An interesting read into some of the insights that Carmack had which lead to the revolution that was Quake can be found in the "Ramblings in Realtime" articles[1] by Michael Abrash[2], who helped John develop Quake's 3D engine. Abrash wrote the rather famous "Graphics Programming Black Book", now available for free[3].

[1]: https://valvedev.info/archives/abrash/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Abrash

[3]: https://github.com/jagregory/abrash-black-book