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New Tolkien Book Released 'The Children of Hurin'
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Mar 26, 2007 08:32 AM
from the hoom-hoom dept.
from the hoom-hoom dept.
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.
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Aaa...Narn Hin Hurin (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, the story has quite a lot of similarities with the Finnish folklore Kalevala [wikipedia.org], spefically Kullervo's story. Knowing how much Tolkien liked Finnish, some of the stuff might be intentionally taken
From the wiki article:
Cantos 31-36: The Kullervo cycle: Untamo kills his brother Kalervo's people except for the wife who begets Kullervo; Untamo gives Kullervo several tasks but he sabotages them all; Kullervo is sold as a slave to Ilmarinen; after being tormented by Ilmarinen's wife, he exacts revenge and the wife gets killed; Kullervo runs away and finds his family unharmed near Lapland; Kullervo seduces a maiden and later finds out she is his sister; Kullervo destroys Untamola (the realm of Untamo) and upon returning home finds everyone killed; Kullervo kills himself.
Well... parallels to Túrin are there.
Word-for-word copying (Score:3, Informative)
Tolkien even copied the final dialogue [gutenberg.org] between the hero and his sword:
But then, Tolkien never published the sto
Written to Spec (Score:5, Interesting)
Heard about this on the radio. According to 'the experts' it features several large battle scenes, and "would make a good movie".
Go figure.
Re:Written to Spec (Score:4, Interesting)
The tale of Turin Turambar certainly would. Nargothrond ruined, dragonfire and orcs all around, our hero living in the wild as a bandit hunting monsters, reclaims birthright, slays dragon, discovers appalling truth, kills self... that would rule.
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Re:Written to Spec (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Written to Spec (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Written to Spec (Score:5, Informative)
Rights the old man sold decades ago for a relative pittance, back when the books were a niche nerdy thing, before the hippies caught onto them and inflicted a generation of kids called things like Pippin Galadriel Moonchild on the world...
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question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Do any of the hobbits, Gandalf, the Shire, or any other "Rings" characters appear in the other books?
Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:5, Informative)
There's also some spiffy appendixes, I believe; place-names and things like that.
There are a few other short stories floating around, which others can tell you of better than I. I think there's one or two either involving Tom Bombadil, Farmer Maggot, or both.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:4, Insightful)
All my friends really like the LotR movies, and I suppose they're good movies, if you've never read Tolkien's books and/or don't care about Tolkien's world. However I happen to like Tolkien's world, and The Silmarillion, and as a result I don't care for the movies at all.
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Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:5, Informative)
I think you mean to say, "if you've never read Tolkien's *other* books".
I've read The Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings, which are Tolkien's books, and loved the movie. The movie expressed the world fine as it appeared in that set of books.
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Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:5, Informative)
The Silmarilion details the events of the First Age of Middle Earth, from the beginning of time to Melkor's defeat (he was Sauron's boss). It also skims over the Second Age -- the rise of fall of the kingdom of Numenor (where Aragorn's ancestors were from) and the making of the Rings of Power through the first 3000 years of the Third Age. It is written in a much different style (often compared to a history book) and was pieces together by Christopher Tolkien from his father's notes (like everything post-LOTR)
After Silmarilion is Unfinished Tales, expounding on parts of Silmarilion. Narn I Hin Hurin - "The Tale of Hurin", Tuor and his coming into the hidden city of Gondolin, and more background on the second and early third ages.
After UT is The Books of Lost Tales (1 and 2), part of The History of Middle Earth, which is 12 (!) books of research on all parts of the story hiterto. Letters, extrapolation, essays. Really deep stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Middl
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Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:question about the "other" Tolkien books ... (Score:4, Informative)
The Return of the Shadow
The Treason of Isengard
The War of the Ring
Sauron Defeated (volumes 6-9)
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"One major twist" (Score:5, Funny)
She's his sister.
(Oh come on, you weren't expecting to get through this discussion without finding that out.)
Re:"One major twist" (Score:5, Funny)
%-)
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Same Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Good analogy. The difference between, say, The Fellowship of the Ring and any Christopher Tolkien followup (except perhaps the Silmarillion) is about as big.
JRR Tolkien and Frank Herbert were visionaries. Their books are legendary because they're so complete, so consistent, they're practically holographic. While those authors were also brilliant editors, especially Tolkien whose main gig was (as is well known) Oxford English Dictionary editor. Their (genetic, and thereby literary) heirs are undistinguished from a vast host of other second or lower tier of "visionary" authors, and have no special editing talent - nor have acquired any at their cashin publishers. While they also operate at a disadvantage while writing outside the original cultural contexts that produced those seminal works for a different audience.
Ironically, both Middle Earth and Dune are epic tales of the original forefathers of our times (Dune less obviously, sorry for the spoiler). A magical time when a unique individual arrived to set the worlds on the path that led to today's mundane, if relatively safe, existence. Both Tolkien and Herbert themselves portrayed themselves as mere humble quoters of the original stories, originally told by the great actors themselves. Their stories resonate with generations of the public partly because we understand that great storytellers are part of great stories which are part of great ages, come once in a long while, and cannot bequeath their talents and opportunities to their children.
On the bright side, both The Lord of the Rings and the Dune trilogies are so good that they can be reread often over a lifetime, delivering new rewards each time. Reading those later "extensions" is a waste of time that could better be spent rereading the original.
Re:Same Difference (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The difference between, say, The Fellowship of the Ring and any Christopher Tolkien followup (except perhaps the Silmarillion) is about as big.
Other than the Silmarillion (which saw some significant editing, not all of which was done by Christopher, a lot of which was entirely necessary due to the state of the source material, some of which Christopher himself felt was badly done and admitted so himself in HoME*), everything Christopher has published has been leftover writings by his father. What is Christopher's in those books is notes, analysis, textual history, and some commentary clearly labeled as such. In reading HoME, I often found Christ
Re:Dull as dish water (Score:5, Insightful)
The Silmarillion is not LotR, but it is, for those that have the patience and appreciation for that sort of thing, a glorious tale. Unfortunately, the published form is in many cases ripped from the Grey Annals, which were a sort concise historical chronology, and not in and of themselves full narratives. Tolkien planned a rather enormous expansion of the work, of which the Children of Hurin was the only part that approached completion. It, and the unfinished version of "Of Tuor and His Coming to Gondolin" that is found in Unfinished Tales are very much like LotR in storytelling quality.
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Re:Dull as dish water (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Dull as dish water (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
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Re:Same Difference (SPOILER) (Score:3, Informative)
SPOILER WARNING
before proceeding. Hopefully this is enough advance/whitespace.
The story is set 100,000 years in the future. But it's the story of a messiah who can see the future, talk with the past, of all humanity. His life's work is to adjust the path of humanity to avert an impending, otherwise inevitable disaster that would destroy us. To do so, he becomes a god-emperor, total control of all our possible courses of action.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dune was three dependent stories published in three volumes comprising an epic. Then he took the money decades later and screwed it up by extending it into a series.
These distinctions are purely semantic. Unless there's some point about a "trilogy" publication that these books and stories actually defy, other than arbitrary bookbinding conventions.
Dune prequels (Score:3, Insightful)
You know they have really old out when... (Score:5, Funny)
One ring to bore them all (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When it comes to Kevin Smith, I have to defer to my wife. She got invited to see the premier of "Dogma" by one of the magazines she buys advertising with. On the way out we were greeted by the guy who arranged it, clearly hoping we'd enjoyed it and that it was a nice perk. He's also a personal friend of my wife's. "Oh my God it was so fucking awful" was the first thing out of her mouth. She couldn't help herself.
I totally agreed and I've been reluctant since then to give certainly him, but even the charact
Does it answer the two most important questions? (Score:5, Funny)
2) Do Balrogs have wings?
Re:Does it answer the two most important questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Gandalf's folk were minor players in the fight against Sauron's boss. As the humans are to Gandalf, so Gandalf is to his superiors, the gods.
Right. In fact, IIRC, there's even something like "THE God", which doesn't interfere in the conflict between the various gods. It's clear from the stories that God (upper-case, THE god) has planned the conflicts to have a purpose which no one but himself can see.
And this is part of why Gandalf holds back his full power. He is acknowledging that he can't just go around solving other people's problems for them, since the problems, conflicts, fighting, and resolution all play a part in this unknown plan. He doesn't know what the plan is, but he knows it exists. This is part of the reason he doesn't stop Gollum, for example. He knows Gollum still has a part to play. It's also very related to the metaphor of the ring, and why Gandalf can't take possession of the ring. He must restrain himself from abuse of power in order to play his proper role. The ring represents undue power and the thirst for undue power, and so taking possession of it would represent the sort of abuse of power many characters in the story are trying to avoid.
When Bombadil fails to be affected by the ring or tempted by it, he is displaying a closeness to God which would be impossible were he not a greater being than he seems. This is also relevant in terms of Hobbits, since they show a remarkable resistance to the ring, indicating that they, too, are greater than they appear.
(Sorry. Geeking out.)
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Book Cover (Score:5, Funny)
Tolkien-like ? (Score:3, Insightful)
In my world there's nothing like what you could call "Tolkien-alike". Many have tried to ride the waves his writings have raised, still very few come even close to what he's accomplished. Maybe it's his background, maybe it's his decades' long knowledge in mythology, languages and literature, maybe it's his natural writing skill, maybe it's the timing, maybe it's all of these together that have resulted in a physical form that it's unique in so many ways. How will this new compilation be judged ? Supposing it's really good, it still will require a great effort to make it stand out from the oceans of fantasy bestseller wannabes these days.
Wikipedia link (Score:3, Insightful)
I dearly hope Christopher, with all the material at hand about Húrin and Túrin, produces a book whose quality is close to his father's writings. If so, the unavoidable buzz that'll happen in our post-Jackson-movies world would be a huge boost to help popularize all books dealing with Arda before the War of the Rings (The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales,...). That'd be nice: too many people watched the movie, eventually read the related trilogy, and then nothing else.
Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Interesting)
Like a wine fine, you have to let it age a bit.
TÚRIN TURAMBAR DAGNIR GLAURUNGA
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Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Funny)
Or aging is lowering/fucking up your standards.
By your sixties you may actually like to listen to Barbra Streisand albums...
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Same is true for adjective noun order.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Insightful)
Just how much of the History of Middle Earth series have you even read?
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Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Insightful)
So was his father. That's why you can buy Lord of the Rings in a store. People work to make money...
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Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Re:Excellent!~ (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Excellent!~ (Score:4, Informative)
Good thing you are here to remind us that it's Edith Mary Tolkien (born Bratt) [wikipedia.org].
Oh no, wait, you didn't...
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Re:Dune House Books (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I read the first sentance too fast... (Score:5, Funny)
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