JRR Tolkien's Son Christopher Dies Aged 95 (theguardian.com) 40
Christopher Tolkien, the son of Lord Of The Rings author JRR Tolkien who was responsible for editing and publishing much of his father's work, has died aged 95. The Tolkien Society released a short statement on Twitter to confirm the news. The Guardian reports: Tolkien, who was born in Leeds in 1924, was the third and youngest son of the revered fantasy author and his wife Edith. He grew up listening to his fathers tales of Bilbo Baggins, which later became the children's fantasy novel, The Hobbit. He drew many of the original maps detailing the world of Middle Earth for his father's The Lord of the Rings when the series was first published between 1954 and 55. He also edited much of his father's posthumously published work following his death in 1973. Since 1975 he had lived in France with Baillie.
In an interview with the Guardian in 2012, Christopher's son Simon described the enormity of the task after his grandfather died with so much material still unpublished. Simon said: "He had produced this huge output that covered everything from the history of the gods to the history of the people he called the Silmarils -- that was his great work but it had never seen the light of day despite his best efforts to get it published." His son was left to sift through the files and notebooks and over the two decades after his father's death, he published The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Beren And Luthien and The History of Middle-earth, which fleshed out the complex world of elves and dwarves created by his father.
In an interview with the Guardian in 2012, Christopher's son Simon described the enormity of the task after his grandfather died with so much material still unpublished. Simon said: "He had produced this huge output that covered everything from the history of the gods to the history of the people he called the Silmarils -- that was his great work but it had never seen the light of day despite his best efforts to get it published." His son was left to sift through the files and notebooks and over the two decades after his father's death, he published The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Beren And Luthien and The History of Middle-earth, which fleshed out the complex world of elves and dwarves created by his father.
The road goes ever on (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The road goes ever on (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
OffTheLip admonished:
I am not one to followup on a post I submitted but in no way was I trying to be Funny with my submission. I enjoyed JRR's work and appreciated the work by Christopher.
It seemed obvious to me, at least, that you were being entirely sincere, and that your reference to the departure of the Elves from Middle Earth (in company with a certain Hobbit) - which marked the end of the entire Middle Earth era - was an honest sentiment, meant as a tribute to Christopher Tolkien. I found it touching and appropriate.
Unfortunately, the first positive mod awarded to a post determines what that post will be modded as from then on, so the first jackass with points gets
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's yet another artifact of /.'s poorly-thought-through (and thoroughly-outdated) moderation architecture we all are forced to live with, because the current owners of this site won't put the resources into the top-to-bottom redesign it so desparately needs ...
As you can see, I still read /.. But that said, please come over to what /. really should have been:\
https://news.ycombinator.com/i... [ycombinator.com]
I don't know if HN signup still requires an invite, but if it does just reply back here and I'll invite you.
Re: (Score:1)
I walked down the long trail to the entrance of Mammoth Cave with an old teacher in HS over 30 years ago and we spoke tales of LoTR with admiration of Tolkein's son Christopher for publishing the Silmarillion.
Last weekend I spoke of ring wraiths, elves, and the Silmarillion with my students as we visited Carnegie Mellon. How the world turns.
The Silmarillion isn't an easy read at first but it is the finest in terms of legend and myth. I've read it half a dozen times.
Christopher will be remembered fondly.
Re: (Score:2)
>Christopher will be remembered fondly.
Not by me he won't. His death will / has been marked with a slightly disgusted, good riddance laugh.
While I'm an avid fan of JR's work, C Tolkien appeared money-grabbing, self-grandiose and altogether entirely unworthy of his name-sake's work.
Constantly 'digging things up' or 'reworking notes' or whatever, he basically stretched out 'The Tolkien Estate' way behind what it *should* have been.
The Tolkien Estate sued many entirely innocent, or fan based, or whatever...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Notice how that book, movie, and the Tolkien family has contributed more to society than you have? Yea, I am sure that comparison is unfair for most people by default, but I am sure I have met inchworms more interesting than you!
Many people, myself included, have read the books, watched the movies, and enjoyed the fantasies along with their family and friends.
I wonder if your families fantasy would be for you to have a little perspective before you die.
Re: (Score:2)
SirAstral snorted:
Notice how that book, movie, and the Tolkien family has contributed more to society than you have? Yea, I am sure that comparison is unfair for most people by default, but I am sure I have met inchworms more interesting than you!
I wonder if your families fantasy would be for you to have a little perspective before you die.
Note to those of you browsing at 0 and above to avoid dealing with the worst trolls, SirAstral is referring to an imbecile AC's comment, and not OffTheLip's heartfelt first post.
FWIW, I think the effort was probably wasted. Ignorance is a perfectly curable condition, but stupidity is congenital ...
Re:got a lot of miles out of that horse (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's be pretty clear here. The Tolkien Estate never authorized any of this. The movies got produced because Tolkien had sold the film rights in the 1960s. The film about JRRT himself wasn't authorized either, and the Estate and the Trust made it abundantly clear they had nothing to do with it.
CJRT's work, that occupied a fair portion of the latter half of his life, was to publish the entire mythos; the Silmarillion and other writings, that his father had spent most of his life working on. I can't imagine he ever made much money off of the expansive History of Middle Earth series, but rather to create an authoritative and scholarly set of works bringing the fuller mythos, in all its stages of development, to those interested in Middle Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
I find it hard to believe that the most litigious estate to ever exist allowed all these movies to slip past.
Re: (Score:2)
I find it hard to believe that the most litigious estate to ever exist allowed all these movies to slip past.
Sometimes you don't have a case. Doesn't matter how litigious you are, eventually judges will stop listening.
Re: (Score:2)
They sure beat that story to death. They even made a movie out of the book.
In more than one way. He is there with Disney corp chasing anyone whose works could have been perceived as derived with lawyer drones.
There is a reason why "The Last Ring-Bearer" was published only in Germany and Russia. Their courts traditionally take a very dim view on chasing derivative works and have allowed similar treatment in the past to derivative works on let's say The Wizard of Oz which could not be published anywhere in the English speaking world due to copyright claims.
The worst bit - he has
Re: (Score:2)
This comment seems to be incorrectly modded. It should be Orc, not Troll.
RIP Supreme curator of Middle Earth (Score:5, Informative)
Re:RIP Supreme curator of Middle Earth (Score:5, Interesting)
The greatest irony of Christopher Tolkien's legacy is that the huge History of Middle Earth series was largely constructed to explain how he created the chapter The Fall of Doriath in the published Silmarillion, as JRRT had never really written that part of the mythos save for a very early version from the Book of Lost Tales which would have been unsuitable for for The Silmarillion that CJRT inherited. In the end, for that chapter, he and Guy Gavriel Kay largely wrote the text themselves, and while he never quite comes out and says he regrets it, in one of the later volumes he finally fessed up that his father hadn't written that chapter at all.
Still, the History of Middle Earth was a vast undertaking, collecting, editing and linking together a mythos that had continued to evolve from the initial drafts started around 1916-17 (and perhaps earlier, some elements such as Earendil probably come from JRRT's days as a university student), and into the late 1960s, with huge conceptual changes along the way. It's a tough read at times, but CJRT's commentaries are invaluable in understanding his father's creative processes and the evolution of the stories.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Most of the heavy lifting was done by his father to be honest but JRR was more interested in the details of the world/story. Christopher was more a ghostwriter (similar to eg. King and Grisham books) and the finishing style of the unwritten stories felt rushed and incomplete in comparison to the original writing.
He also was responsible for green-lighting the Peter Jackson interpretations, especially the 3-movie boring Hobbit movie series based on a single children's story, which I don't believe JRR would ev
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
RIP it was one of (Score:2)
Just my 2 cents
Re: (Score:2)
my favorite books along with the trilogy. Just my 2 cents ;)
The Lord of the Rings was a series of 6 books, divided into 3 volumes. Each volume received a name, but the individual books did not.
Re: (Score:1)
my favorite books along with the trilogy. Just my 2 cents ;)
The Lord of the Rings was a series of 6 books, divided into 3 volumes. Each volume received a name, but the individual books did not.
Wikipedia.org says, "A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works." And being three volumes or three chapters, OP's comments were just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
my favorite books along with the trilogy. Just my 2 cents ;)
The Lord of the Rings was a series of 6 books, divided into 3 volumes. Each volume received a name, but the individual books did not.
What's your point? More than a few of us refer to LotR as a trilogy. Even the wikipedia article[1] acknowledges that it is commonly thought of as a trilogy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re:RIP it was one of (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the entirety of the Lord of the Rings in (IIRC) four days as I could not put it down. Fortunately I was unemployed at the time, or I might have been unemployed by the end of it. The Silmarillion on the other hand took me a good two weeks.
Re: (Score:3)
The Silmarillion on the other hand took me a good two weeks.
I think that's a world record. The Silmarillion is as dense as a flourless chocolate torte (and just about as good). It takes work to appreciate, though. I haven't convinced my daughters to read it yet but I'm working on it.
Re: (Score:2)
The Silmarillion is dry as hell, but I still have incredibly fond memories of it. I'm not a native English speaker, and in eighth grade my English teacher decided to see just how good my English skills were, so she threw progressively harder books at me. Ending with Silmarillion, non-translated. Apparently that qualifies as university level with nothing above it, and we discussed a chapter each week.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I was shocked to find that I actually did. It's incredibly rare that Hollyweird actually sticks to the actual story line of a book (as the clusterfuck of 'The Hobbit' demonstrates). It's even rarer that they actually do it well, covering the important parts and not dwelling on trivia.
Re: (Score:2)
Many a tear will be shed (Score:4, Interesting)
in the Hundred-Acre Wood.
ENORMOUSNESS (Score:2)
Enormity: "the great or extreme scale, seriousness, or extent of something perceived as bad or morally wrong."
This is a particularly common example of using the wrong word...