Tolkien Gleanings #202.
* New on Archive.org, part of a large intake of open-access ebooks, Tolkien on the name ‘Nodens’. Their only other copy of this item is now “Borrow Unavailable”. Among the other open-access ebooks being added is The Dream of the North: a cultural history to 1920 (2014).
* Zeitschrift fur Fantastikforschung reviews Thomas Honegger’s recent book Tweaking Things a Little on Tolkien and George Martin. Freely available online, in German.
* A new one-hour Seen & Unseen podcast face-to-face interview with “Holly Ordway on the Christian faith of J.R.R. Tolkien”. Also, Holly Ordway’s recent book Tolkien’s Faith is reviewed in the latest issue of the journal Literature and Theology ($ paywall), with what appears to be a partial free sample of the review. I assume the free sample is not the whole review.
* I’ve now finished perusing all 300+ PDF issues of The Tolkien’s Society’s Amon Hen. Sorry Gleanings readers, but it would have been too much work to make notes and then type up and elaborate all my discoveries here. Suffice it to say that I found trawling Amon Hen worth it for the time-travel effect (videogames that load from cassette-tape, etc), the Kristine Larsen articles, and a half-dozen ‘I remember Tolkien’ articles (from family, those who knew him socially, or who studied with him). And for the passing mention of The Face in the Frost (1969), an acclaimed short fantasy novel I’d never heard of. I’ve now started skipping merrily back through the first 50 issues of Mallorn.
* I also went looking for equivalent publications in the USA. No PDFs there, but I did find the Web page American Tolkien Society – Back Issues, which offers their paper journal Minas Tirith Evening Star…
“Currently, 24 back issues are available. Order ‘All Available Back Issues’ and get the reduced price of $45.00 US (includes shipping)!”.
Or, should I say… ‘seems to offer’. Since their website appears to have been last updated in 2020, thus the offer may well be out-of-date in both price and availability. Is the Society still active?
* Other Minds #27 (February 2024), the unofficial magazine for the 1980s Middle-earth pen & paper role-playing game, and some later equivalent tabletop RPGs. Freely available online, and all Other Minds issues are under Creative Commons Noncommercial (except for artwork labelled © or stated as being ‘fair-use’).
Issue #27 has a fine multi-page links-list for relevant Middle-earth artists, and part two of an RPG-elaborated history of the Rangers of the north. If the latter interests, then you’ll also want #26 which has part one. #26 also asks “Where in Bree-land is Combe?”…
“The locations differ more or less wildly in all publications so far (both scholarly and official RPG maps) and you will find this article very helpful in making your own mind up”.
Which is especially interesting to me, since I’ve just bagged the The Journeys of Frodo map-book in hardcover for £16 from a UK seller.
* EconLib has a short but thoughtful new article on “Asimov vs. Tolkien”. Compared to the 1970s ‘timeline futurists’ such as Asimov, the article states that Tolkien’s…
Elrond recognizes not only that things unfolded in ways that even the wisest could not foresee. More importantly, Elrond also says that the unforeseeability of how things would unfold is itself something that the truly wise would have already understood. And this shows the difference between raw intellect and true wisdom. In terms of sheer brainpower, I’m sure that Asimov would have outclassed Tolkien. But wisdom is about more than mere intelligence — and all too often the hubris that comes with great intelligence undermines the humility necessary for true wisdom.
Something we’ll all need to remember as AI use takes hold, I’d suggest, and especially if ‘augmented intelligence’ leads to a belief in our individual ability to see into the future in a seemingly ‘predictive’ way. Messy reality will probably quickly squish that dream, but maybe not for some. If not, Tolkien’s observations on the untrustworthiness of the Palantiri may also be useful to keep in mind.
* And finally, a library Special Collections exhibition “Exploring the Fairytale Forest: The Fantastic & Imaginative Illustrations of Arthur Rackham” at Lafayette College, through summer 2024. The College is located at Easton, Pennsylvania — which it turns out is about 50 miles west of New York City. Running at the same time over in Chicago, the Driehaus Museum’s “Jewelry In Perspective” exhibition, of superb fin-de-siècle work that reviews have compared to Elvish adornments.
