probably be replaced with Starships and Space Aliens. Nerd Culture would need some other thing to make it mainstream in the 00s.
 
When the non-Tolkein universe joins the paratime trade federation, its citizens will be able to purchase copies on Amazon (or the equivalent) imported from a universe in which Tolkein survived. And OTL will purchase equally good stuff--like music from universes in which Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline didn't die in plane crashes.

NASA, get cracking! The Everett paratime capsule is long overdue! We might even get to finally see the legendary film Casablanca, the negatives and all prints of which were destroyed, just before its release, during the Japanese sneak attack on Los Angeles...
 
Last edited:
and what would that mean for the Fantasy Genre?

My thought is that the fantasy genre, or what remains of it, would be influenced by Howard, Burroughs, Lovecraft (and, through Lovecraft, Dunsany), Lieber, and Moorcock.

Dungeons and Dragons, being based around the idea of an adventuring party in a fantasy setting, might never have been made.

Led Zeppelin's song catalog would look different.

Peter Jackson would remain the director of some special effects-heavy comedies and critically acclaimed dramas.
 
Probably similar to the scenario I postulated in this thread. In short, something like what we know as the fantasy genre still crops up, but it's far more influenced by Robert Howard-style sword and sorcery - low fantasy, if you will.
 

Flubber

Banned
Various comments:

Lovecraft - Lovecraft died in March of '37. The Hobbit was published in September of '37. Tolkien dying at the Somme will have no effect on Lovecraft's output whatsoever. By the early Thirties, Lovecraft essentially moved from writing to acting as a "script doctor", sounding board, and one man committee of correspondence within the fantasy/weird fiction writing community.

D&D - As Gygax's Appendix N readily attests, Tolkien was only one of dozens inspirations for that game. D&D's magic system comes from Jack Vance, not Tolkien. D&D's combat system owes more to Howard's Conan, plus Gygax's and Arneson's background in miniature wargames, than anything Tolkien wrote. Even the idea of the loot gathering, monster slaying, dungeon crawl isn't Tolkien's. About the only aspect of Tolkien's work which shows up in D&D unchanged in the depiction of elves.

Later RPGs did rip off Tolkien shamelessly, but D&D had many, many more inspirations.

Fantasy in general - Fantasy was written before Tolkien and fantasy was written after Tolkien. While we'll lose his masterful work, we'll also be spared the utter dreck written by his far too many pathetic imitators. More importantly, we'll lose the works produced by writers like Moorcock and Mieville as a backlash to Tolkien and the constant flood of Tolkien imitators.
 
True, but Tolkien's magnum opus was instrumental in breaking the ground for respect for the fantasy genre. How many writers have been inspired or taken heart from LotR is anyone's guess. As has been noted, the Conan books are fun, but tend to blood and thunder and rather poor writing. JRR Tolkien was also a professor and insisted on turning out a well-written story, no matter where it would have been set.
 
About the only aspect of Tolkien's work which shows up in D&D unchanged in the depiction of elves.
Unchanged as in owing a lot to the elves in Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword*, being about two feet shorter and a few other minor details.

*It's been a while since I've read it. I only recall the "And people keep insisting D&D's elves are Tolkien-inspired?!" which memory keeps changing to "It says 90% resistance to sleep and charm spells right there in the book."
 
My thought is that the fantasy genre, or what remains of it, would be influenced by Howard, Burroughs, Lovecraft (and, through Lovecraft, Dunsany), Lieber, and Moorcock.

Dungeons and Dragons, being based around the idea of an adventuring party in a fantasy setting, might never have been made.

Led Zeppelin's song catalog would look different.

Peter Jackson would remain the director of some special effects-heavy comedies and critically acclaimed dramas.

Burroughs and howard. Thats gonna suck. Pulp novels for fantasy ......
 
My thought is that the fantasy genre, or what remains of it, would be influenced by Howard, Burroughs, Lovecraft (and, through Lovecraft, Dunsany), Lieber, and Moorcock.

Dungeons and Dragons, being based around the idea of an adventuring party in a fantasy setting, might never have been made.

clichés in the genre would probably be quite different, less hopefull among other things if those authors were the ones you automaticaly associated with fantasy.

(something which I would actualy enjoy given I dislike tolkien and lewis......THERE, I'VE SAID IT !)

D&D evolved from a fantasy version of wargame ("chainmail") so what you might see is the squad level fighting being applied within such a setting. After following succesive editions that emphasise the "storytelling" over "wargaming" aspect, the end result would be roughly the same.
 
Top