At the end of Lord of the Rings, as the forces of Mordor
bang down the gates to Minas Tirith, Gandalf ponders life after death.
The journey doesn't end here.
Death is just another path, one that we must all take.
The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass.
And then you see it, white shores, and
beyond a far green country under a swift sunrise.
These words aren't just an expression of Tolkien's view on death.
But also,
a metaphor of the lasting impact authors can have after the release of a book.
That impact wouldn't just affect authors that came after Tolkien, but also,
a dear friend and soon to be legend of literature.
How did this friendship between two masters of fantasy lead to the evolution
of the genre as we know it today?
[MUSIC]
The beauty of books is just how impactful words can be to audiences,
including other authors.
Take Tolkien, for example, he had an amazing impact on his dear friend C.S.
Lewis, more on that later.
But he'd also influenced one of the masters of modern fantasy and
procrastination: George R.R. Martin.
50 years after Tolkien's death, George R.R.
Martin would release his Song of Ice and Fire series, aka Game of Thrones.
This yet-to-be-finished series is, at this point, considered a masterpiece.
And this masterpiece owes a whole lot to Tolkien's work.
It plays on fantasy tropes and manages to comment on and subvert these expectations.
The first book in the series sees a climactic end, when, spoiler alert,
main character Eddard Stark is swiftly decapitated.
This jaw-dropping twist was actually inspired by Tolkien's decision to kill
off Gandalf in the first Lord of the Rings book.
You can't kill Gandalf,
Tolkien just broke that rule, and I'll love him forever for that.
The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is a thousand
times greater, because now anybody could die.
Of course, that had a profound effect on my own willingness to kill characters
off at the drop of a hat.
We'll never forgive you for some of these deaths, George, but
it works to subvert the idea of plot armor.
Martin claims that Game of Thrones wouldn't be possible without Lord of
the Rings.
It's both lovingly inspired and a critique of Tolkien's work.
Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good
man, the land would prosper.
We look at real history and it's not that simple.
Martins answer to this was grounding the events in a real-ish world.
Game of Thrones is straight up brutal,
actions have consequences that go beyond dragons and White Walkers.
Pardon the pun, but there's a real political game in Game of Thrones.
[MUSIC]
This cycle of inspiration and
evolution goes back to the start of the fantasy genre.
With Tolkien drawing inspiration from both George MacDonald and William Morris,
two of the first fantasy genre writers in the mid-1800s.
Fun fact: Morris's The Well of World's End would introduce
the name Gandalf into the fantasy genre for the first, but not the last time.
Eventually, Tolkien's love of the very new fantasy genre, and specifically
MacDonald and Morris would lead him to a lifelong friendship with C.S.
Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia series.
Tolkien and Lewis's friendship would be at the core of a small literary group at
Oxford University called The Inklings.
Established in the early 1930s, the group originally met to read
classic Norwegian myths in its native Old Norse language.
From there, it evolved into a space for writers to workshop their literary pieces.
One of the works shared during this time, was an early version of The Hobbit series,
which Lewis fell in love with.
As their friendship peaked, Lewis would be one of a very small handful of people to
hear and give notes on the soon to be instant classic.
This friendship would be a two-way street,
as Tolkien would provide feedback on some of Lewis' work.
They would frequently spend time together, going on walks to discuss their works,
philosophy, and religion.
Without the support of each other,
the genre of fantasy would turn out very differently.
But luckily for all of us, Lord of the Rings, and
The Chronicles of Narnia would go on to change fantasy forever.
And much like Martin creating Game of Thrones in response to Tolkien,
Lewis would see a modern response to his series by Philip Pullman in his series,
His Dark Materials.
Pullman's series would appear as a sharp inviting critique to the core beliefs and
themes of the Chronicles of Narnia series.
Pullman wrote of Lewis's series: Narnia books are such an invaluable
guide to what is wrong, and cruel, and selfish.
Yikes, this is just a small example of the strong words that Pullman had for
the Narnia series over the years.
Where Martin has a loving response to the Lord of the Rings series,
Pullman straight up hits the Narnia books.
The way in which these authors connect, whether in the early days
of a blossoming genre or a common interest through true friendship.
Or through admiration and an evolution of the theme presented.
Or through an ideological war between differing philosophies is
a prime example of the the living organism, that is the fantasy genre.
Fantasy is cyclical, and authors feed off of one another to move the genre forward.
Fantasy worlds evolve, not within a vacuum, but in response to each other.
A fantasy novel is pulling from a shared history and
memory of the entire genre as a whole.
This is the beauty of fantasy.
It is a fellowship, a chronicle, a game, and
an answer to the worlds imagine throughout time.
And while Lewis and Tolkien drifted apart over the years,
they would owe each other a great debt throughout their lives and works.
In 1963, C.S. Lewis passed away.
Tolkien wrote of Lewis: We owed each a great debt to the other, and
that tie with the deep affection that is begot, remains.
He was a great man of whom the cold blooded official obituaries only scraped
the surface, in places with injustice.
[MUSIC]
Perhaps no other writing summarizes Lewis's death
better than his final passage from the final Narnia book titled The Last Battle.
And for us this is the end of all the stories,
and we can most truly say, that they all lived happily ever after.
But for them, it was only the beginning of the real story.
All their life in this world and
all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page.
Now at last, they were beginning chapter one of the great story.
Which no one on Earth has read,
in which every chapter is better than the one before it.
The interconnectedness of fantasy as a genre is only becoming more and
more apparent in modern fantasy fiction.
We can't wait to see where things go next.
Post in the comments below your favorite example of this.