---
# System prepended metadata

title: 'Empty Worlds: The Crisis of Meaning in Modern Fantasy'
tags: [Overculture, Central Concepts]

---

# Empty Worlds: The Crisis of Meaning in Modern Fantasy

### Why Modern Fantasy Leaves Me Cold

I've spent much time lately reflecting on why modern fantasy doesn't resonate with me. Whether browsing bookstores or scrolling through streaming platforms, so much of what gets labeled as "fantasy" feels hollow, mass-produced, or even parodic. Recently, I came across a video titled *"This is Why We Never Got Another Lord of the Rings"* that articulated many of my frustrations in a way I hadn't seen before. While the video covers a wide range of topics, one idea struck me most profoundly: Tolkien's work wasn't just different from modern fantasy—it didn't belong to the genre at all.

What I realized is this: I'm not drawn to fantasy as a genre—I'm drawn to myths. Real myths feel complete, interconnected, alive. Every piece belongs because it grew organically from the same source. And somehow, Tolkien achieved this wholeness as a single author, crafting something that feels as timeless and inevitable as stories born from entire cultures over centuries.

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### Tolkien Wasn't Writing "Fantasy"

Tolkien's work wasn't part of a genre when he created it. He wasn't trying to write "fantasy" in the sense we understand today; he was a philologist, a medievalist, and a war veteran who wove together languages, histories, and myths not to entertain, but to restore a sense of the sacred in storytelling. When I read *The Lord of the Rings*, I'm not reading genre fiction—I'm reading something mythic, timeless, and deeply resonant.

As the video points out, Tolkien wasn't responsible for inventing modern fantasy. In fact, while the commercialization of fantasy was taking shape in America, Tolkien was living his quiet life in England—painting, raising his children, talking to trees, and writing stories that felt like they emerged from the deep roots of the world. His work existed outside the machine. But Tolkien's popularity created a market, and markets inevitably attract people who see patterns to be endlessly replicated rather than mysteries to be honored.

For Tolkien, language wasn't just a tool—it was the foundation upon which everything else rested. The names, places, and histories in Middle-earth aren't arbitrary; they're imbued with meaning, each element contributing to a living, breathing world.

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### The Del Rey Machine: How Fantasy Became Formulaic

One of the most eye-opening sections of the video discusses Lester Del Rey and his role in shaping modern fantasy. Del Rey didn't just publish fantasy—he turned it into a replicable formula. As the video describes, he built "a machine," and once that machine was running, the soul of storytelling began to drain away. Authors stopped being mythmakers and became copyists. The goal shifted from vision and truth to market share.

In Del Rey's system, story elements became interchangeable parts. But true mythology resists such reductionism. In myth, nothing is arbitrary—every detail is alive, connected, and essential to the whole. This is the gut feeling I get whenever I walk through the fantasy section of a bookstore. Most of these books aren't bad because they're poorly written—they're bad because they're empty. They operate within a rigid, artificial framework designed not around vision, but around commerce.

The video captures this perfectly, describing how fantasy was reshaped to be "safe," consumable, and iterative. Productions like Amazon's *Rings of Power* or *The Wheel of Time* embody this process: shows engineered by committee, built to echo a mythic tone without any real mythic soul.

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### Formula Kills Meaning

The video begins with a stark warning: formulas destroy everything. That line has stayed with me ever since. What Tolkien accomplished—the depth, the resonance, the sheer magic of his work—wasn't formulaic. It was the opposite. His stories grew out of memory, grief, beauty, and language. He wasn't trying to build a franchise; he was trying to tell the truth through story.

When we reduce storytelling to a formula, we lose the ineffable quality that makes it meaningful. True mythmaking requires vulnerability, imagination, and a willingness to embrace mystery. By contrast, formulaic storytelling prioritizes predictability and profit margins.

That's why I don't believe Tolkien belongs to modern fantasy. His name may adorn the banner, but he didn't construct the tent. That was Lester Del Rey and others like him, who took a complex, sacred act and boiled it down to its most bankable components.

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### A Broader Cultural Problem

The trajectory of the fantasy genre reflects a larger cultural issue. It's symptomatic of how our capitalist, industrialized society turns the dream-rich into the dead-boring. Art becomes product. Myth becomes merch. And we, the audience, are slowly trained to forget the difference.

Modern fantasy assembles components—a magic system here, a character archetype there—like building with blocks. But mythology works more like a tree: every branch, every leaf grows from the same living center. Cut one part, and the whole organism responds.

What the video made me realize is that my frustration with modern fantasy isn't just about books or TV shows. It's about the loss of the mythic as a living language. It's about how we've forgotten how to dream stories that aren't merely content, but vessels of something deeper.

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### Conclusion: Why There Won't Be Another Tolkien

There hasn't been another Tolkien because the system isn't designed to produce one. You don't get myth by following a checklist. You get it when someone sinks down into the root-system of the world and comes back up with something *numinous*. That's what Tolkien did.

Until our culture remembers the difference between art and product—until we rebuild the conditions where vision is valued over volume—we'll keep getting fantasy that looks like magic but feels like marketing.

The video didn't just explain why we never got another *Lord of the Rings*. It explained why we probably won't—not until we stop mistaking the machine for the myth.

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*This piece was sparked by a video I recently watched that finally articulated what I’ve long felt:*

**Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BBrDhgGz1k