Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I guess outrageously long copyright terms really do encourage artists to produce more work after they die.
I think I speak for all true Tolkien fans when I say; This book will give the conclusive, irrefutable evidence that Balrog's indeed have wings. Namely, there will be one with wings on the cover.
May the Maths Be with you!
At last, the true secrets of the Bene Gesserit line of Noldor will be revealed! I LOVE pre-quels!
Look, the guy chose to die rather than have it published. I don't see how anyone could send a clearer signal, sheesh.
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
and yes, Chris Tolkien has fed off the teat of his late father's creativity for a long time now. still, the literary joy of reading The Silmarillion, The Narn i Hin Hurun, The Lay of Leithian, and more, far outweighs whatever motives young Tolkien may have in editing and publishing these many works.
Prof. Tolkien, while living, tried and failed to publish the Silmarillion. The other works were never even close to publishable. yet he often talked and wrote of these tales having a life of their own, and I don't think he would object to their being shared with millions of fans.
I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity to have read of the First and Second ages of Tolkien's world.
This is the first part of a trilogy, actually. Chris Tolkien is co-writing them with Kevin J. Anderson, who is widely regarded as the finest science fiction and fantasy author in the history of either genre.
Disturbance, not tremor, you fucking philistine!
wasnt Christopher Tolkien in that pulp fiction movie?
"he hid that book up his ass for 30 years."
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."
He could have engaged in spontaneous human combustion while holding the original manuscript.
Navicula hydraulica plena anguilarum est. Omnes castelli tuus nostri sunt. Ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta.
No, but it does give some indication of motive. If I'm looking to make a quick buck, I sure don't spend 30 years turning it into a rather slow buck.
"...the CG was obvious..."
As opposed to all those movies starring REAL balrogs and cave trolls?
Blog -
CJRT is "somewhat of a Tolkien scholar". The Pope is "a well-known Catholic". The Sun is "a nearby star". Michael Moore "is not entirely pleased with the Bush administration". Slashdot "occasionally posts dupes"....
And the brethren went away edified.
There are a lots of people here bashing the Tolkien works that were released after J.R.R death. Have any of you actually looked any of these books? Given that most of these books are very dense and very scholarly works, it's highly doubtful that Christopher Tolkien edited them just to make a quick buck. The intended audience for these books was just too small for that.
When J.R.R died, he left literally thousands of pages of unpublished pages, many that he had been working on for decades. It would have been a real shame for this stuff to vanish forever. And Christopher Tolkien's contribution is usually just editing. He is generally very careful to separate his father's words from his commentary (usually with a different font).
Personally, any epic tale that has the main character tearing someone's arm off and beating them to death with it has got some serious literary merit in my book!
The story really does have a lot going for it, once you get past the language barrier - Old English really does read a lot more like German than modern English. It was one of the coolest books I'd ever read - full of adventure with tons of gruesome details (like the whole 'tearing someone's arm off and beating them to death with it' bit) that you'd never seen in any other piece of classical literature aside from Dante's Inferno.
The end kind of sucked, as I recall, but as far as adventure and ass-kicking go, Beowulf was one of the best, if not *the* best.
I've read most, but not all, of the volumes of Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle Earth and I've enjoyed them greatly. I felt no hint of exploitation or dilution. I'm very grateful to Christopher for taking the time and effort (and flack) to make all these parts of his father's work available to the rest of us.
If you are interested in exploring these other works, you might want to start with "Unfinished Tales" which provides a nice bridge between what happened in the Lord of the Rings and the larger world of the Silmarillion.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Wormtalk
And here's what he says:
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.)