What if The Chronicles of Narnia inspired a theme park similar to Disneyworld in Florida? Of course, it’s not likely to happen anytime soon. Or ever perhaps. But think of the possibilities. That’s the theme I’m going to riff on for this July’s Worldbuilding Wednesday posts. What rides, events, eating places, and attractions would it …
Want to make your fantasy world really fantasyish? Add in some -wyns, -yrs, -wys, with a sprinkling of gws and lls, just like the characters and places in The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh folktales written down in the 14th century. Based on oral traditions that were older, they served as the basis for modern …
The two villains of Tolkien’s trilogy and Lewis’s Narnia come together for tea. Scones, anyone?
Say the name Sauron and most people will think of this armored character from The Lord of the Rings movies, or a giant burning eye. But in the books Tolkien never spoke of Sauron’s Third Age physical form except in abstracts, saying only that he was “not fair” which could mean anything. So, inspired by …
Much has been said about The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Amazon Prime’s new series set in the Second Age of Middle Earth. Some fans are enthusiastic about the idea, others skeptical. (I can understand the latter after recently watching The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: Battle of …
I’m talking about the ones featured in The Lord of the Rings: sophisticated, powerful, conventional (in appearance) tools of mass destruction, masquerading as fine jewelry any 20th century European might want to wear. Foremost among them was Sauron’s One Ring, of course, of unadorned gold, with a mysterious script running around the inside as demonstrated …
In The Worm Ouroboros E.R. Eddison dazzles the reader with innumerable exotic and fantastically named people, places, and things. Unfortunately, they don’t all adhere to a consistent linguistic base, and no less a luminary like J.R.R. Tolkien criticized the author for this. Some character names sound Latin, such as Laxus, Corinius, Corund, and Corsus. Others …
Well, here at last, dear friends, on the shores of the Sea comes the end of our fellowship in Middle-Earth. Go in Peace! I will not say: Do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. It’s been fun a fun month here in Cobaltland, delving into all things Middle Earth. I’ve found out …
Tolkien March is drawing to a close. As it ends, I want to touch on the fanfic and fanart… and the slash… bursting onto the scene after the release of Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, and gathering steam through the next two releases and then Hobbit trilogy that wrapped in 2014. Not …
The great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! It was a winged creature: if bird, then greater than all other birds, and it was naked, and neither quill nor feather did it bear, and its vast pinions were as webs of hide between horned fingers; and it stank. A creature of an older …