A fan of Tolkien's original stories is exactly that, not a fan of any story written by a random author with the same characters in it. There are plenty of fantasy novels that don't enjoy the same level of success for that reason.
There is no lack of elfves, dwarves, wizards, and dragons. What is lacking is Tolkien's talent.
Is the fear that a derivative would some how make the original less successful? or fail itself or reveal some character attributes that you don't like?
But it does feel different when you invite new creators to step up to the plate and create new chapters in a story and then explicitly elevate those new chapters to the same level of canon as the original. This could even be said to apply to Lucas and the prequel trilogy, since Lucas did not direct Empire or Jedi, so the prequels were being made essentially be a completely different team than the originals (other than him).
All that to say— this could be done, but it would be really important to manage the branding of it. It's not an "LOTR sequel", it's "LOTR Legends — new stories set in Tolkien's beloved world", with the clear implication that canon 0 is LOTR, canon 1 is the Christopher Tolkien-edited works like the Silmarillion, and the "Legends" are canon 2. Anything not associated with the estate is canon 3, and the movies, video games, and TV show are not canon at all.
Some of the expanded universe Star Wars is quite good. I personally loved the KOTOR game and the Yuzhaan Vong books while hating all the Disney movies. I suppose the same argument applies to the Silmarillion since it was heavily edited by Tolkien's son.
Often repeated as a mantra, but do they actually not?
Classic example: The plummeting of the rewatchability of Game of Thrones Seasons 1-4. Also, Star Wars.
That said, there was a fantasy series I've read part of where the author himself started writing tons of spinoffs and whatnot; almost like writing fanfiction of their own works.
potential for what? Making more money? I'm glad Tolkien's son actually had the decency to not squeeze his father's legacy for every penny. Within months of him stepping down at age 93 whoever is in charge of it now signed the contract with Amazon
After suffering through the Hobbit movies, I would completely disagree.
Adding salt to the injury, these movies destroyed the story in the book that Tolkien apparently wrote specially for his children. Talk about taking care of a legacy.
I guess it was difficult to resist the temptation, with so much money involved. But I don't see any other justification for those 3 movies apart from penny squeezing
Honestly, what would it hurt? They can continue to publish the more raw works, you're not losing anything. I didn't finish the Hobbit films and I'm still alive.
Of course, as another commenter pointed out there's the Dune book which is an example of how not to do that. But, this is why it only works if the author that's chosen is a good writer and not a complete hack like Kevin J. Anderson who has never produced a single decent book (even outside the dune universe)
Either way at least we got an ending. Thing is- the books had been meandering for a while, and it's quite possible Jordan would have whiffed at the end, but we will never know.
With Tolkien it's just been a shallow money grab since The Hobbit trilogy made off a super short book and after the Amazon series stuff I'm over it anyway.
It feels like at this point they should have people write universe books like Forgotten Realms or something. New books by new authors in the Tolkienverse.
ASOIAF will probably never be finished, and I'm OK with that.
I used to hate not getting to see how a story ends but after so many books/shows/series/movies always ending on cliffhangers to never be completed, I'm just over it.
Seems even storytellers die heroes or live long enough to become villains ;)
Can you go into why it was considered a mess? I'm a relatively recent finisher of the series so I can't speak to the contemporary reaction of the fanbase, but my impression has been that the current community is, at a minimum, satisfied with Sanderson's work. There are several things that people complain frequently about (and that I agree with) like Mat's character development and the Androl arc. Not to mention the lost possibility of follow-on series after A Memory of Light! That doesn't mean people think it's a mess, though.
I personally was glad for the ending. My main critique was with the series as a whole meandering wildly. But was still something I loved.
I believe they had lots of notes and a roadmap from Jordan as well, but I could be mis-remembering.
One weird series that had an ending that wasn't supposed to was the Gunslinger series. I think King went like 20 years between books before ending it. I really remember it because he had a note when you got to the ending saying he didn't feel the story should have an ending, and he recommended stopping there, but for those who needed an ending he provided one to give some closure.
I thought that was so cool, and read it, but prefer to think Roland is still out there somewhere chasing some new Walter, so rather than preferring an ending that time I preferred open-ended, which almost never happens.
I actually feel that some of the cannon changes detracted from the dune universe, which is even worse than not adding anything to it.
For example, The Last Ringbearer [1] is a fan fiction book that plays in a Tolkien universe after the fall of Mordor. IMHO, it's more intriguing than some Tolkien works published by his son, but the family decided to prevent it from being published and distributed in most legislations.
Is it just a quality bar? Some sense of how much it "fits" with the existing world while still expanding on it in meaningful and plausible ways?
I get that Star Wars novels are a template here, but that's not exactly a flattering comparison. Other cases like Robert Jordan and Robert Ludlum seem also to be a bit mixed.
They already have! The Silmarillion was a collaboration between Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay.
However, they will likely never be improved upon: anyone possessing the wit and knowledge to retell these stories for a discerning modern audience likely has their own legendarium to develop.
The History of Middle-Earth was never really meant to be read cover to cover. It's a collection of the elder Tolkien's unpublished works and rough drafts, some of which was later adapted into The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, and other more recent books.
Having just finished reading the Wheel of Time books for the first time about a week ago, I disagree with this statement. To me, the difference was stark - after going through so many of Jordan's books, you can clearly see a subtle but distinct writing style for each of the main POV characters. After the transition, the characters stay (mostly) the same but the writing style distinctions between them disappear; the worst offender being Aviendha's POV chapters (so! many! exclamation! marks!).
Sanderson also made a few mistakes in writing scenes involving the Aiel that contradicted lore laid down earlier in the series that really stuck out to me.
That's not to say Sanderson did a bad job, not at all. I really enjoyed the series, and I think Sanderson does a much better job at portraying emotional characters than Jordan did, which was crucial for the ending having the quality and impact that it did. they're both quality builders and writers, and both excel in different areas.
To me, though, it was if I had started watching something animated in the style of Arcane[0], and suddenly it switched to Moana[1]. Both fantastically animated and detailed, but the detail budget is spent in different places.
Sure they won't be cannon, but it will be a fun world to live in when a Master A.I. can rewrite and unfuck Star Wars.