Who was/is more talented: J.R.R. Tolkien or George R.R. Martin?

leave now

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GRRM is not going to finish writing the ASOIAF series

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Safest assumption ever made on tRant

Hmm... Tolkien wasn't good at writing female characters, Martin loves to have his raped. Even before Game of Thrones having female characters raped left and right is sort of his thing.

Tolkien can get distracted during the narrative and drop a five page history/genealogy infodump. Martin will fill pages talking about food.

Tolkien, while he loved the English language, wasn't really a professional writer and many of things he did while writing his books are no nos in writing (if he didn't like the way a story was going he'd throw away everything and start over scratch and he did this more then once). Martin is a polished professional writer but he is renowned for being lazy and not finishing projects.

Tolkien by far is the most talented of the two while Martin is easily the more professional (even with his legendary laziness). Martin is actually quite good at what he does, and you can compare his body of work with just about anyone writing today. Tolkien, on the other hand, got through writing the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings on sheer intellectual talent and hard work.

Not to mention he did all this while holding down a job at Oxford as a professor.

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There would be no GRRM without JRR...

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I don't know that that's a fair criticism. Writers build off of one another and both works are very unoriginal when you look at their bare bones.

Tolkein's work was general Germanic folklore + Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" + heavy Christian moralizing. I'm not knocking him, I enjoy his work, but the point is that none of his themes or ideas in those areas were innovative. Where he was brilliant was in his ability to make those things accessible, to pare them down to their root, and develop a wider updated world around them by adding languages etc.

GRRM took a step back from Tolkein's high fantasy direction and moralization and forward in nuance and political intrigue. There are relatively few crazy creatures in his world compared to Tolkein and magic is less prominent. GRRM is more heavily influenced by some general themes in European history than he is by Tolkein. He owes Tolkein for popularizing the fantasy genre but I'm not sure what else.

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GRRM took a step back from Tolkein's high fantasy direction and moralization and forward in nuance and political intrigue. There are relatively few crazy creatures in his world compared to Tolkein and magic is less prominent. GRRM is more heavily influenced by some general themes in European history than he is by Tolkein. He owes Tolkein for popularizing the fantasy genre but I'm not sure what else.

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I was going to try and argue with you on this. But you won't get it.

No. There might come a time in your life when you realize how much Martin was stealing from Tolkien and the War of the Roses (but with more rape) but it isn't now.

So. You are right. Martin is by far the more talented and creative. Perhaps if Tolkien had included more rapes and discussion on tax policy... ah but how can he eclipse the master?

It depends on what you mean by talent, really. Tolkien, I think, built a far, far more comprehensive world - good Lord, he basically wrote a Biblical origination story replete with coherent linguistic ties - but Martin is probably a better storyteller. Nothing in Tolkien's works is really a "page-turner" unless you are a complete nerd, but if you are, they are full of incredible depth and knowledge.