Is George R.R. Martin the “American Tolkien”?

With the end of the third season of Game of Thrones in sight (June 9th), a global audience of over 5 million is debating whether or not George R.R. Martin is the rightful “American Tolkien.” I argue that while The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have striking similarities, Martin is actually pioneering a distinct genre—a new kind of fantasy novel informed by historical fiction and politics.
Martin admits that he was influenced a great deal by Tolkien, and mirrored the structure of his novels off of Tolkien’s work:

“Tolkien begins his story in the Shire with one group of inhabitants, hobbits, but eventually expands the tale in ever-widening orbits to cover many races and huge tracts of land. That’s what I wanted to do too. I wanted to start with a tight focus on a few characters and one place in the world, and as the story is told, the world will continue to get bigger and bigger and more people get drawn into the conflict,” Martin told the Detroit Free Press.

Martin’s Game of Thrones takes place in “the known world,” consisting of three discovered continents. It is important to note that Martin’s series is unfinished pending the release of two more books. Because Martin’s legendarium isn't complete, only speculative maps of “the known world” exist online.
Though Martin’s novels gave the illusion of a multi-lingual world, he never actually created the languages. The Dothraki and High Valyrian that you hear in the HBO series were crafted by a group of linguists in the Language Creation Society. Throughout the course of the books, the maps and languages are revealed to the reader in sections on a need-to-know basis as the characters traverse an increasing percentage of the world.
Tolkien’s creation displays a sense of depth yet unrivaled in the fantasy genre. In this way, Lord of the Rings is to Game of Thrones as the Atlantic Ocean is to Lake Michigan. In contrast to the invention of Martin’s world, which is secondary to his plotline, Tolkien built his real...