OK, I don’t want to devolve this lovely thread into a Great Debate about Free Will. So I’ll about approach this from the angle of literary criticism. (also a source of Great Debate, I realize, as witness the recent Dumbledore thread):
Despite what the Silmarillion and thus the good Professor says about Eru’s foreknowledge of all the music and actions in the world – I still read choice & free will into LOTR. In fact I see “how an individual chooses to react to evil” as being a major theme in the work. And one of the reasons I like it so much. We sort of knew all along the good guys were going to win; it’s how they did it, how they bore up, their motives, their hope or despair – that really made things interesting. I’m not sure I’m making myself clear, and I realize I’m saying I like my interpretation better than the author’s. Hubris, indeed.
PS - to Cemetery Savior: Yes, yes. I wanted more stories set in the rest of Middle Earth. But not if they were going to be like Star Wars extended universe paperbacks…
Aside from “knowing” there will be a happy ending* because that is just how these things work in books I do believe that JRRT means for there to be free will in the story. If nothing else it makes for a boring story if you think Iluvatar had every move planned down to a blade of grass and nothing is ever in doubt. But more than that I think it fits with JRRT’s personal religious views. However, those views are hard to reconcile logically when examined closely.
Maybe Iluvatar just had the broad strokes in mind and the fiddly details were open to question. I dunno.
*- As an aside for a series where you really, really have to wonder if the good guys will prevail as it the norm I HIGHLY recommend you read George R. R. Martin’s series A Song of Ice and Fire. You just never know who is going to get it in the head next…wonderful series.
Alatar and Pallando, were the other Istari, IIRC. Although I see wikipedia mentions they were known as Morinehtar (Darkness-slayer) and Romestamo(East-helper) – presumably in Valinor, since those names are listed alongside Olórin. Tolkien mentions them a bit in his letters, but really doesn’t seem to know much of their fate.
Um…no thanks to the entended universe concept. I’d only read those if they were written by Christopher Tolkein, or maybe Guy Kay.
Marginally funny aside…I was walking down the street by a theater the other day, and I saw a large bald guy with a big red (presumably glass) gem stuck on his forehead. He was also dressed in floppy green RenFaire-type clothes. I looked at the posters on the exterior wall of the theater, and saw that they were running the cartoon Hobbit, and then the LOTR cycle in some dehydrating 10-hour lovefest.
I wanted to address him as Hawkmoon, but I know he was going for Feanor uber-geekdom, and didn’t want to upset him. Silmarils were diamond-like, right? Hate to think I was incorrect.
[Extra geeky alert] Just to pursue this sidebar, for the last 30 years, on and off, I have run Fourth Age Middle Earth campaigns using D&D. Part of the reason was to create more stories and explore much more of Middle Earth. I have had several adventures over this time in the area of Rhun. I just started a new ME campaign this part month, the first in 6 years and two of the PC are Silven Elves from the Woods near Rhun. I am also a map geek, I true up a full map of ME back in 1982 and it is frighteningly close to the official one that turned up later. Many differences, but going with the Idea the Shire was England, I built a large continent that roughly looked like a reconfigured Eurasia-Africa and obviously guessed correctly that Tolkien did the same.
What is the story on the current full map of Middle Earth? Does anyone know? Was it drawn by Tolkien or did Christopher piece it together?
To the Best of my Knowledge, Glorfindel is not in the House of Finwë (alt-0235 = ë)
Does anyone have a link to the “current” map? I’d like to see if it matches my older one.
I think you were correct in the rough link to Eurasia/Africa. I loved that there were Oliphants in the LOTR (Rathillien?).
If you pursue that logic, I wonder how the Eldar would intereact with Baba Yaga’s chicken-leg hut that would undoubtedly pop up about 200 leagues to the east of the Rhun?
Well, I’ll have to assume that Glorfindel is still hanging out in Rivendell, waiting for the Callback of Mandos.
Dunno if these will do. Most of these seem to be by Christopher Tolkein.
While looking for maps online I found many, many broken links and notes on websites that were still there that basically say the Tolkein Estate is aggressive in shutting them down.
If he is, then he is a later generation then Galadriel, it seems probable that his mom or a grandmom was of the Vanyar and thus he has Golden Hair and not the typical dark hair of the Noldor.
Yeah, but I can picture them being farmed out to “up and coming” authors, and sucking pretty hard. I’ll stick by Tolkien Jr. and Kay for any upcoming ME-type stuff.
Iron Crown Enterprises had published a “Middle Earth Role Playing System” to go along with their unique type of game rule set (d100 based), and had a bunch of maps published (including a map that showed the continent upon with the Tolkien stories are based). This was in the 80’s, and I assume that they have lost those rights (or allowed them to lapse), since that stuff does not show up on their website. You may find some of that stuff on ebay… My continent poster map comes from this set.
Do you know who designed the continental maps? I was just looking at it again the other day and I was amazed that they and I had such similarities in our vision.
I have the Atlas at home (of course) but I don’t think hers had as much detail as the one MERP used. I guess, I was hoping someone knew from where that came.
That is it exactly. I was wondering if Christopher was involved with its creation or not. My map made a few years prior to that map’s publication is surprisingly close.
I like their map better, but then mine was hand drawn on a 8x11 sheet of graph paper and traced off to clean it up. I did this back when I was still in High School.
Jim (poor eleanorigby, I ubergeeked her wonderful thread)
