Welcome FotB! Great dopername.
<Sung to the tune of “Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino>
They found mithril
Under Moria’s hill
Zirak-zigil
In Khazad-dum
Gandalf lay still
On Moria’s hill
And lingered until
He defied the tomb
Old Durin the Deathless delved
and found wond’rous things
Gave some to Eregion’s Elves
Who fashioned some rings
Through trolls’ assaults
Young Frodo lives still
Cause he had mithril
Under Moria’s hill
Thank you! glad to see there are so many Tolkien fans here 
Actually, this is exactly what’s wrong with it. An author should be creative enough to develop his or her own concepts, items and world in such a way that it is conveyed to the reader without the cheapening shortcut of using someone else’s creation. Not 10 minutes though would give a decent author some way to imply that a metal is
A) very hard
B) very shiny
C) very valuable
And voila! a mithril substitute that the author actually created! Woot!
The whole ‘fantasy fans will know what to expect’ takes away from the book and story, for all of me.
On the subject of mithril (or other variant spellings) in non-Tolkien sources, I’d make a distinction between novels that crib the idea from Tolkien, and video or role-playing games that do so. Dungeons and Dragons, for example, was originally created as a home-brew rule set for wargaming in the Middle Earth setting. So, yeah, it has mithril in it, and ents, and balrogs, and hobbits, because the purpose of the game, as originally conceived, was not world building. The point of a lot of role-playing and video games isn’t, “Here are original characters doing something you’ve never seen before in a unique setting,” it’s “Here’re characters and settings with which you are intimatly familiar: it’s up to you to decide what to do in them.” That’s precisely the attraction of your average generic fantasy RPG/video game.
Sure, but those are somehow different than “mithril.” Those are fleshed out characters and concepts. I could actually understand being really annoyed if someone simply swiped them lock, stock, and barrel and inserted them into their story.
But mithril is a small element of Tolkien, and with no offense to the Tolkien nuts, it’s basically really hard, shiny, magic metal. I do not think borrowing that concept and not changing the name is any great theft of intellectual property than I think that Tolkien borrowing names and idea from Old World sagas is.
The public domain part doesn’t really matter to me much here, but I assumed we were talking about morally correct versus legally correct (in which case legally the mere lifting of a concept like “mithril” is almost certainly legal).
So my point was not so much an attack on Tolkien for lifting intellectual property (because he did, but I believe did it fairly and made his own story) as it is a questioning of someone who would literally boycott any product that dares to use so much as a word or a concept from Tolkien.
I think the greatest measure of Tolkien’s success will be the degree to which, over time, people come to feel that his inventions – orcs, ents, mithril – have always been.
Just as it’s a measure of Milton’s genius that so many have a hard time distinguishing the mythology of Paradise Lost from that of the Bible.
It may seem strange that a writer who once taught literature should feel this way. By all accounts, I should be shaking my head in disgust at those who haven’t read Milton or the Bible sufficiently to accurately draw the line. I should be defending Tolkien’s right to his intellectual property.
But in this case, that’s not how I see it. The work of a true genius takes on a life of its own.
I’m not advocating that people go around publishing spurious sequels to the Ring Trilogy. But I’m happy to see Tolkien’s mythology enter the public imagination so fully. Like a word coined by a master speaker, some of Tolkien’s ideas are so right, so necessary, that we look at them and say, yes, that’s it.
Why invent something exactly like mithril and call it by another name? People would only scoff at it and wonder, “Why didn’t he just call it mithril? What, does he think we’re stupid? We know what this is.”
He did more than that. His mission was to resurrect the largely forgotten mythic history of northern Europe, rescue it from Walt Disney, imbue it with a modern Christian ethos, and make it live again. Amazingly, he succeeded.
*And so they received the gifts from the Duke of that land, for his queen had been turned human from wolf, and his daughter freed of her sleep. For the trickster, a coin from the beast’s hoard that would always come back to him, bringing two more coins with it. For the archer, a bow made from the tusks of that very beast, and strung with spiders’ silk, woven by sprites. For the magician, a book from the Duke’s library which would teach him one new thing each day. And for the Paladin, the daughter’s hand in marriage, and a coat of mail made by dwarvish craftsmen, from a metal so light and luminous they named it for the queen of the Faeries.
They called it… titanium.
*
Frankly, it would be even better if he’d avoid the sword and sorcery stuff altogether, not just invent new names.
I give you the definitive thread on the subject:
When I think if mithril, I always picture titanium.
Awesome!
A-f*cking-men.
I was cogitating just yesterday on the fact that the fantasy genre is still basically beholden, in pretty much it’s entirety, to Tolkein and the world and concepts he introduced.
And that sucks. No disrespect to JRRT…but it’s time to move along.
Well, Mercedes Lackey is perfect if you like fantasy elements, lot and lots of exposition, and an idea of elves that is not behoven to Tolkien. Or you might hate it.
Wasn’t part of Tolkien’s goal to rebuild Anglo-Saxon mythology and add it to the voice of other world mythologies? It seems to me that the common, almost unconscious, use of terms and concepts he invented is evidence that he was successful.
I enjoy a completely original work of fiction (if such a thing can be said to exist) but I also enjoy works that knowingly stand on shoulders of giants- just as Tolkien’s work was built on the mythology (however unfamiliar to most modern men) that came before it .
I see that I have basically repeated what Sample said. Sorry for the redundancy.
Oooh, Lackey! My guilty pleasure! Literature from the “Beautiful, magic talking horsie will be my friennnnnnnnnnd!” school!
Ditto here.
So, anybody with a knowledge of material science/metallurgy and who knows their Tolkien care to comment?
Don’t you need an inert gas atmosphere to forge/cast Titanium? How would the dwarves have smelted & worked it. Any magic required?
I worked with the stuff as an undergrad doing a research project on artificial hip implants. We had cigarette-size rods that had been knurled with a particular pattern we were doing fatigue testing on. Each specimen was like $150 or so.
Now I see titanium jewelry and fountain pens being sold…
Be sure to read this thread…when you have time.
I picture Aluminum.
Except more rare than that…