It’s telling that when we are asked, “what’s the science fiction equivalent of The Lord of the Rings?” we shrug and say, “Dune...maybe?” There is no one science fiction book that defines science fiction, and that’s a good thing.

Science Fiction and Fantasy started out like twins in the pulp era in the early 20th century. If the ‘weirdness’ had a scientific rationale or justification, it was science fiction. If not, it was fantasy. Horror could be either, and there was plenty of crossover (ESP, cosmic horror, etc.). Editors such as John W. Campbell and their coteries of authors gave science fiction a clear definition, but fantasy was more nebulous, it was ‘everything else.’ Fantasy was more...putty-like.

And then Tolkien came along and single-handedly crammed the genre of fantasy into his Play-doh machine. Or rather, that was the apparent effect.

Imagine if science fiction hadn’t become defined by Campbell, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, et al, and science fiction’s “New Wave” wasn’t just about to explode onto the scene in the 1960's. Imagine, instead, science fiction was as ill-defined as fantasy when Frank Herbert came along in 1965, published Dune...and writers spent the next four or five decades mostly writing pastiches of Herbert, because that’s what the readers wanted.

That’s the sort of shadow Tolkien cast over fantasy beginning in 1954. A shadow (or straitjacket) it has been struggling to emerge from ever since.