New Tolkien Story To be Published

vingilot writes "CNN reports that Christopher Tolkien has edited and will release a new book by his father. From the article: 'Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on "The Children of Hurin," an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarfs of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.'"

Comments

Dwarfs

[KrayzieKyd]

"Dwarfs" is only the plural form of dwarf stars. The plural for dwarf people is "dwarves". Yes, English major.

Re:Greedy Children

[Anonymous Coward]

Now his greedy kid is capitalizing on his fathers name just to make some cash and hurt Tolkein's reputation by publishing a book not up to his usual quality.

Uh, we're not talking about a snot-nosed punk trying to make a quick buck. The guy's eighty years old and has dedicated much of his life to his father's literary legacy, trying to make sense of his notes and half-finished stories (see the Silmarillion.) Whether his efforts have literary merit is one thing-- I personally think a dead author's notes and partial works should be buried with him-- but he's hardly trying to "make some cash."

Herbert's Dune Series

[zenasprime]

Brian Herbert has been doing this with his fathers great worlks also. I hear they are good but I'm scared to read something by an author other then the one who originally developed the story. Though I did read the Paul Preuss version of Arthur C. Clark's Venus Prime and I enjoyed it.

I've been meaning to pick up the Simillarion as I've heard nothing but good things... perhaps this will be the viral marketing ploy that will motivate me enough to grab a copy.

Re:Herbert's Dune Series

[DarkProphet]

I've been meaning to pick up the Simillarion as I've heard nothing but good things... perhaps this will be the viral marketing ploy that will motivate me enough to grab a copy.

I highly recommend that you do. I scored a used hardcover copy on Amazon for under USD $20. As another poster mentioned, LOTR is but a footnote in the Tolkien universe's history. I've heard people liken the Silmarillion to the bible in that it can be a rather dry history, and that may be a vaild complaint. In my experience, though, it gets better every time through. The books included in the Silmarillion span from the creation of that universe up to the rise of Gondor. IMHO it gives the Elvish race much more depth (and also Men, to a lesser extent) than LOTR, and makes the friction between Elrond and Aragorn much more poignant.

Plus, thats how I found out who Elbereth really is and why people go around invoking her name all the time ;-)

Re:Herbert's Dune Series

[acvh]

No similarity at all. As young Herbert said in the intro to the first abomination bearing his name, he COULD have used Dad's notes to write the story of the Scattering as his father intended, or he could just write some backstory to Dune that he made up himself.

Bad choice, boyo.

Chris Tolkien doesn't write, he edits. He consulted closely with his father on the writing of the published works, and no one is more qualified to produce these versions of Prof. Tolkien's stories.

Elves and Dwarfs?

[ko9]

I can't resist correcting this text.. It's either Elfs and Dwarfs (the original official english rule), or the Tolkien style: Elves and Dwarves. Hobbits are still hobbits though ;-)

Re:Greedy Children

[MightyMartian]

Perhaps you would be good enough to give some examples. The *only* work I know of that he wrote was chapter The Fall of Doriath from the Silmarillion with Guy Gavriel Kay, because the only version of the story in existence was from the very earliest stages of JRRT's work on the mythos, and was completely unsuitable to be placed in the published Silmarillion.

CJRT has never released any fiction of his own. What he has done is released the larger part of his father's writings, right from the Book of Lost Tales first written in 1917. It's not easy reading for the casual reader, but for those interested in the evolution of the mythos, it's priceless.

A Tolkien Scholar on The Children of Hurin

[InklingBooks]

Here is the blog of Michael Drout, the English professor who discovered Tolkien's Beowulf translation. His latest post comments on The Children of Hurin.

Wormtalk

And here's what he says:

HarperCollins is going to be publishing Tolkien's Children of Húrin as a stand-alone volume next year. According to the press release (which I haven't been able to find on line), the text was created by Christopher Tolkien's painstaking editing together of Tolkien's many drafts. The book will include a new map by Christopher Tolkien and a jacket and color paintings by Alan Lee.

He mentions several previously published versions of the tale and points out: "From the press release, it seems as if these variants will be stitched into a coherent whole in the same the way that Christopher Tolkien brought together disparate texts to create the 1977 The Silmarillion."

Prof. Drout is also the editor of The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, which due out this October. It's a scholarly reference, which must explain the $199.95 price tag on Amazon. (Maybe you can get your public or school library to get a copy.) Since I contributed several articles, I'm hoping all contributors get free copies.

--Michael W. Perry, author of Untangling Tolkien (The only book-length, day-by-day chronology of LOTR.)

Re:Just a money grab?

[Elf-friend]

They really shouldn't be publsihing stuff a writer didn't want published after they're dead, to say nothing of 'finishing' their work.

If that were the case here, I would agree. I would also agree if this were just any person doing the editing.

However, that's not the case. It isn't that JRRT didn't want these books finished - indeed he specifically etrusted his son with doing just that - he just didn't manage to get it done before he died. Many an author has that problem, and JRRT had it in spades. The man was a professor of the highest calibre, and a perfectionist to boot; he left nearly unimaginable amounts of work unfinished. There is far more than the aging CJRT will ever be able to bring to publishable form, especially given that his standards seem to be, if anything, even more conservative than his father's.

As others have noted, it was these works, the histories of the first and second ages of Middle Earth, that were JRRT's life's work. It was these works which he truly longed to bring to finished form. "The Hobbit," and TLOTR were mere side stories, writen at the behest of publishers, and never meant to be the main story. "The Silmarilion" was the main story, and the publication of the other works is in part an attempt by CJRT to flesh out that story; which, sadly, was completed in more of a rush than might have been. If it had been known in the early '70s that anyone would still care about J.R.R. Tolkien in 30 years time, I think the finished "Silmarilion" would have been better for it.

Besides, this isn't some hack, pulp-paperback writer writing new stories to milk a popular series, this is the world's foremost scholar on JRRT - a man with a personal relationship to the author which allowed him to see much of the story as it developed - painstakingly piecing together decades of manuscripts and notes into some semblence of coherence. If anyone, ever, was qualified to finish the work of another, it would be Chistopher Tolkien being qualifed to finish his father's work.

In addition,

[scrimmer]

Christopher Tolkien is his father's literary executor, and as such he may have explicitly received permission from his father to do this. If I may quote liberally from the Wikipedia entry:

• The literary estate will often consist mainly of the copyright and other intellectual property rights of published works . . . It may well also include: original manuscripts of published work, which potentially have a market value; unpublished work in a finished state or partially completed
• The position of literary executor has more to it than the simple monetary aspect, though. Appointment to such a position, perhaps informally, is often a matter of the author's choice during his or her lifetime. . . What is to be managed is not just a portfolio of intellectual property, but a posthumous reputation. Wishes of the deceased author may have been clearly expressed, but are not always respected

.

I think the GeorgeLucasitis endemic to this site has tainted the Slashdot groupthink on this issue. While I haven't had a chance yet to search for details, I'm sure Mr. Tolkien keeps his father's vision close to heart and true.

Re:Greedy Children

[DrJimbo]

It seemed to me that JRR covered the entire history of Middle Earth in Silmarillion, ...

Well, yes Christopher put together the published Silmarillion into an coherent whole that did cover the entire history of Middle Earth. I think he made a good compromise in its length since he has been severally criticized both for making it too long and for making it too short. In the forward he says:

There is indeed a wealth of unpublished writings by my father concerning the Three Ages, narrative, linguistic, historical, and philosophical, and I hope that it will prove possible to publish some of this at a later date.

I can sympathize with finding these later works, or even the Silmarillion itself, inpenetratable or just not to one's taste but that is a far cry from being exploitative and a dilution.

As I said before, I feel very grateful towards Christopher Tolkien for making so much of his father's work available to the public. These books are not for everyone, perhaps they're not to your taste but that doesn't make them bad and exploitive.

IMO Christopher Tolkien is not being greedy. He could probably have just sat back out of the fray and lived comfortably off of royalties. Or he could have pursued his own career totally separate from his father's work and fame. I think he truly wants to get his father's works into the hands of the public and further, I think he is responding to a clammer from the fans of these works for more, more, more.

Re:Well! I stand corrected.

[CRCulver]

If you've read the History of Middle-Earth series, which really is a collection of notes, you'd see that the text of the Silmarillion is indeed J.R.R Tolkien's own writing. There are even facsimiles of 70 year-old manuscripts, unless you want to accuse Christopher Tolkien of forging those too. The sparse, vaguely epic style of the Silmarillion as it appeared in print is how Tolkien wrote it from the very beginning. Those who find it strange because "it's not like Lord of the Rings" are forgetting the fact that that trilogy was penned first as a sequel to a children's book (The Hobbit, of course) so of course its style was going to be different.

Only one chapter of the Silmarillion had to be penned outright by Christopher Tolkien, and it is the shortest one.

Plot Highlights

[necro81]

The Children of Hurin, from what I remember from the previously published excerpts, is a tragic epic. The children are separated, there's amnesia, revenge, killing, bloodshed, betrayal, more killing, grief, backstabbing, and ultimately suicide. A compelling story, but not a happy story where the good guys win in the end. Actually, I'm not sure you could say there are any good guys in the whole thing.