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The Atlas of Middle Earth
If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it's my wonder and delight in the earth as it is," Tolkien told an interviewer, "particularly the natural earth." He also wanted to provide a new, Brit-centric mythology for the world, so he took the literal earth and changed it just enough to make it "faerie."
With the cinematic trilogy of his books under production -- three separate films are scheduled for release over the next two years -- Middle Earth is going mainstream. These films will probably be nearly as big as Star Wars, if they're half as good, touching mythological and creative nerves that revolve around what we like to call science fiction in its varied forms.
As is often the case with culture The Lord Of the Rings, The Hobbit and The Silmarillion -- provided comfort, stimulation, and escape for a particular sub-set of the human species, especially young, enchanted brainiacs growing up apart from the mainstream and eager -- desperate, maybe -- for other worlds to explore.
If you want to enter Tolkien's world, the best way is to read The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the The Silmarillion. For hard-core Tolkien lovers who have already done that, I'd highly recommend -- there's plenty of time before the first movie in December -- The Atlas of Middle-Earth (Houghton Mifflin), by Karen Wynn Fonstad, a University of Wisconsin cartographer who has drafted unbelievably detailed maps of Middle Earth from the First Age through the Third, including thematic and other maps, guides, places and events (the mapping of the The Silarillion is astounding).
Tolkien created the details of Middle Earth for himself, for his own creativity and intellectual exercise. He was, Fonstad writes, envisioning his world much as our medieval cartographers viewed our own.
Fonstad's descriptions of the pain-staking process she used to create these hundreds of details maps are almost as interesting as the stories upon which they're based. The atlas is a composite of the physical surface with the imprint of the "Free Peoples." A number of basic map types are included -- the physical, including landforms, minerals, and climate; the political (spheres of influence); battles; migrations (closely tied with linguistics); the traveller's pathways and finally, situation maps -- towns and dwellings, all arranged roughly in sequence. Fonstad even includes detailed pathway tables -- the distance Frodo spent on his pony on dozens of trips, the length of marches, the treks of elves, the flights of refugees.
Fonstad concedes that an almost endless series of questions, assumptions and interpretations were necessary in creating these maps. But each line has been drawn with a reason behind it, she says. And she explains the reasoning.
Middle Earth was the creation of a world, and is deserving of its own geography. Fonstad's atlas is well and clearly written, even for the casual fan of Tolkien. And the hundreds of maps she created offers a new prism through which to look at these works. This is by no means a book for everybody, and even die-hard fans of the trilogy might ask why they need to know so much. The hard-core fanatic will know.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
I bought the Atlas about three years back and loved it. The Atlas contains amazing detail and history. I especially liked how it contained topography of not only middle earth during the time that the trilogy is set in but also maps from the Silmarillion's time.
Well worth the money in my opinion.
Whaddya say, CmdrTaco?
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
I have had this book for at least five years now, and I have to agree with Katz on this one. It is really detailed (far more detailed than I could have imagined just reading Tolkien's books), and offers a lot of help when reading through Tolkien's books, especially the Silmarillion. I'm a die-hard Tolkien fan (just got The Hobbit millenium edition, and the Lord of the Rings is on the way!), so I'm very familiar with the history and imagery of Middle-Earth, but the Atlas reviewed here really does justice to the series. It might be interesting to note that Karen Wynn Fonstad has done lots of other fiction cartography work for other popular book series' out there (I think D&D and other related stuff), so she's pretty good at giving the fantastical flair to her work (at least I think so). Get this book and reread through the Silmarillion. It's a much better read with maps like this in hand (The Silmarillion maps do take up approximately 1/2 of the Atlas of Middle Earth - IIRC).
It's always great to discover a new author, and now that Katz has told me about this Tolkein chap, I'll be certain to check out some of his books! I'm a little surprised that this "Lord Of The Rings" book is out already, though, normally novelisations aren't released until after the film hits the cinemas..
Go to Amazon - it's $16.80 there as opposed to $19.20 at Fatbrain.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
... but I do have the Forgotten Realms atlas at home by Fonstad, and I have to say it's lovely. The maps contain an incredible amount of detail and are amazingly easy to read considering, and it's a pleasure to have maps that haven't been drawn by the author with little triangles for mountains :)
Also the maps depicting important scenes from the books really serve to make things clearer, especially during confusing scenes which occur over wide or tangled geographical areas. I can only imagine the effort that went into making these as consistent as possible with the books, especially in this case as the author cannot be contacted...
I'm not a huge Tolkien fan, but I might get this anyway just to look through. Maps are great, and I wish there were more books like this for all my favourite worlds :)
I browsed the summaries on Amazon but i havent really felt the urge to buy the series. I like Sci-Fi (trek, B5, etc) but some fantasy novels just try too hard and end up making me bored. Should I even try to make it through LOTR?
Here will you find the mythic story relationships and linguistic relationships between Beowolf (the OE epic) and the Hobbit. There are also philological relationships between story, placenames, and character in the real british isles and their use in LOTR. This adds another dimension to the re-reading of LOTR.
I have been in love with Tolkien's work since I was 11 or 12 years old, and the love hasn't ceased growing yet. Some comments:
:-)), we could almost accept them as our own natural mythos rather than one invented by a telented writer. Harry Harrison's "Warriors of the Way" trilogy has opened up some new intellectual doors for me regarding Asgardian myth (particularly the role of Loki), and I plan to re-read as much of Tolkien's work as I can to look into the topic further. This stuff never ceases to amaze me.
Although the great maps Tolkien obviously created to detail the civilizations, migrations, and geography/geology of his world(s) have a huge impact on their shocking reality, I think there are many other factors that contribute as much or more. First of all is the languages. Look at the appendices of Return of the King if you want to know what I mean. These languages are in depth, realistic, and utterly amazing. Many of them closely parallel structure and syntax of North-Germanic languages (e.g. Norwegian, Danish, Old English). They parallel them enough that it isn't entirely inconceivable that the Common which is spoken in Middle Earth is in fact written as it sounds. It sounds just like English. Notice how Tolkien doesn't use very many words of Latin origin (which can often give a clinical feel to speech). This gives the books a hominess (sic?) and a feeling of old beauty.
Also, the mythology. My favorite Tolkien book of all is the Silmarillion because of the great mythology it presents for Middle Earth. Also look how closely it mirrors our own mythologies, particularly Norse, Greek, and Christian. The stories are so rich and so human (even though many of them take place before humans are invented
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
This is actually a good idea. LOTR is much more deserving of a topic icon than, say, Star Wars.
dinner: it's what's for beer
"If you want to enter Tolkien's world, the best way is to tLotR, the Hobbit, and The Silmarillion." People do not read the Silmarillion - they struggle through it. Recommending it as an entry level book for Middle Earth is madness.
"For hard-core Tolkien lovers who have [already read the books]..": how can you be a hard-core fan without having read the books.
"[it's] well and clearly written, even for the casual fan". I can't figure out what this means - I think he is looking for understandable, but I could be wrong.
"Offers a new prism through which to look at these works". Erm - trying to read though a prism will not be very productive.
And, finally, the subtle nuance which separates the die-hard fan from the hard core fanatic is lost on me. Are these more or less fanatical than the hard-core Tolkien lovers?
Is anybody who read this any the wiser as to whether the book is worth buying?
This is the kind of info that should be IN THE REVIEW.
You are in the wonderful position of still being able to read TLOR for the first time. Yes, some fantasy novels do try to hard... but not these. Tolkien produced the original. All the others are just trying to recreate his masterpiece.
Tolkien is to fantasy what Plato was to philosophy: a pioneer, a definer, a methodologist. Although parts of LOTR are, frankly, boring (although they are few and nicely bounded by excitement), Tolkien has done an amazing job at making a fantasy world.
The word "world" here not only encompasses the environment in which the characters live and interact, but the entirety of the existence of all characters. If any one character may know about a certain place, event, or person, that object is not only mentioned but defined, elaborated, and links seamlessly into the other aspects of the world.
Good fantasy has very few inconsistencies in the history and events of the worlds, as well as personal interactions, race definitions, language definitions and modes, and cultural aspects. Tolkien, being a linguist, was primarily interested in the language aspect of his worlds and so you can find extensive studies and documents of the Elven languages, as well as Dwarven and such. There are quite a few people in the world who speak one of the Elven languages Tolkien created, just because they were done so well!
LOTR is a must-read for any sci-fi/fantasy lover, if nothing else for the simple fact that it is a definitive book in the genre. And if you're fortunate, like myself, it will become one of your favorite novels of all time. I distinctly remember crying at the end of the first read of LOTR, not so much because I was empathizing with the characters, but because I didn't want the story to ever end.
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There is so much in the speculative fiction world that borrows from Tolkien. These books are great. At least read Lord of the Rings, maybe The Hobbit (if you do, you should read it first). Read my other post to find out part of why I love these books so much (too lazy to find post url (-:).
Read them. they will change your view of the world.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
As I kiss some karma goodbye...
I started reading the LOTR series when I was 8. Couldn't get through more than a couple of chapters. I tried again when I was 12, 16 and 20, and then tried for the last time this year, at 22. I finally made it through the books, and, sadly enough, I consider it poorly spent time.
As you pointed out in your post 'some fantasy novels just try too hard... mak[e] me bored.' LOTR is one of these books. Tolkien is longwinded, almost to the point of incomprehensibility; his sentance structure is overly complex for what I consider to be recreational reading and the story, IMHO, just isn't that good.
I am a scifi man, as well, and you pointed out my biggest beef with the fantasy genre: a lot of the novels don't recognize thier place. But I digress. I found LOTR to be boring, overly complicated (both structurally and storyline-wise) and althogether a less-than-enjoyable read. If you want something fun to read, go pick up a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's _Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera_ (/randombookreccomendation)
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Keep in mind that The Hobbit was written more as a children's novel. It also provides a really good introduction to Middle Earth and its inhabitants. Not only that, but there are references in LOTR to The Hobbit that are important, and Tolkien wrote LOTR with the idea that the reader would already be familiar with The Hobbit.
Also, after reading about Bilbo Baggins, you will want to know what happens to him and the ring... you will get hooked into reading LOTR.
[Oops... the markup got stripped!]
Sarcasm is rarely recognized without the <sarcasm> tag.
Given one hour to live, the student replied: "I'd spend it with professor FP who can make an hour seem like a lifetime."
I went on to read some reviews of the trilogy and found one reviewer to say the first 'book' can be pretty hard to get through but after the Council it really picked up. And it did. I found the Two Towers volume to be quite good. 'Book Five' in Return of the King was also really good but again, in 'Book Six', I find myself struggling to finish. While I recognize the brillance of the story and it's ground breaking imagery I have a hard time getting through some of tedious dialog and story. I find myself eying the second book of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn on my desk. This won't be popular with most LOTR fans, but frankly I like some modern fantasy better. To this day nothing has gripped me like RR Martin's Song of Fire and Ice.
As to the LOTR movie it will be a huge success if the creators stick to the original image of the movie. If the water it down for children, which I'm afraid they will, I will be very disappointed. I want to see heads fly over Minas Tirith!
"Delorme will also be offering Middle Earth Atlas 1.0 for Windows which will enable you to navigate through middle earth easily and accurately. It has a GPS option for realtime tracking, but they haven't quite figured out how to make it work underground yet."
Technically not impossible, since JRR said that the Shire is located in north-central England. However, that would put Isengard about at the endpoint of the boot of Italy, meaning most of the interesting parts are underwater today. Perhaps this occured at the time Atlantis sank? Hard to say.
sPh
J.R.'s son Christopher published at least 16
Tolkien books from his father's papers after
his death. These include the Silmarillion,
Numenor, Tales, Lost Tales, and the tweleve volume
"History of Middle Earth".
The latter contains rough drafts of the material
in LOTR.
The Silmarillion and the first couple history
books were interesting. However the later stuff
is more sketchy and bird cage lining.
Most people recommend that you start with The Hobbit and then continue on with the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, Return of the King). They are separate stories, though they are closely coupled. If you don't normally like fantasy, then I suggest you defer reading The Hobbit until after reading the trilogy (if you finish it at all). Why? Two reasons: a) The Hobbit is mostly backstory to the larger and more epic story in the trilogy. While helpful, it is not really necessary for reading the Lord of the Rings. b) The Hobbit was originally written by Tolkein for his children. The storytelling style is very much in the mode of a children's fairy tale. It is a ripping good yarn and well worth the time for adults, but its distinctly juvenile style can seem a little "cute" at times. Please note that a little of this style rubs off on the first few chapters of Fellowship. The style seems to "mature" rapidly as the principles get farther from home, so it may be seen more as a literary device than anything.
2nd Do read the books before Fellowship is released in the theaters.
From all that I have read Peter Jackson and his team are doing superb job of adapting the story to the screen, but it is STILL an adaptation. There is a depth and breadth to Tolkien's prose that cannot be captured on film no matter how good the director or the production. This richness comes from Tolkien himself. He was one of the premier philologists (historian of languages) of his time. He had a decades long fascination with creating languages and mythologies/histories to describe them. From these deep roots grew Lord of the Rings. No author before or since has been able to match the scope and depth of this story. To do so would take the two things Tolkien had: genius and a long lifetime of hard study.
3rd Remember, Lord of the Rings was not written yesterday.
Why is this important? Sometimes readers dismiss perfectly good books because they consider the style or the story archaic. If you do really enjoy SF, like Babylon 5, then you should give Tolkien a chance. You will recognize some very familiar themes and stories and characters. No author writes in a vacuum. Epic fiction, whether it is Beowulf or LOTR or Babylon 5, has similar themes. Later authors will often borrow and reshape much older stories, if only subconciously. Tolkien drew on the mythologies of Beowulf and the Der Ring des Nibelungen, and created a world. Strazynski drew on Tolkien and Doc Smith and a dozen other sources to expressed his own ideas about the future. All I am trying to say is that you will see familiar faces, if in a different form, if you choose to make the journey. It is worth it.
Now go grab a copy and READ!!!
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
Ok, perhaps "boring" was the wrong word...how about...um....unexciting? There are places where Tolkien goes into vast descriptions or histories or such that just aren't "action-packed" excitement. Oh, I enjoy those sections as well, it paints the world better. I guess "boring" was a poor word, but it might be perceived by others as being "boring" if they don't like that kind of detail. That's all! :)
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Christianity (and its affiliate communism)
holds out for last minute redemption-
that as long as you are alive you can repent
and turn good.
IN the pagan myths the gods and humans have
intrinsic good or bad natures.
Ironic because J.R.s close colleague wrote
Christian mythology fantasy series.
Just on the off-chance someone is actually using this to plan out their reading list, it should be noted that The Hobbit precedes The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the story arc, and should probably therefore be read first. Note that it was written as a children's book (unlike the others), and thus has a slightly twee style that some may find a bit off-putting.
The Silmarillion is a compendium of material concerning events far earlier in Middle Earth's history, but should be read after LotR simply because it's denser, less accessible, and relies heavily on a good understanding of Middle Earth as a prerequisite.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
No - that's why it's at the end.
I also find your comment about "struggling" through it disheartening.
Life must just be full of disappointments for you.
Perhaps you're not really a literary genius worthy of making these comments.
Never claimed to be a "literary genius". I maintain my right to critique books. For starters Tolkein did not consider the book completed, and anybody who has read it will agree that it isn't. The background is complete, but there is almost only background, which to me is very unsatisfying. Characterisation is negligible - never a Tolkien strong point - and I never emphathised with any of the characters. To give a scope of what is missing read the summary of the third age at the end of the book (which is LotR in about two pages). Comparing this summary to LotR is, I think, comparing what should have been written with the Silmarillion we actually got.
You must agree - you said yourself that it was last in the list, and by implication a lesser work.
" Offers a new prism through which to look at these works". Erm - trying to read though a prism will not be very productive.
Excuse me, Mr. Jackass - but it's called a metaphor. Try adding them to your writing sometime and see if it sounds better
No it isn't - metaphor is a comparison between unlike objects. When you read you look at a work so looking at a work through a prism isn't metaphorical, merely confused. A metaphor would have been something like "Offers a worthy new dish at the feast." assuming that it is a good book, of course.
Not that it particularly matters, but the standard of JKs writing is poor for a professional, particularly considering the weighty topics he chooses, and this broken metaphor was one of the better bad examples he has produced; a 50cc engine in a 10 tonne truck indeed.
Only the wierd smelly guys at the bookstore read this shit.
Were you talking about Tolkien or Slashdot?
Actually, it was one book, split into three by the original publishers.
I must concur that this is an excellent book. I had read Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion before, but a lot of stuff never really "clicked" until I saw the atlas. The atlas stresses stuff that you can easily miss when reading the books. You can actually see how far Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas ran when following orcs in what, 3 days? I think it's almost far as France is wide! The architecture maps give you a much strong feel for what it must really have been like to be in Cirith Ungol, or standing in front of the Black Gate. There are just so many tiny things this atlas illuminates. It was recently out of print I think, but I'm glad they brought it back. It's definitly one of my favorite non-fiction books.
By the way, if you're looking for more information on the upcoming Lord of the Rings movies, the best site is The One Ring dot Net (TORn).
-Ted
Don't dismiss "The Hobbit" offhand as a children's book, any more than you'd do the same for "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" (CS Lewis was a close friend of Tolkien, BTW), "Wind in the Willows" (and the sequels by William Horwood), the Harry Potter series or Pratchett. All of these are children's books, or at least were originally written as children's books.
:-) And I forgot to mention Alan Garner's Wierdstone books as well.
"The Hobbit" has quite a lot of light entertainment in it which makes it less heavy going than some of the children's books above (TL,TW&TW is definitely older children only!) but there's still some bits which are darker than usual, which gives it the depth many children's books (and adults' books, for that matter) are sadly lacking.
Grab.
PS. I know I'll get flamed for mentioning Harry Potter.
"Ahh, but Atlantis is supposed to be Númenor, so
Isengard is != Atlantis."
Not disagreeing, but are can you cite a reference for that?
Anyway, what I ment but didn't express well is that if, per the Appendices, the Shire is in England, and neither the moon nor the constellations are much different from our time, then tLOtR can't have happened more than about 10,000 years ago. That implies that the mountain chain running down the spine of Italy must be a remnent of the Misty Mountains. Isengard would be about at the southern tip of Itay (which checks with the amount of time it took to walk there from Rivendell).
BUT, if this totally bogus speculation on my part is correct, there is a whole lot of land missing south and southast of Italy, including most of Gondor. That would have had to have sunk at some point in the not-too-distant past. The sinking of Atlantis seems a logical event to cause this.
sPh
This book seems like an easier to read version of the silmarillion
Any Tolkien fan will tell you that the of the five books mentioned above, the Silmarillion reads like a cross between the Bible and 1980's VCR instructions. It is heavy with volumes of mythology, unpronouncable names and maps thet Bryce couldn't render. This book seems like an easier to read version of that most enigmatic of JRR's books.
Think Ill go get it and use it as a companion so I can finally finish teh Silmarillion.
It's obvious from the text that Hobbits live in the British Isles, but look at the map again. It doesn't stop there. The war against Mordor is a transparent retelling of the centuries of conflict between Europe and the Huns (initially), later the Ottoman Empire. It's the same "West (good) vs. East (bad)" myth that fueled the Crusades.
Mordor == Turkey
Orcs == Turks
Rohan = Hungary
Gondor = Austria
Minas Tirith == Vienna
Check out the language (character set) of the orcs & Mordor, and the everpresent stereotypes (filth, cruelty, even curved blades!). Notice how ME is bordered on the West by the sea (divine, the final retreat of the heroes i.e. Avalon) but on the East it's a complete blank. Even the shape of Mordor resembles Turkey (Anatolia, actually).
There are so many details to support this it would make a decent PhD dissertation. But I don't mean to judge Tolkien or invalidate his work, it's just that as an adult I can't help but place it in the larger historcial and social context. The British Empire had finally triumphed (at hideous cost, e.g. Gallipoli) over the Ottoman at the time of The Hobbit's publication ('37?) but was itself mortally wounded. Rising Arab and Indian nationalism were busily undermining colonial rule, and Sauron was indeed growing in power in Europe's midst. The apocalypse finally arrived in Europe with the same inescapable and terrible violence it did in Middle Earth.
I look at that map and I see Europe before WWII. It makes me sad, because contained withing one of my most beloved childhood stories is a racist view of the world that persists (in some ways) to this day.
Guilty, your Honor. Then again, maybe the "normal" smell-free guys like you should try reading a dictionary. It is spelled W-E-I-R-D.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Didn't you know that Sauron personifies rampant corporatism in 1930's England. And, the Nine represent the nine largest "Company Men" of the day.
I think Jon's starting to get to me.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Since I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, if you are a LOTR fan, you absolutely must check out this website. Enjoy!
I just got the BBC drama (13 episodes) of LotR and the Hobbit.I haven't heard such a great Sci-fi story in a long time. This really brought me back to the days when i "discovered" Star Wars. I definately recommend getting the CDs to this or at least download them from your favorite file-sharing program.
I found LOTR difficult to read and unenjoyable. It's characters were flat. While they are original because they were the first in the genre, they didn't feel "real" to me. The complete lack of strong female characters - Eowyn appeared strong, but was unimportant, Arwen was irrelevent and Galadriel was fluff. You can say that they were important in the Simarillion, but I saw no reason to read that because I didn't enjoy LOTR enough to continue.
Also, the writing was done by someone who was obviously a linguist. In other words, he used fancy language because they knew how, not because it made sense that the characters spoke that way.
I much prefer Guy Gavriel Kay. "The Fionavar Tapestry" is some of the best fantasy I've ever read. Although it too has some issues; I didn't think the whole King Arthur piece to the story flowed from the rest.
Jason Pollock
The Lost Road was Tolkien's attempt at writing a time-travel story (while C. S. Lewis was writing his space-travel story, Out of the Silent Planet), which he later abandoned, but incorporated into his mythology; see The Lost Road and Other Writings (The History of Middle-earth, volume 5).
The Eldar were indeed morally ambiguous, but for another reason. They wanted to turn Middle-Earth into a museum of their own glory days, and actually succeeded in those places where one of the Three resided (Rivendell, Lorien.) It is in resisting the flow of time resulting in a kind of stasis, or stagnation, that made them less wholly good than they might have been.
And the brethren went away edified.
Yes, he's been dead for almost 30 years now. Mind like a steel trap, you've got...
Who has the right to say who can get some and who don't?
International copyright law. Copyright on Tolkien's works is held by his estate on behalf of his literary heirs. Tolkien's children and grandchildren are benefitting from their forebear's creation, and who's to say they shouldn't?
And the brethren went away edified.
After you're through with LoTR, you might want to try The Hobbit, but if you start with it there's a good chance it will put you off entirely. Then go for The Silmarillion -- but that's a different animal entirely. It has no coherent plot, being presented instead as an episodic series of loosely connected legends, and is written in a highly formal style. Although it's indispensible for people who really get into Tolkien's Middle-Earth, it's clearly not for everybody. You can follow up The Silmarillion with Unfinished Tales, which fills in some of the remaining gaps in the histories based on some of Tolkien's more complete fragments. Then, if you decide you're really a Tolkien wonk, go for the History of Middle Earth series, a scholarly assemblage of Tolkien's rough drafts and fragments edited by his son Christopher that traces the development of the entire legendarium from the earliest beginnings in 1914 or thereabouts to his death.
And the brethren went away edified.
It's an all-male cast, but there are no sexual overtones, no hint that such a thing exists. At least not in The Hobbit or the trilogy, which I read and enjoyed way back when the raging hormones were at their peak, so I'd have noticed the slightest suggestion. This may not have been true for The Silmarillion, but trying to read that was like trying to paddle a canoe on a lake of molasses.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I was so pleased at your catch of the mistaking of "pain-staking" for "pains-taking" (which I don't think requires hyphenation anyway, but maybe it should in order to preseve the proper meaning) that it pains me to point out that you then said "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes".
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'd read The Hobbit and LOTR 3 or 4 years earlier and was able to enjoy BOTR even more than he did.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Yes, it includes all the changes that have occurred in Tolkien's imaginary world in the past few years. :-)
Seriously, I have no idea what changes, if any, have been made in the content, but I expect the price will have been increased by the "movie tie-in bandwagon jumping" factor as well as regular old inflation.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The Silmarillion was collected together by one of his sons, based on notes and unpublished stories, and then published posthumously. A large part of the actual prose -- the part that reads like the 1980's VCR instructions -- was actually written by Christopher as glue text. Think of the contents of the Sil. as simply one snapshot from a massive CVS repository.
Tolkien's notes were extremely confused and contradictory at the time of his death. I am amazed (and thankful) that Christopher was able to make any sense out of them at all. Tolkien had actually started to make heavy rewrites (again!) in sections of the Middle-Earth mythology that we like to think of as set in stone; Christopher had to deliberately ignore the inconsistencies, and publish the intended changes in a later series of books.
Keep in mind also that the events of the Quenta Silmarillion and Akallabeth (probably misspelled that second one, it's the atlantis reference with one of the biggest "pun" setups in English literature) were Tolkien's real story; the one he spent his lifetime dreaming about. The Lord of the Rings was intended to just be a Hobbit sequel, but the Sil. was where his soul lived. It was bound to change a lot.
(One of my favorite aspects of the First and Second Ages is that nearly all the action took place west of the Blue Mountains. If you look at the maps in LOTR, you'll say, "Huh? The Blue Mountains stand on the west coastline! There's no land there!" To which the answer is, "There's no land there anymore...")
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
"Informative"?? uh oh, I don't think I'm the only one Jon's getting too.
That was a joke.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."