Russia loves Tolkien. The first officially translated edition of The Hobbit was released there in 1976 and has stayed in print there ever since (note: Tolkien’s works circulated there unofficially for years in samizdat) and not only that, it was Russia that attempted the first live-action movies of both The Hobbit and the The Lord …
He’s trimming his nose hairs, apparently.
Since I’ve been reading The Silmarillion, I thought I’d generate some names of Elven women, or as Tolkien might put it, elf-maids. Elf names all meant something in the languages he created – he was a linguist after all. In the text of the book they are explained to you, and defined again in the …
It’s amazing to me how differently artists interpret Bilbo Baggins. Last month I found these two covers and now, here’s this one. It’s not a great depiction. First off, Bilbo is too tall and portly, and his signature feature, the hairy feet, is missing. He looks more like John Goodman from the 1990s sitcom Roseanne. …
The Fall of Númenor by J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. by Brian Sibley William Morrow, 2022 [ #23 Pixies and Dryads and Elves, oh my! : A high fantasy ] I am backposting this review, as I finished the book only a few days before the end of 2024. Let’s hope 2025 is a little …
Since I just finished watching The Rings of Power on Amazon, and am also reading Tolkien’s compilation The Fall of Numenor, I’ve a mind to talk about Tolkien’s Wizards. First off, there weren’t that many of them. There are only three as characters in the main trilogy: Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, and Radagast …
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?