New Tolkien Book Released 'The Children of Hurin'

Zoolander writes "Christopher Tolkien has completed the last book of J.R.R. Tolkien from notes left from his father." The ultimate question is how much of a quality difference will there be; for instance the difference between Dune and Dune: House Atriedes is a pretty big gap. But in my experience, Christopher Tolkien has always taken a good, cautious approach when it comes to his father's work so here's to hoping.

Comments

Re:Same Difference

[SolemnLord]

Tolkien's "main gig" was not editing the OED (hundreds of people edited OED2). It's just well-known because anyone who's dipped their toe into an English class greater than 101 is aware of what the OED is. I'm not disparaging his contributions, I'm just saying that give the man some credit: he was a professor of language and literature at Leeds and Oxford, and a writer to boot. To make things /. compatible, I doubt people would want me typing "Torvalds is that guy who did some work on the Sinclair QL, right?" (I had to check Linus's Wikipedia bio to pull something like that up, FYI)

Re:Dull as dish water

[jeffasselin]

Where do people take tripe like this from?

"JRR built up a whole mythos to draw from when writing LoTR."???

He didn't build up the stories to have background for LotR. He built the mythos for his own enjoyment, as a background history for his invented languages, and in hope of giving back to the English a mythology of their own that was "lost" when the Normans invaded the Anglo-Saxons.

The Hobbit was a story he made for his children. He spiced it up a bit with details from his mythos. He published it because it seemed publishable as a good children's story. Lord of the Rings was written as a commercial follow-up to The Hobbit. Didn't really end up like that but...

I am not disputing the fact that the huge amount of previous writing and pre-existing mythos gave LotR a backstory of unparalleled proportions. It ended up being a large part of the attraction of the book, that you feel this world has a whole history behind it that is barely hinted at.

Re:Excellent!~

[MightyMartian]

Christopher Tolkien was a philologist at Oxford like his father before him. He had work, he is an old man now.

As to Tolkien's wishes, he made them very clear during his lifetime. He wanted the Silmarillion completed and published. When he knew he could no longer do it, he left it to Christopher Tolkien to complete it.

And I'd love for you to cite where Tolkien despised his greatest fans. Because you know what, he didn't, and spent countless hours answering their letters. You're just talking out of your ass.