"Whither" actually means "to what place or state"*, so the OP's post does make a bit more sense in that context, in which s/he seems to think that "downhill from greater glories" seems to be it.
Are there sf clones of Tolkien and Harry Potter? Plenty of fantasy ones, I'd agree, but actual sfnal elves and wizards tend to be fairly rare to begin with.
Anyway, for decent free stuff, if that's what the OP is looking for, I'd recommend starting at the Baen Free Library (once upon a time, I'd have recommended starting at the Tor.com short stories, but they removed the convenient downloadable e-reader-friendly versions of all of those) and working one's way out to various promo giveaways available directly from the author/publisher.
Someone asked for free PDF-format SF over in the Deals forum a few days ago, and she
got a good number of replies. Plus, Night Shade Books are running a number of free e-book offers in addition to what
they regularly have at their download page, and
Small Beer Press have a small but excellent Creative Commons selection.
Out of the freebies, I especially recommend Ted Chiang, Maureen F. McHugh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Peter Watts, & Charles Stross. There are many other good authors, but those are the ones I both enjoyed and consider good enough to unreservedly recommend (sometimes I have inexplicably trashy taste).
And if the OP is really nostalgic for old-school pulp, there's at least one free L. Ron Hubbard story every month offered by a reprint press which is supposedly not funnelling/accepting the money from the Scientology branch of the operation.
* Definition cribbed from the Mac dictionary app.