Playing Baldur's Gate 3 and watching Frieren has made me think about how ubiquitous certain fantasy tropes, largely dependent on D&D and Tolkien, are. Moreover, the Anglosphere seems to have a bit of a monopoly, on the fantasy genre, even if said monopoly is limited to influence (for example, not many in Japan give a damn about A Song of Ice and Fire, but isekai and fantasy anime are often set in worlds that are nothing but Japanese interpretations of post-Tolkien fantasy.
Science fiction, on the other hand, you've got several authors that contributed more or less equally to the development of the genre's most salient tropes and, as far back as the Cold War, you had competing American- and Soviet-influenced science fiction scenes, with other countries (China, Japan, etc.) contributing their own spins on the genre, especially in recent times.
So, how could one have a more polycentric development of the fantasy genre? Wuxia definitely counts but, until recently, it was a strictly East Asian phenomenon, and not many Western writers have been as influenced by it as the other way around, with certain outliers such as the Avatar series. And, I find it very weird, and a bit of a missed opportunity, that the Arabic and Romance-speaking worlds did not come up with their own Lewis or Tolkien-sized epics, for example.
Science fiction, on the other hand, you've got several authors that contributed more or less equally to the development of the genre's most salient tropes and, as far back as the Cold War, you had competing American- and Soviet-influenced science fiction scenes, with other countries (China, Japan, etc.) contributing their own spins on the genre, especially in recent times.
So, how could one have a more polycentric development of the fantasy genre? Wuxia definitely counts but, until recently, it was a strictly East Asian phenomenon, and not many Western writers have been as influenced by it as the other way around, with certain outliers such as the Avatar series. And, I find it very weird, and a bit of a missed opportunity, that the Arabic and Romance-speaking worlds did not come up with their own Lewis or Tolkien-sized epics, for example.