Tolkien pretty much created the modern fantasy genre.
As the title says, Tolkien is so awesome. He wrote books like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He embedded the fantastical image of graceful, powerful elves; murderous orcs; stone-cutting, ingenius dwarves, etc. He also created full languages, with their own syntax and writing systems! I never really finished reading the books, however I did watch the films of his Lord of the Rings series. They were actually really good. My favourite out of the trilogy has to be the first one. It was just so awesome, with the Balrog and Ring Wraiths, and just WOW.