Influences on the fantasy genre

The enormous popularity of Tolkien's epic saga greatly expanded the demand for fantasy fiction. Largely thanks to The Lord of the Rings, the genre flowered throughout the 1960s. Many other books in a broadly similar vein were published, including the Earthsea books of Ursula K. Le Guin, The Riftwar Saga by Raymond Feist, The Belgariad by David Eddings, The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, the Thomas Covenant novels of Stephen R. Donaldson; the "Wheel of Time" books of Robert Jordan, and in the case of the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake and The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison, rediscovered.

It also strongly influenced the role playing game industry which achieved popularity in the 1970s with Dungeons & Dragons, a game which features many races found in The Lord of the Rings, most notably halflings (another term for hobbits), elves, dwarves, half-elves, orcs, and dragons. However, Gary Gygax, lead designer of the game, maintains that he was influenced very little by The Lord of the Rings, stating that he included these elements as a marketing move to draw on the popularity the work enjoyed at the time he was developing the game. The Lord of the Rings is also suspected to have influenced the creation of Magic: The Gathering as well as various video games, including Final Fantasy IV, Ultima, Betrayal at Krondor, Baldur's Gate, EverQuest, The Elder Scrolls, RuneScape, Neverwinter Nights, and the Warcraft series, as well as, quite naturally, video games set in Middle-earth itself.

As in all artistic fields, a great many lesser derivatives of the more prominent works appeared. The term "Tolkienesque" is used in the genre to refer to the oft-used and abused storyline of The Lord of the Rings: a group of adventurers embarking on a quest to save a magical fantasy world from the armies of an evil dark lord, and is a testament to how much the popularity of these books has increased, since many critics initially decried it as being "Wagner for children" (a reference to Der Ring des Nibelungen) — an especially interesting commentary in light of a possible interpretation of the books as a Christian response to Wagner. The book also helped popularize several spellings concerning elves and dwarves (i.e. using -ves instead of -fs for plural forms).

The work has also had an influence upon such science fiction authors as Arthur C. Clarke. In fact, Clarke (who found only Frank Herbert's Dune comparable) makes a reference to Mount Doom in his work 2010: Odyssey Two. Tolkien also influenced George Lucas' Star Wars films