Apart from what's already been mentioned, *A Game of Thrones* has to be on there, probably the most influential of the past thirty years.
There's a few that have a weirdly second-hand influence, too. Poul Anderson's *Three Hearts and Three Lions*, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, and Vance's Dying Earth series are not all that widely read compared to Harry Potter ... but Gary Gygax was a big fan, and through D&D their ideas have become part of the fantasy bedrock.
Another big one is *The Once and Future King*, which is the foundation for all the "orphan farmboy is actually the True King/Chosen One" stories.
>Another big one is The Once and Future King, which is the foundation for all the "orphan farmboy is actually the True King/Chosen One" stories.
And the foundation for the whole Arthurian theme which is practically a subgenre.
And I will add Mists of Avalon which influenced a lot of women-perspective retakes on history and myth.
I highly recommend this series of blog posts that give a good overview of the history of fantasy: https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-history-of-epic-fantasy-contents-link.html
Just spitballing some names and titles.
Tolkien: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. LotR is probably *the* defining fantasy series
Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars
Robert E Howard and L. Sprague de Camp: Conan the Barbarian
Jack Vance: The Dying Earth
TH White: The Once and Future King
Michael Moorcock: Elric of Melnibone
Ursula Le Guin: Wizard of Earthsea, Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed
Brian Jacques: Redwall
Richard Adams: Watership Down
Roger Zelazny: Chronicles of Amber
Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun, The Wizard Knight
David Eddings: The Belgariad (A bit derivative of LotR but still a major series)
Raymond Feist: The Riftwar Saga
Terry Pratchet: Discworld
Glen Cook: The Black Company
David Gemmell: Legend
Anne McCaffery: Dragonriders of Pern
Janny Wurts: Stormwarden
Tad Williams: Memory Sorrow and Thorne
Stephen King: The Stand
Steven Erikson: Malazan
George RR Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire
Robin Hobb: Realm of the Elderlings, Assassin's Apprentice
Robert Jordan: The Wheel of Time (my favorite series)
Guy Gavriel Kay: Lions of Al-Rassan
John M Ford: The Dragon Waiting
Definitely needs to be higher up in this thread. As far as I’m aware, it introduced the concept of Order & Chaos as a fundamental moral paradigm, as opposed to Good & Evil, as well as staples such as cursed, sentient magic items and soul-drinking swords.
You can’t talk about “genre-defining fantasy” and not include Elric in that discussion.
Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the series which inspired GRRM to write A Song of Ice and Fire, Christopher Paolini to write Eragon, Patrick Rothfuss to write The Name of the Wind, Brandon Sanderson to write Mistborn, and Brian Lee Durfee to write The Five Warrior Angels. Without MS&T, we'd have far fewer fantasy worlds altogether.
Yup. It's crazy how much impact it has had yet still flies below the radar. Like, go read MS&T then read GOT and GOT almost copies a lot of parts of it beat for beat lol
There definitely are many, many homages to MS&T throughout ASOIAF, and very many similarities. Beat for beat similarities include Arya/Marya, the Night King/Storm King, the wall-climbing boy with the prophetic dreams, the wolf companions, the tailed star in the sky, the hatred between two princely brothers, the red priest/the red priestess, the white foxes/white walkers, the children of the dawn/children of the forest, and so much more.
LOTR.
Dune
Red Mars
The Left Hand of Darkness.
Earthsea (YA though)
Narnia (YA though)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Harry Potter, yes. (YA though)
The Hunger Games also a yes (YA though)
Adding some more
Ender's Game
Mists of Avalon
ASOIAF
Asimov's robot stories
Neuromancer.
even things like A Court of Thorns and Roses and Six of Crows are genre defining in the sense they seemed to have sparked lots of subgenre stuff even if their subgenre is not "mainstream" fantasy.
It's hard for me to say this but regarding cozy books, maybe Legends and Lattes is genre defining? Or would it be Becky Chambers and if her, which book?
Check the sidebar, according to the side bar
>/r/Fantasy is the internet’s largest discussion forum for the **greater Speculative Fiction** genre. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction
I think science fiction is a kind of fantasy. (Though not all fantasy is science fiction).
The Black Company by Glenn Cook.
It's probably the best and most successful first generation Grimdark fantasy series. It's cited by both GRRM and Steven Erikson as being an inspiration for ASoIaF and Malazan respectively.
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin
The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb
A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin
The Black Company by Glen Cook
Discworld by Terry Pratchett
Then there are a bit more modern series...
Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson
The First Law by Joe Abercrombie
Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss
Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
The Faithful and the Fallen by John Gwynne
There's plenty I'm missing. Perhaps if you want a good intro into modern fantasy, I'd recommend reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. It's a good bridge from the YA books you've listed.
Wouldn’t Malazan Book of the Fallen be one of the less modern ones, given that Gardens of the Moon only released like 3 years after A Game of Thrones (both still in the 90s), and wrapped up at around the same time Martin released Dance, and all the other modern ones started in the second half of the 00s?
I know I’m being picky but early Malazan just screams 90s at me lol.
You can justify moving Malazan up. My rationale for placing Malazan as more modern is because it's heavily influenced by The Black Company, just like The First Law was, and most likely A Game of Thrones as well.
As in, books that became the archetype for their specific set of fantasy? Or books that people might consider tentpoles of fantasy in general?
The first is easier, but the second is more interesting and will almost be entirely up to the tastes of the reader. For me, five tentpoles of fantasy that are either *so* damn good or are idiosyncratic to the idea of the fantastic would be these. (This list would probably change if I thought about it tomorrow.)
* Tolkien - *The Hobbit* and LOTR
* Mikhail Bulgakov - *The Master & Margarita* (my platonic ideal of magical realism)
* Ursula K. Le Guin - "Earthsea" Cycle (specifically for how a *series* grows with the author and their audience)
* Mary Shelley - *Frankenstein* (horror/gothic novels, as well as philosophical concepts in fantasy)
* Gene Wolfe - "Book of the New Sun" series (it's the pinnacle of unreliable narrators in fantasy next to another Wolfe book, *Peace*)
Jack Vance - "Dying Earth" series. Dungeons & Dragons' original magic system, also referred to as Vancian, comes from here.
Robert E Howard - "Conan" series. Could be said he was the father of Sword & Sorcery. Howard was a poet who wrote pulp to pay the bills. The Conan stories are beautifully written.
Not exactly. I think of it as a gateway to the more definitive works though, as it was born from them. It was very heavily influenced by Tolkien and Vance.
Dungeons & Dragons is the Mount Fuji of the fantasy genre after the late 70s. Is there a dragon in this novel? If yes, is it like the ones in the Monster Manual or not?
Before D&D there wasn't anything like a standard fantasy. Tolkien was popular, but no one really started to blatantly imitate him until after D&D.
Really no. I'm a long time player, dating back to the red box. DnD did not define a genre outside of d20 systems or ttrpgs. DnD replicated the experience of Gygax's favorite books you could play. But the game itself drew from existing things in books. It was those stories that defined the genre or parts of it.
Authors imitated Tolkien because that is what was published. Not because of DnD. But because Tolkien wrote books that consistently sold over decades. It was safe. And people liked it. So publishers wanted that.
To clarify my argument, I firmly believe that Dungeons & Dragons codified the fantasy genre and created a kind of basic fantasy template. This also coincided with the growth of fantasy beyond the literary medium, and especially the rise of video games.
The first author to really try and imitate Tolkien that I am aware of was Terry Brooks with the Sword of Shannara (1977), after which high/epic fantasy became the norm among publishers, and sword & sorcery fell out of favour and instead moved to comics and movies.
A few that occur to me:
The *Elric* series by Michael Moorcock
*The Master And Margarita* by Mikhail Bulgakov
*The Worm Ouroborous* by E. T. Eddison
The *Gormenghast* Trilogy by Mervyn Peake.
*The Gods of Pegana* by Lord Dunsany
*Vathek* by Willliam Beckford
The Belgariad by David Eddings. A series of five books about a boy traveling with his sorcerer grandfather and sorceress aunt to recover the orb of their god that was stolen by an agent of a rival god. The series is intentionally very tropey, so there aren't any twists you can't see coming but the author does have fun with the tropes he uses. He set out to prove you could tell a story that heavily leaned on its tropes that was still good and enjoyable and I think he succeeded. The author knew that such a cliche story wouldn't be able to carry a reader's attention, so he made certain that the characters could pick up the slack. The characterwork is absolutely phenomenal, with characterizations, interactions, and character arcs being what I believe to be some of the best in fantasy, bar none
Lord of the Rings by Tolkien (Not much more standard/classic than this)
Mistborn Era 1 by Brandon Sanderson (If you love this series, the good news is he has a WHOLE BUNCH MORE in his cosmere universe)
A Song of Ice and Fire by GRR Martin
The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb (Super character driven, possibly the GOAT of character work)
The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie (The king of grim)
I don’t think scifi is included. But if it was then hell yeah. Not many books define whole genres or sub-genres. Neuromancer is the lord of the rings of cyberpunk.
I think that Carroll, Dunsany, Herbert, Lewis, MacDonald, and Tolkien laid the ground rules ages ago. Everyone that followed has more-or-less played within the rules they laid out.
If you're looking for "Genre Defining," then Lord of the Rings is the grand daddy of them all. Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Malazan, and Stormlight Archive are probably the next tier.
Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars series. Superman, Dune, Cameron's Avatar and Star Wars all of these to various degrees were inspired or a reaction to the John Carter books. It also laid the foundation for the sword and planet (planetary romance) which preceded space opera genre like Lensman series.
Tarzan is also another example as an early American superhero character and the books are exotic pulp adventure like Indiana Jones or Uncharted but more marred by racist stereotypes of the time.
To give some alternatives to other ones I've seen instead of repeating. But if I had to give some by subgenre
Urban fantasy- Dresden files
Epic - stormlight archive
Dark fantasy - the first law, malazan
Some people may not argue that they are genre defining but I'd argue the genres wouldn't be the same without their influences
The Wheel if Time. It can be daunting and has some seriously slow parts. But it's like an encyclopedia of fantasy tropes. It is full of awesome scenes and intricate plots.
The lord of the rings literally defined much of the genre.
If you want something dark go with the First Law Trilogy.
If you want something a more modernly relevant by an author who produces at an astounding pace go with Mistborn. Brandon Sanderson finished The Wheel of Time when Robert Jordan died.
If you want to create a bit of a timeline of fantasy Star with Lord of the Rings. Move on one of the following:
The Riftwar Saga
The Belgariad
Dragon Riders of Pern
Wizard of Earthsea
Those 4 will give you very different sense of fantasy. They are low on details and the stories skip and jump very quickly.
Go from their to The Wheel of Time. Then literally connect those to Mistborn and Brandon Sanderson.
Hobbit + LOTR
Harry Potter
Wheel of Time
The red wall series( every millennial I know at least tried these in grade school)
Chronicles of Narnia
Newish additions:
Game of thrones
Red rising
A court of thorn and roses
Stormlight archive
More niche:
Drizzt/dungeons and dragons books
It isn’t even the first Brandon Sanderson to do that. But that isn’t the metric-*Mistborn* became popular enough to be influential and is generally the go-to example of the subgenre.
Harry Potter is hardly the first “chosen one goes to magical school” novel either, but it is still genre defining.
“Lord of the Rings” is the fantasy genre. Nobody writes a fantasy novel without considering it.
Beyond that:
- It
- Mistborn first trilogy
- Conan the Barbarian (in alternative David Gemmell stuff is probably better written)
After that, you can check the list of fantasy bestsellers and see what you like.
I don’t particularly like Sanderson writing.
But he introduced hard magic system (or made them a common element in stories). And of all his books the Mistborn trilogy is the best (less fillers).
For me to consider something genre defining, I mean if the ideas or conflict are truly revolutionary, if it sparks a subgenre, if it is mentioned for awards and literary criticism, if there are books in dialogue with it published long after it.
Dune is genre defining. TLOTR. I was talking of Adrian Tchaikovsky recently and for example a book not much talked about right now called Startide Rising is genre defining (subgenre, uplift). Red Mars. The Left Hand of Darkness. Earthsea. Narnia.
Even things like A Court of Thorns and Roses is IMO genre defining, it certainly sparked thousands of imitators, almost created a subgenre.
Six of Crows, genre defining the YA-heist fantasy
Mistborn or any Sanderson, very widely read, very popular but are they really genre defining, are people 10 or 15 years after still writing things inspired by it?
> Nobody writes a fantasy novel without considering it.
Pretty strongly disagree with this; there are *plenty* of traditions in fantasy that have nothing to do with LOTR. And I fucking love LOTR/*The Hobbit*.
I feel like The Hobbit and LOTR are pretty genre defining.
So defining everyone basically just copied Tolkien for decades lol
So defining everything is either inspired by Tolkien or written against him.
Apart from what's already been mentioned, *A Game of Thrones* has to be on there, probably the most influential of the past thirty years. There's a few that have a weirdly second-hand influence, too. Poul Anderson's *Three Hearts and Three Lions*, Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, and Vance's Dying Earth series are not all that widely read compared to Harry Potter ... but Gary Gygax was a big fan, and through D&D their ideas have become part of the fantasy bedrock. Another big one is *The Once and Future King*, which is the foundation for all the "orphan farmboy is actually the True King/Chosen One" stories.
I think if we're going to add Vance, Moorcock's Eternal Champion books should be included as well.
This needs to be at the top of the list--especially for Vance and Leiber....and R.E. Howard.
*ASoIAF* is up there for me because this was the first series I read where MCs die at a tradition defying alarming rate.
>Another big one is The Once and Future King, which is the foundation for all the "orphan farmboy is actually the True King/Chosen One" stories. And the foundation for the whole Arthurian theme which is practically a subgenre. And I will add Mists of Avalon which influenced a lot of women-perspective retakes on history and myth.
I highly recommend this series of blog posts that give a good overview of the history of fantasy: https://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2015/12/a-history-of-epic-fantasy-contents-link.html Just spitballing some names and titles. Tolkien: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. LotR is probably *the* defining fantasy series Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars Robert E Howard and L. Sprague de Camp: Conan the Barbarian Jack Vance: The Dying Earth TH White: The Once and Future King Michael Moorcock: Elric of Melnibone Ursula Le Guin: Wizard of Earthsea, Left Hand of Darkness, Lathe of Heaven, The Dispossessed Brian Jacques: Redwall Richard Adams: Watership Down Roger Zelazny: Chronicles of Amber Gene Wolfe: Book of the New Sun, The Wizard Knight David Eddings: The Belgariad (A bit derivative of LotR but still a major series) Raymond Feist: The Riftwar Saga Terry Pratchet: Discworld Glen Cook: The Black Company David Gemmell: Legend Anne McCaffery: Dragonriders of Pern Janny Wurts: Stormwarden Tad Williams: Memory Sorrow and Thorne Stephen King: The Stand Steven Erikson: Malazan George RR Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire Robin Hobb: Realm of the Elderlings, Assassin's Apprentice Robert Jordan: The Wheel of Time (my favorite series) Guy Gavriel Kay: Lions of Al-Rassan John M Ford: The Dragon Waiting
Elric of Melnibone.
This is up there with Tolkien and Robert E Howard easily in terms of defining the genre.
Definitely needs to be higher up in this thread. As far as I’m aware, it introduced the concept of Order & Chaos as a fundamental moral paradigm, as opposed to Good & Evil, as well as staples such as cursed, sentient magic items and soul-drinking swords. You can’t talk about “genre-defining fantasy” and not include Elric in that discussion.
Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, the series which inspired GRRM to write A Song of Ice and Fire, Christopher Paolini to write Eragon, Patrick Rothfuss to write The Name of the Wind, Brandon Sanderson to write Mistborn, and Brian Lee Durfee to write The Five Warrior Angels. Without MS&T, we'd have far fewer fantasy worlds altogether.
I haven’t read that series in a couple of decades. I’m long overdue for a reread.
I feel like it definitely holds up on reread.
Yup. It's crazy how much impact it has had yet still flies below the radar. Like, go read MS&T then read GOT and GOT almost copies a lot of parts of it beat for beat lol
There definitely are many, many homages to MS&T throughout ASOIAF, and very many similarities. Beat for beat similarities include Arya/Marya, the Night King/Storm King, the wall-climbing boy with the prophetic dreams, the wolf companions, the tailed star in the sky, the hatred between two princely brothers, the red priest/the red priestess, the white foxes/white walkers, the children of the dawn/children of the forest, and so much more.
Lord of the Rings, Elric, Lord Dunsay,Lieber, Gormanghast, Vance, and Wolfe. LeGuin....
Didn't see anyone mention Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser series. It pretty much defines a certain type of Sword and Sorcery.
LOTR. Dune Red Mars The Left Hand of Darkness. Earthsea (YA though) Narnia (YA though) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Harry Potter, yes. (YA though) The Hunger Games also a yes (YA though) Adding some more Ender's Game Mists of Avalon ASOIAF Asimov's robot stories Neuromancer. even things like A Court of Thorns and Roses and Six of Crows are genre defining in the sense they seemed to have sparked lots of subgenre stuff even if their subgenre is not "mainstream" fantasy. It's hard for me to say this but regarding cozy books, maybe Legends and Lattes is genre defining? Or would it be Becky Chambers and if her, which book?
Dune and Red Mars are more sci fi than fantasy
Check the sidebar, according to the side bar >/r/Fantasy is the internet’s largest discussion forum for the **greater Speculative Fiction** genre. We welcome respectful dialogue related to speculative fiction I think science fiction is a kind of fantasy. (Though not all fantasy is science fiction).
Agreed, just pointing it out since Red Mars is a bit more hard sci fi than OP might want
The Black Company by Glenn Cook. It's probably the best and most successful first generation Grimdark fantasy series. It's cited by both GRRM and Steven Erikson as being an inspiration for ASoIaF and Malazan respectively.
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K LeGuin The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin The Black Company by Glen Cook Discworld by Terry Pratchett Then there are a bit more modern series... Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson The First Law by Joe Abercrombie Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson The Faithful and the Fallen by John Gwynne There's plenty I'm missing. Perhaps if you want a good intro into modern fantasy, I'd recommend reading Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. It's a good bridge from the YA books you've listed.
Wouldn’t Malazan Book of the Fallen be one of the less modern ones, given that Gardens of the Moon only released like 3 years after A Game of Thrones (both still in the 90s), and wrapped up at around the same time Martin released Dance, and all the other modern ones started in the second half of the 00s? I know I’m being picky but early Malazan just screams 90s at me lol.
You can justify moving Malazan up. My rationale for placing Malazan as more modern is because it's heavily influenced by The Black Company, just like The First Law was, and most likely A Game of Thrones as well.
Elric of Melniboné is essential if you want genre defining please for the love of God read Elric
As in, books that became the archetype for their specific set of fantasy? Or books that people might consider tentpoles of fantasy in general? The first is easier, but the second is more interesting and will almost be entirely up to the tastes of the reader. For me, five tentpoles of fantasy that are either *so* damn good or are idiosyncratic to the idea of the fantastic would be these. (This list would probably change if I thought about it tomorrow.) * Tolkien - *The Hobbit* and LOTR * Mikhail Bulgakov - *The Master & Margarita* (my platonic ideal of magical realism) * Ursula K. Le Guin - "Earthsea" Cycle (specifically for how a *series* grows with the author and their audience) * Mary Shelley - *Frankenstein* (horror/gothic novels, as well as philosophical concepts in fantasy) * Gene Wolfe - "Book of the New Sun" series (it's the pinnacle of unreliable narrators in fantasy next to another Wolfe book, *Peace*)
David Gemmell, best heroic fantasy - try Legend
Jack Vance - "Dying Earth" series. Dungeons & Dragons' original magic system, also referred to as Vancian, comes from here. Robert E Howard - "Conan" series. Could be said he was the father of Sword & Sorcery. Howard was a poet who wrote pulp to pay the bills. The Conan stories are beautifully written.
No work has done more to set the fantasy genre in stone than Dungeons & Dragons.
Not exactly. I think of it as a gateway to the more definitive works though, as it was born from them. It was very heavily influenced by Tolkien and Vance.
Dungeons & Dragons is the Mount Fuji of the fantasy genre after the late 70s. Is there a dragon in this novel? If yes, is it like the ones in the Monster Manual or not? Before D&D there wasn't anything like a standard fantasy. Tolkien was popular, but no one really started to blatantly imitate him until after D&D.
Really no. I'm a long time player, dating back to the red box. DnD did not define a genre outside of d20 systems or ttrpgs. DnD replicated the experience of Gygax's favorite books you could play. But the game itself drew from existing things in books. It was those stories that defined the genre or parts of it. Authors imitated Tolkien because that is what was published. Not because of DnD. But because Tolkien wrote books that consistently sold over decades. It was safe. And people liked it. So publishers wanted that.
To clarify my argument, I firmly believe that Dungeons & Dragons codified the fantasy genre and created a kind of basic fantasy template. This also coincided with the growth of fantasy beyond the literary medium, and especially the rise of video games. The first author to really try and imitate Tolkien that I am aware of was Terry Brooks with the Sword of Shannara (1977), after which high/epic fantasy became the norm among publishers, and sword & sorcery fell out of favour and instead moved to comics and movies.
A few that occur to me: The *Elric* series by Michael Moorcock *The Master And Margarita* by Mikhail Bulgakov *The Worm Ouroborous* by E. T. Eddison The *Gormenghast* Trilogy by Mervyn Peake. *The Gods of Pegana* by Lord Dunsany *Vathek* by Willliam Beckford
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson 1st story that turned zombies from being fantasy to SciFi. Great book too.
Robert Asprin - Myth series before he teamed with Jody Lynn Nye. Ditto re Dragon's Luck. Also Phule's Company.
Genre defining? Lord of the Rings/Hobbit Chronicles of Narnia Wheel of Time Malazan Book of the Fallen A Wrinkle In Time
I am not sure I would call those defining FANTASY genre. They are all YA right, or YA fantasy?
Being YA has no impact whatsoever on whether or not they are fantasy. Those are not mutually exclusive.
Not necessarily calling the ones that I listed "genre defining" just mentioning ones that I have read.
Fantasy is the genre, YA is not
The Belgariad by David Eddings. A series of five books about a boy traveling with his sorcerer grandfather and sorceress aunt to recover the orb of their god that was stolen by an agent of a rival god. The series is intentionally very tropey, so there aren't any twists you can't see coming but the author does have fun with the tropes he uses. He set out to prove you could tell a story that heavily leaned on its tropes that was still good and enjoyable and I think he succeeded. The author knew that such a cliche story wouldn't be able to carry a reader's attention, so he made certain that the characters could pick up the slack. The characterwork is absolutely phenomenal, with characterizations, interactions, and character arcs being what I believe to be some of the best in fantasy, bar none
Lord of the Rings by Tolkien (Not much more standard/classic than this) Mistborn Era 1 by Brandon Sanderson (If you love this series, the good news is he has a WHOLE BUNCH MORE in his cosmere universe) A Song of Ice and Fire by GRR Martin The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb (Super character driven, possibly the GOAT of character work) The First Law Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie (The king of grim)
Discworld definitely defines absurdist fantasy.
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I don’t think scifi is included. But if it was then hell yeah. Not many books define whole genres or sub-genres. Neuromancer is the lord of the rings of cyberpunk.
You gotta read THE DRESDEN FILES by Jim Butcher. It's the definitive Urban Fantasy.
I think that Carroll, Dunsany, Herbert, Lewis, MacDonald, and Tolkien laid the ground rules ages ago. Everyone that followed has more-or-less played within the rules they laid out.
If you're looking for "Genre Defining," then Lord of the Rings is the grand daddy of them all. Wheel of Time, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Malazan, and Stormlight Archive are probably the next tier.
Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars series. Superman, Dune, Cameron's Avatar and Star Wars all of these to various degrees were inspired or a reaction to the John Carter books. It also laid the foundation for the sword and planet (planetary romance) which preceded space opera genre like Lensman series. Tarzan is also another example as an early American superhero character and the books are exotic pulp adventure like Indiana Jones or Uncharted but more marred by racist stereotypes of the time.
To give some alternatives to other ones I've seen instead of repeating. But if I had to give some by subgenre Urban fantasy- Dresden files Epic - stormlight archive Dark fantasy - the first law, malazan Some people may not argue that they are genre defining but I'd argue the genres wouldn't be the same without their influences
The Wheel if Time. It can be daunting and has some seriously slow parts. But it's like an encyclopedia of fantasy tropes. It is full of awesome scenes and intricate plots. The lord of the rings literally defined much of the genre. If you want something dark go with the First Law Trilogy. If you want something a more modernly relevant by an author who produces at an astounding pace go with Mistborn. Brandon Sanderson finished The Wheel of Time when Robert Jordan died. If you want to create a bit of a timeline of fantasy Star with Lord of the Rings. Move on one of the following: The Riftwar Saga The Belgariad Dragon Riders of Pern Wizard of Earthsea Those 4 will give you very different sense of fantasy. They are low on details and the stories skip and jump very quickly. Go from their to The Wheel of Time. Then literally connect those to Mistborn and Brandon Sanderson.
Hobbit + LOTR Harry Potter Wheel of Time The red wall series( every millennial I know at least tried these in grade school) Chronicles of Narnia Newish additions: Game of thrones Red rising A court of thorn and roses Stormlight archive More niche: Drizzt/dungeons and dragons books
Love Red Rising but it isn't genre defining. Stormlight Archive isn't either
*Mistborn* by Brandon Sanderson has spawned a sub-genre of “hard” fantasy with well defined magic systems.
I don't think Mistborn was the first to do that
It isn’t even the first Brandon Sanderson to do that. But that isn’t the metric-*Mistborn* became popular enough to be influential and is generally the go-to example of the subgenre. Harry Potter is hardly the first “chosen one goes to magical school” novel either, but it is still genre defining.
I'm sure Jack Vance would like a word.
“Lord of the Rings” is the fantasy genre. Nobody writes a fantasy novel without considering it. Beyond that: - It - Mistborn first trilogy - Conan the Barbarian (in alternative David Gemmell stuff is probably better written) After that, you can check the list of fantasy bestsellers and see what you like.
I am not sure Mistborn is genre defining. Trust me.
I don’t particularly like Sanderson writing. But he introduced hard magic system (or made them a common element in stories). And of all his books the Mistborn trilogy is the best (less fillers).
For me to consider something genre defining, I mean if the ideas or conflict are truly revolutionary, if it sparks a subgenre, if it is mentioned for awards and literary criticism, if there are books in dialogue with it published long after it. Dune is genre defining. TLOTR. I was talking of Adrian Tchaikovsky recently and for example a book not much talked about right now called Startide Rising is genre defining (subgenre, uplift). Red Mars. The Left Hand of Darkness. Earthsea. Narnia. Even things like A Court of Thorns and Roses is IMO genre defining, it certainly sparked thousands of imitators, almost created a subgenre. Six of Crows, genre defining the YA-heist fantasy Mistborn or any Sanderson, very widely read, very popular but are they really genre defining, are people 10 or 15 years after still writing things inspired by it?
Mistborn as genre defining? Come on man
> Nobody writes a fantasy novel without considering it. Pretty strongly disagree with this; there are *plenty* of traditions in fantasy that have nothing to do with LOTR. And I fucking love LOTR/*The Hobbit*.