|
SilkyP posted:So I just finished the Hobbit and am on my way through the trilogy currently. I see some talk about the Simarillion and others and want to know what a recommended reading list might look like for someone who wants to continue to read about this stuff. The Simarillion is next if you want the guidebook/mythology, and The Children of Hurin if you want another novel. Both are worth your time. The Unfinished Tales is kinda cool, too, even though, as the title states, many of them aren't quite ready for prime time. I also dug The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, but if you're already past that part of Fellowship you already know if you're interested in that or not. Fonstad's Atlas of Middle Earth is cool if you want to know more about the land itself. It's a gorgeous book. If you're really hardcore you can then dive into the 12 volume History of Middle Earth, which is basically Christopher Tolkien publishing everything Middle Earth related he could get his hands on. Very cool and interesting, but definitely not for the uninitiated. If you're pissed at Tolkien for being racist/classist or want to see the story from the perspective of the "Bad Guys," check out Eskov's The Last Ringbearer for oppressed Orc action under the tyrannical yoke of the Elves, or Carey's The Sundering duology for edit: and if you want "Similar, but different," you should check out ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros and Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast books. The former was the previous king of English fantasy fiction, and there's no doubt Tolkien was a devotee of his work, and the latter is what you get when you take Tolkien's flair for description and fantasy world building and confine it to a small castle and a small family. Peake and Tolkien were contemporaries, and reading them side by side was a very pleasurable experience. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Apr 2, 2013 |
#
¿
Apr 2, 2013 01:09
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:57 |
|
|
Hamiltonian Bicycle posted:After all these years I still haven't read Eddison, but I've read Peake and I wouldn't say he was at all a world builder - his approach is more expressionistic than meticulous. If you can tell Tolkien was a philologist, you can tell Peake was a painter. His writing is full of vivid images, strange digressions, and colourful dialogue. Extremely worth reading but very dissimilar from Tolkien's work, in my opinion, whatever that's worth. v I guess what I mean is, I got a really good sense of this small cramped space and these small horrible people who were trapped in it. It felt like all the work that Tolkien did to make Middle Earth seem like a real place with a real history crammed into one myopic, labyrinthine castle. All the work Tolkien put into describing the Mines of Moria or the Murkwood forest are instead lavished on a dusty library or a tree which grows from the side of the castle.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2013 16:25
|
|
v
|
Hannibal Rex posted:If only Christopher Tolkien had the artistic integrity to give the fans what they want, like Brian Herbert... At least if he did, he'd probably be teaming up with Guy Gavriel Kay, who is awesome and a wonderful author in his own right, rather than Kevin J. Anderson...
|
|
#
¿
Dec 31, 2013 22:03
|
|
|
The Quenta Simarillion Chapter Eight: The Darkening of Valinor posted:There, beneath the sheer walls of the mountains and the cold dark sea, the shadows were deepest and thickest in the world; and there in Avathar, secret and unknown, Ungoliant had made her abode. The Eldar knew not whence she came; but some have said that in ages long before she descended from the darkness that lies about Arda, when Melkor first looked down in envy upon the Kingdom of Manwë, and that in the beginning she was one of those that he corrupted to his service. But she had disowned her Master, desiring to be mistress of her own lust, taking all things to herself to feed her emptiness; and she fled to the south, escaping the assaults of the Valar and the hunters of Oromë, for their vigilance had ever been to the north, and the south was long unheeded. Thence she had crept towards the light of the Blessed Realm; for she hungered for light and hated it. The elves have no idea. "Emerged from darkness? Maybe Melkor corrupted her? Everything is his fault anyways, so let's just blame him like we always do..."
|
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2014 15:31
|
|
|
redshirt posted:The Ring itself is such a difficult symbol to process these days - was it always? Rather than representing, say, nuclear missiles, I've always seen it on a much more personal level. I always took the ring to represent the basic selfishness, deceit, and greed that lie in all of us, and temptation to act on it. Frodo and Sam's entire journey is laden with opportunities to betray or mistrust one another, and that they do not is what gets them through. I mean, look at it this way: the ring is this tiny little bit of gold that people are willing to kill one another over (the films got this over very well, I thought. The brutality of Sméagol killing his brother in the boat was quite chilling, as was Bilbo's transformation when he demands the ring be returned), and which can only be used for selfish ends - to make one's self invisible, to dominate the minds of others, etc. To a deeply committed Christian like Tolkien, this would be the polar opposite of the charity, humility, and kindness embodied in the teachings of the church. He's not nearly as blatant as C.S. Lewis about it, but it seems like this was his intention. More on their friendship and its effects on both of their stories here: http://www.salon.com/2003/12/03/tolkien_lewis/
|
|
#
¿
Mar 24, 2014 20:02
|
|
|
Ravenfood posted:Elrond quite clearly says that someone with sufficient power could overthrow Sauron using the Ring, but they would become another Dark Lord in the process. I could see Gandalf or Galadriel being powerful enough to do it, what with them already being wielders of the elven rings, and being, respectively, a demi-god cut from the same stock as Sauron and an immortal magician who is "the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth", with the attendant corruption and fall that comes to all who use the One Ring (replacing Sauron as Dark Lord/Lady and Enemy of Good, not somehow managing to turn the ring helpful and life affirming), but that's just personal opinion, not out right stated. And this, of course, being the very reason that they don't take the Ring from Frodo, despite the much easier time they'd have getting it to Mount Doom.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 25, 2014 06:30
|
|
|
Tolkien's translation of Beowulf dropped today, and goodness gracious is it a beautiful thing. Not only the poetic-prose translation itself (in prose form, but with an ear to how long sentences are and to alliteration), but copious footnotes by Christopher Tolkien about the translation and it's composition from the existent manuscripts that JRR had left behind, a couple hundred pages of lecture excepts from JRR's famous lecture series on the poem that are just gorgeous in detail and scope, The Sellic Spell, a piece of Beowulf fan-fiction that JRR wrote about the early adventures of Beowulf/attempt to reconstruct the original tale from which Beowulf is a later version of, and The Lay of Beowulf, a shorter version of the story in verse for singing your children to sleep. This is the good poo poo. I'm not done with it yet, but I'm already enjoying it as much as Seamus Heaney's verse translation, and the commentary is amazing. My only beef is that it doesn't include Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien's famous lecture about the poem's critics and its place in history, but as that's not really about the poem itself, and it easily available both online and in a separate volume, I can over look it. I read something like this, and I wish all writers could be so served by their heirs. Brian Herbert, I'm looking in your direction... Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 07:03 on May 23, 2014 |
|
#
¿
May 23, 2014 06:58
|
|
|
I gotta agree there, especially with how overriding Tolkien's influence has been on all later conceptions. I've been reading William Blake lately, and I do a double take whenever Orc shows up: "Oh, right, the Zoa, spirit of revolution and violence and change, not the race of evil people... Well, sometimes, but not the green skinned ones." Come to think of it, I wonder if there've been any comparative studies of Blake and Tolkien? Vala vs. Valar, etc. No way was Tolkien not aware of him, at least, as a professor of English and a writer of fantasy literature.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2014 21:19
|
|
|
Hieronymous Alloy posted:The problem with doing a comparison of Tolkien's and Blake's cosmology is that Blake's fantasy worlds read a lot more like schizophrenic delusions than fictional artifice :P There's a reason everyone sticks with the Songs of Innocence and Experience. You start getting into things like the Book of Urizen and you're not that far away from The Story of the Vivian Girls. I don't think you're wrong at all. Blake is genuinely weird in a way that most authors aren't, and terribly difficult to read if you don't have a guide book and/or don't enjoy piecing together a bunch of gigantic, self-contradictory free verse poems about the "true" history of the world and reincarnating god entities. But then the Silmarillion can be the same way, is what I was getting at, albeit with a lot more "God of Death" "God of the Hunt" "Heracles with the serial numbers filed off", rather than "Self-emanating force of pure creation which gives birth to the animating force in man and propagates its own sense of revolution, to stand in opposition to industrialization and fight off the crushing oppression of over rationality". Blake's gods are freaking complicated and his writing style doesn't help at all.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 9, 2014 22:24
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:One of the major changes that the movies make is Sam never put on the Ring. I get why the change was made-the way it's portrayed putting it on was treated like turning on a homing beacon for the Ring Wraiths, and it would have been a plot hole for Sam to use the Ring without consequence. But that just raises another question-why is Sam able to get away with it in the book? I remember that in the book the Ring doesn't quite have the same klaxon-like effect it had in the movies, but when Frodo puts the Ring on at Mount Doom it immediately alerts Sauron to where it is. Because Sam doesn't want it. That's what I've thought, anyways. Out of all the various people in the book, every-loving-body Frodo meets wants the Ring for themselves, or is at least tempted very strongly. Gandalf, Gollum, Galadriel, Boromir... Even Frodo himself wants to keep the thing, in the end. But not Sam. He just wanted to meet some Elves, throw the thing into the volcano, and go home. 
|
|
#
¿
Jan 15, 2015 05:38
|
|
|
webmeister posted:I think it also demonstrates Sam's psyche - he's so ingrained in his "I'm just a servant" mentality that he sees straight through the Ring's illusions. It shows him the hero he could be thanks to the Ring, and he knows pretty much instantly that it's entirely false and so rejects it completely. Absolutely. The language used is literally the "tend your own garden" Leibnizian Optimism that Voltaire made fun of/endorsed(?) so thoroughly in Candide, so it's easy to read in a pretty troubling view of class and mindset. Sam won't use the Ring because he knows his place in life, and won't rise above his station. At the same time, though, Tolkien is paying Sam an immense compliment: this places Sam on the level of other Ring refusers like "Literal Demi-God" Gandalf and "Neigh Immortal Ruler of the Elves" Galadriel, both of whom were far more tempted; neither of them even put the Ring on. And there's nothing wrong with wanting only what one can build and tend with one's own hands; it's certainly more admirable than using magical slave labor. And then, of course, after all the events are settled, he proceeds to be the hero of the Shire anyways, magic rings be damned. Toph Bei Fong fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Jan 16, 2015 |
|
#
¿
Jan 16, 2015 18:45
|
|
|
Prolonged Priapism posted:This article mentions it. It's pretty interesting. There's a lot of speculation that phrases like "wine dark sea" from Homer etc are relics of a time when blue wasn't thought of as a color at all - just some variety of "dark." Interestingly enough, this particular cliche was so omnipresent in ancient Greece that they often decorated the rims of their wine amphorae with ships, so that when they were filled up, the ships painted on would appear to "sail on wine dark seas"  Homer is filled with cliches and fixed epithets like this; they presumably helped the poet remember the lines, and would help keep the meter. Athena is always Grey Eyed Goddess Athena. All swords are Sharp Swords. A famous example of this failing to work as intended is "The loud barking dogs did not bark".
|
|
#
¿
Feb 5, 2015 06:42
|
|
|
SirPhoebos posted:And to be perfectly honest I prefer the frequent uncertainty in Middle Earth than the situation in Star Wars, where every little detail has a minimum 50,000 word backstory. RPG company I.C.E. put out a cubic fuckton of supplements detailing anything and everything to do with Middle Earth for their Middle Earth Role Playing Game back in the 1980 and 90s, but they've all been out of print for years now. They and their system were the  company you could imagine, making for one of the most dissonant connections you could imagine between the beautiful world and the table after table to critical hit charts to let you know exactly where and how the arrow landed in the guy's eye. How canon RPG supplements are is in the eye of the beholder. Some are neat fanfiction about single lines Tolkien jotted down, some are... fanfiction, to put it charitably.ICE lost the license in 1997, and there's no way they'll ever get it back.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 23, 2015 21:43
|
|
|
TildeATH posted:Didn't MERPS have the "you trip on an imaginary turtle and are confused" fumble? Yes, yes it does 
|
|
#
¿
Mar 26, 2015 20:31
|
|
|
Rime posted:But...but they already covered all that ground during the loving horrible original titan series. They're just going to go back and re-write their existing trashy fanfiction? How does Herbert sleep at night? On a big pile of money. Russian TV did an adaptation of The Hobbit way back in 1985. I have no idea the complete fidelity because I can't speak Russian, but, it's, uh... produced within budget, certainly, and they do leave a great deal out (no Battle of the Five Armies, for example). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m0l3Yr1B50
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2015 01:22
|
|
|
i81icu812 posted:To be honest, after listening to Brian talk and reading about the odd family dynamics in Dreamer of Dune, getting mad at Brian kinda feels like kicking a puppy. Brian is NOT a good interview: https://vimeo.com/34545393. After 10s of the video, hearing him say that he 'does not fly' is completely unsurprising. Man, the way he says "Frank Herbert" right in the beginning there when talking about the world of the novels... 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 7, 2015 06:02
|
|
|
Nessus posted:The three films together appear to have made just shy of $3bn dollars. That is to say, $3,000,000,000. Budget: $745 million Box office: $2.932 billion ROI: ~300%, before merchandising, DVD sales, etc. That's some pretty good money, right there.
|
|
#
¿
May 2, 2015 06:59
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 07:57 |
|
|
Data Graham posted:The "Samwise the Strong" bit would have helped in that regard. It's just a passing moment in the book, but it could have made for a great and memorable sequence of visuals that really drove home what it was that had put Boromir over the edge and nearly consumed Frodo. I concur. quote:He felt that he had from now on only two choices: to forbear the Ring, though it would torment him; or to claim it, and challenge the Power that sat in its dark hold beyond the valley of shadows. Already the Ring tempted him, gnawing at his will and reason. Wild fantasies arose in his mind; and he saw Samwise the Strong, Hero of the Age, striding with a flaming sword across the darkened land, and armies flocking to his call as he marched to the overthrow of Barad-dûr. And then all the clouds rolled away, and the white sun shone, and at his command the vale of Gorgoroth became a garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit. He had only to put on the Ring and claim it for his own, and all this could be. Core of the whole novel, right there.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 24, 2015 23:02
|
|