J.R.R. Tolkien gave modern fantasy its dominant language. Fellowship quests, invented histories, dark lords, maps, ancient races, lost kingdoms, and secondary worlds still carry his fingerprints. Calling another book more influential therefore needs a wider measurement. These five works shaped storytelling across centuries, languages, religions, folklore, children’s literature, and entire ideas about what an adventure could be.
Several were already ancient before the fantasy genre had a name. Their heroes travelled into impossible places, faced monsters, bargained with supernatural powers, crossed the boundary between life and death, and returned carrying knowledge that changed them. Middle-earth remains fantasy’s greatest modern construction. These stories helped construct the imagination that made Middle-earth possible. Scroll down slowly if you can take it.
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'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland' (1865)
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Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland sends a curious young girl down a rabbit hole into a place where size, language, manners, time, and logic refuse to behave. Wonderland has no grand war or heroic prophecy. Its danger comes from unstable rules. A conversation can become a trap. A children’s game can become a trial. Adults speak with complete confidence while making absolutely no sense. Lewis Carroll gave younger readers a fantasy world that did not need to lecture them before allowing them to enjoy it.
Published in 1865, the book became a landmark of Victorian children’s literature and helped open the path for modern portal fantasy. Its creatures and phrases escaped the page almost immediately. The White Rabbit, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts, and the rabbit hole itself became cultural language understood by people who may never have read the novel. Wonderland reaches into children’s books, surrealism, film, games, fashion, psychology, music, and internet culture. Tolkien built a world readers want to inhabit. Carroll made falling into another reality feel like a permanent possibility. That rabbit hole is still open.
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'Grimms’ Fairy Tales' (1812–1815)
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Grimms’ Fairy Tales is the collection that preserved and reshaped stories such as Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Little Red Riding Hood for generations of readers. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published the first volume of Children’s and Household Tales in 1812 and followed it with a second in 1815. These stories brought forests, witches, curses, transformations, cruel families, magical bargains, and talking animals into one of the most widely circulated bodies of fantasy ever assembled.
The collection’s influence goes far beyond familiar princesses. It helped elevate folk narrative as something worth collecting, studying, editing, and preserving. Later editions also changed the tales, strengthening moral lessons and adjusting material for family audiences, which reminds us that the version called “traditional” was often shaped by publishers and collectors. Fantasy fiction, animated cinema, horror, advertising, theme parks, and popular ideas about childhood all keep borrowing Grimm imagery. Tolkien gave fantasy writers a model for mythology. The Grimms supplied culture with a shared box of nightmares and wishes. Open the book and you will recognise half the forest before the first page is over.
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'One Thousand and One Nights' (c. 8th–14th Centuries)
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One Thousand and One Nights is a vast, evolving collection of tales held together by one of storytelling’s greatest setups. Shahrazad marries a ruler who kills each new wife, then keeps herself alive by telling him a story every night and stopping at the point he most desperately wants to hear more. Her imagination becomes strategy, resistance, education, and survival. Inside that frame sit voyages, romances, monsters, hidden treasure, magical objects, criminal schemes, demons, rulers, merchants, and ordinary people whose luck can change in a sentence.
The collection developed through Arabic, Persian, Indian, and other storytelling traditions rather than arriving as one fixed book from one author. Antoine Galland’s hugely successful French translation began appearing in 1704 and helped carry the Nights across European literature. Aladdin and Ali Baba became internationally famous through that translation tradition, even though they were absent from the earliest surviving Arabic manuscript used by Galland. The deeper legacy belongs to the structure itself. Stories grow inside stories, narrators interrupt one another, and suspense becomes a literal life-saving force. Every fantasy author understands the power of another chapter. Shahrazad understood it centuries earlier. Read one night and see how quickly it becomes ten.
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'The Odyssey' (c. 8th Century BCE)
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The Odyssey is the ancient Greek epic (it’s what’s trending in cinemas right now) about Odysseus trying to return home after the Trojan War. The trip should take weeks. It lasts ten years. Gods interfere, monsters wait along the route, sailors make disastrous decisions, and every island offers a new temptation or threat. Back in Ithaca, Penelope delays a house full of suitors while Telemachus searches for news of the father he barely remembers. The story keeps its massive scale connected to one modest human desire. A tired man wants to reach his family.
Its influence is almost impossible to contain inside fantasy. The dangerous voyage, wandering hero, deceptive host, descent toward the dead, faithful spouse, lost identity, homecoming, and monster-filled sea journey all became basic tools of Western storytelling. The poem grew from oral performance, where repeated phrases and familiar scenes helped bards carry an enormous narrative before audiences. Later translations extended its reach into English literature, while adaptations have travelled through novels, theatre, opera, film, science fiction, and modern retellings. Tolkien gave readers the fellowship journey. The Odyssey helped teach literature how to make the road itself into a story. Pick a translation with energy and sail. The monsters are waiting.
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'The Epic of Gilgamesh' (c. 2100–1200 BCE)
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The Epic of Gilgamesh begins with a powerful king whose strength has made him arrogant and destructive. The gods create Enkidu as his equal, and their confrontation grows into a friendship that changes both men. They face supernatural creatures, challenge divine authority, and chase glory until death forces Gilgamesh to confront the one enemy no hero can defeat forever. His search for immortality turns an adventure story into something painfully recognizable. Power, fame, and victory suddenly look small beside the fear of losing someone.
Gilgamesh stories existed in separate Sumerian poems before they were woven into Akkadian versions during the second millennium BCE. The later Standard Babylonian form gathered that material into the epic readers know today. Its friendship, monster battles, divine punishment, great flood, journey beyond the human world, and confrontation with mortality place major fantasy ideas near the beginning of recorded literature. Its direct line of influence was interrupted because the poem disappeared from cultural memory until cuneiform tablets were deciphered in the nineteenth century. Its foundational power remains astonishing. Gilgamesh proves that humanity was telling emotionally layered fantasy almost as soon as it began writing stories down. Four thousand years later, his grief still feels immediate. Start there and meet one of fantasy’s first heroes.
Collider Exclusive · Middle-earth QuizWhich Lord of the Rings Character Are You?One Quiz · Ten Questions · Your Fate Revealed
The road goes ever on. From the green hills of the Shire to the fires of Mount Doom, every soul in Middle-earth carries a destiny. Ten questions stand between you and the truth of who you are. Answer honestly — the One Ring has a way of revealing what we most want to hide.
💍Frodo
🌿Samwise
👑Aragorn
🔥Gandalf
🏹Legolas
⚒️Gimli
👁️Sauron
🪨Gollum
BEGIN YOUR QUEST →
01
You are handed a responsibility that could destroy you. What do you do?The weight of the world falls on unlikely shoulders.
AAccept it. Someone has to, and running changes nothing.
BStay by the side of whoever carries it. They shouldn't go alone.
CStep forward and lead. This is exactly what I was made for.
DIt's mine now. I won't let anyone else have it.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Your closest companion is heading into terrible danger. You:True loyalty is revealed not in comfort, but in crisis.
AFollow them without hesitation. I'd rather die beside them than live without them.
BRally others and forge a plan to help — strength in numbers.
COffer wisdom and guidance. My counsel may save them where swords cannot.
DLet them go. Only the strong survive, and sentiment is a weakness.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
Enormous power is within your reach. Your instinct is:Power corrupts — but only those who reach for it.
ADestroy it. Nothing good comes from power this absolute.
BUse it to protect those I love — just this once.
CWield it wisely. I have the will and the knowledge to do good with it.
DSeize it. I have waited long enough. It belongs to me.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What does "home" mean to you?Where we long to return reveals who we truly are.
AA simple, peaceful place — green hills, good food, no adventure required.
BWherever the people I love are. Home is a feeling, not a place.
CA kingdom I must earn before I can truly claim it as mine.
DI lost it long ago. That loss is what drives everything I do.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
When a battle is upon you, your approach is:War reveals what we are made of — whether we like it or not.
ASurvive by any means. I'm not a fighter — but I'll do what I must.
BFight for the person beside me, not for glory or honour.
CLead the charge. Nothing inspires an army like a king at the front.
DStrike from range, fast and precise — never let them get close.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
Someone comes to you for advice in their darkest hour. You:Wisdom is not knowing all the answers — it's knowing which questions to ask.
AListen, then offer honest encouragement. Sometimes people just need belief.
BGive them practical help — words are fine, but action is better.
CSpeak carefully. I have seen much, and I know what counsel can cost.
DTell them what they want to hear. Trust is a tool like any other.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
How do you see yourself, honestly?Self-knowledge is the most dangerous kind.
ASmall and ordinary — but perhaps that's exactly why I was chosen.
BDefined entirely by who I serve and love. I am nothing without them.
CForged by hardship into something the world has not yet fully seen.
DDiminished from what I once was — and consumed by the need to reclaim it.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
Which of these best describes your relationship with the natural world?Middle-earth speaks to those who know how to listen.
AI find peace in it — forests, rivers, open skies. Nature restores me.
BI prefer the earth underfoot — stone, mines, solid and real things.
CI have watched the world change for longer than most can comprehend.
DNature offers hiding places, cold water, raw fish. That's enough for me.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
You encounter a wretched, pitiable creature who has done terrible things. You:How we treat the fallen reveals the height of our character.
AShow mercy. Even the most broken souls deserve a chance at redemption.
BPity them — but never trust them. They made their choices.
CSee them as a tool. Their knowledge or skills may still serve a purpose.
DDestroy them before they can cause more harm. Mercy is a luxury we cannot afford.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
When the quest is over and the songs are sung, what do you hope they say about you?In the end, we are all just stories.
AThat an ordinary person did an extraordinary thing — and came home.
BThat I never abandoned the person who needed me most.
CThat I was worthy of the crown — and everything it demanded.
DNothing. I don't need songs. I needed it, and now it's gone.
REVEAL MY FATE →
The Fellowship Has SpokenYour Place in Middle-earth
The scores below reveal your true character. Your highest number is your match. Even a tie tells a story — the Fellowship was never made of simple people.
💍Frodo
🌿Samwise
👑Aragorn
🔥Gandalf
🏹Legolas
⚒️Gimli
👁️Sauron
🪨Gollum
You carry something heavy — and you carry it alone, even when you don't have to. You were not born for greatness, and that is precisely why greatness chose you. Your courage is not the roaring, sword-swinging kind; it is quiet, stubborn, and terrifying in its refusal to quit. The Ring weighs on you more than anyone can see, and still you walk toward the fire. That is not weakness. That is the rarest kind of strength there is.
You are, without question, the best of them. Not the most powerful, not the most celebrated — but the most essential. Your loyalty is not a trait; it is a force of nature. You would carry the person you love up the slopes of Mount Doom if it came to that, and we both know you'd do it without being asked. The world needs more people like you, and the world is lucky it has even one.
You were born to lead, and you have spent years running from it. The crown is yours by right, but you know better than anyone that right means nothing without the will and the worthiness to back it up. You are tempered by loss, shaped by long roads, and defined by a code of honour you hold to even when no one is watching. When you finally step forward, the world shifts. Because it was always waiting for you.
You have seen more than you let on, and you say less than you know — which is exactly as it should be. You are a catalyst: you do not fight the battles yourself, you ignite the people who can. Your wisdom comes not from books but from an age of watching what happens when it is ignored. You arrive precisely when you mean to, and your presence alone changes what is possible. A wizard is never late.
Graceful, perceptive, and almost preternaturally calm under pressure — you see things others miss and act before others react. You do not need to make a scene to be remarkable; your presence speaks for itself. You are loyal to those you choose to stand beside, and that choice is not made lightly. You have lived long enough to know that the most beautiful things in this world are also the most fragile, and that is why you fight to protect them.
You are loud, proud, and absolutely formidable — and beneath all of that is one of the most fiercely loyal hearts in Middle-earth. You don't do anything by half measures. Your friendships are forged like iron, your grudges run as deep as mines, and your courage in battle is the kind that makes legends. You came into this fellowship suspicious of everyone and ended it willing to die for an elf. That is not a small thing. That is everything.
You think in centuries and act in absolutes. Order, dominion, control — not because you are cruel by nature, but because you have decided that the world left to itself always falls apart, and you are the only one with the vision and the will to hold it together. You were not always this. Something was lost, or taken, or betrayed, and the version of you that stands now is the answer to that wound. The tragedy is that you're not entirely wrong — just entirely too far gone to course-correct.
You are a study in contradiction — pitiable and dangerous, cunning and broken, capable of both cruelty and something that once resembled love. You are defined by loss: of innocence, of self, of the one thing that gave your existence meaning. Two voices war inside you constantly, and the tragedy is that the better one sometimes wins, just not often enough, and never at the right moment. You are a warning, yes — but also a mirror. We are all a little Gollum, given the right ring and enough time.
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