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Post by Deleted on Aug 18, 2018 14:06:14 GMT -5
After re-watching the trilogy again on one of the Encore channels recently, I'm curious. Does Tolkien's estate own the complete rights to LoTR and it's respective works? Nothing in the public domain as such? Middle-Earth seems like one of the most popular and respected realms in all of fantasy yet it doesn't seem like (to me at least) that there's little interest in producing brand-new adventures and stories set within that realm (i.e. novels, novellas, and such). Nothing in comparison as with Conan or even John Carter. Is that because of the estate's desire to maintain the integrity of Tolkein's work? Other writers perhaps daunted of the task of trying to measure up to Tolkien in following him? Fear of fan backlash? Or am I misunderstanding the scenarios at hand? Christopher Tolkien, John's son, who was in charge of the estate since his father's death was quite conservative in how the property was used and licensed. He was very much concerned with the integrity of his father's legacy. In later years, when other family members had more influence on the estate's decisions, more licensing was permitted, and there was quite a lot allowed in conjunction with the movies, but Christopher's influence was still the most powerful and what was allowed was limited, usually licensing things from the movie not the books itself and the publishing rights were most closely guarded and no pastiche was allowed. The only thing resembling new material for Middle Earth was the supplements for Iron Crown Enterprises Middle Earth Role-Playing Game which fleshed out places and people from the books but did not offer new fiction set in Middle Earth. Christopher was more interested in editing and publishing material his father had left in note form or draft form than in seeing new material by other hands published, outside of scholarly or popular criticism and analysis, which he couldn't control anyways. Recently (within the last year or so), Christopher announced he was retiring and stepping down form the board o the estate. Since that time, we have had the announcement of the new Amazon series creating new material for the Tolkien world, so this may be a portent of things to come in terms of publishing pastiches and other stories set in Middle Earth. We'll have to see what happens. The grandchildren now running the state seem more interested in revenue than protecting the legacy, but there are still some on the baord to whom the legacy is important. -M |
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Post by berkley on Aug 18, 2018 20:19:29 GMT -5
I think Tolkien's fictional world was a little different from REH's Hyborian Age or ERB's Barsoom in that everything Tolkien wrote for that setting was in some way connected to the overall epic, a huge story with a beginning, middle, and end, and whose major characters were already in place.
REH and ERB left more open-ended worlds: you could create a new character or tell new stories about the old ones without contradicting what ERB had already written. That would be a little more difficult with Tolkien, though I suppose technically not impossible.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,199 
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Post by Confessor on Aug 20, 2018 11:17:30 GMT -5
I just got back from visiting the Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth exhibition at the Weston Library, Oxford University.  It was an absolutely fascinating exhibition, focusing not just on the creation of Tolkien's Middle-Earth legendarium, but also looking at his work as an artist, poet, and linguist, as well as aspects of his private life. The exhibition features some incredible treasures, such as the original copies of Tolkien's illustrations for The Hobbit, early draft manuscripts for The Lord of the Rings, his writing desk, his original hand painted dust jacket artwork for The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, a number of letters, early draft pages of The Silmarillion, a collection of his pipes, and a number of hand drawn maps of Middle-Earth, among other things.   It was incredible to see these things up close and in real life...especially the original watercolour paintings from the The Hobbit and Tolkien's hand-drawn maps of Middle-Earth, which I know so well from reading the books. I think that my favourite exhibit was an early, hand drawn map of Middle-Earth, which Tolkien worked on and expanded, as he was writing LOTRs. It had masses of annotations and corrections on it, as you might expect, but what really captured my imagination was that there was a small burn mark on it, where an ember of tobacco had fallen out of his pipe and scorched the paper as he poured over the map. Somehow, something as silly and human as that really brought the whole thing alive for me. You could really get a sense of Tolkien leaning over the map for hours on end, as he created it. All in all, it's a fantastic exhibition and comes highly recommended by me, if you're in the UK and can get to see it. Best of all, tickets are absolutely free!    |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 20, 2018 13:49:11 GMT -5
Very jealous. That would be a wonderful exhibit to see. However, I think my chances of going to the UK to see it are even less than the chances of it becoming a travelling exhibit and coming to the US. Maybe someone will do a virtual tour of the exhibit at some point (which is probably the only way I'll ever get to see it). But the very fact it exists and people can experience it is a joyful thing.
-M
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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 21, 2018 8:58:05 GMT -5
Very jealous. That would be a wonderful exhibit to see. However, I think my chances of going to the UK to see it are even less than the chances of it becoming a travelling exhibit and coming to the US. Maybe someone will do a virtual tour of the exhibit at some point (which is probably the only way I'll ever get to see it). But the very fact it exists and people can experience it is a joyful thing. -M Yeah, I'd dearly love to see this go on tour; I'd certainly go see it! |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 22, 2018 21:30:50 GMT -5
Didn't pick it up, but I saw this at the magazine rack of the dollar store I stopped at today...  If I see it again before I leave for vacation, I may pick it up to bring with to read in the car. -M |
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Post by String on Aug 28, 2018 20:48:42 GMT -5
Yeah, I was quite surprised to learn that this week sees the release of what is appears to be Christopher Tolkien's last edited book, The Fall of Gondolin.
I wasn't aware of his previous efforts like Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien or even such series as The History of Middle-Earth. What's the general opinion of those books?
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2018 21:11:22 GMT -5
Yeah, I was quite surprised to learn that this week sees the release of what is appears to be Christopher Tolkien's last edited book, The Fall of Gondolin.
I wasn't aware of his previous efforts like Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien or even such series as The History of Middle-Earth. What's the general opinion of those books? There's some discussion of the History of Middle Earth series in context with the Silmarillion earlier in the thread starting here where I mention my experience with them, and others comment on them later. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2018 13:27:20 GMT -5
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Post by thwhtguardian on Aug 31, 2018 19:30:32 GMT -5
In our travels this week, I discovered a whole other Lord of the Rings toy line I knew nothing about, done by Toy Vault circa 1998...it looks like they had a couple of different waves/packaging...      I saw a few of these in the wild, but didn't get any-I knew nothing of the line, how expansive it was or what going rates were, and they seemed a bit pricey, so I passed, but I will keep an eye out for them in the future. I did pick up some other LOTR things though, I will post pics somewhere one I get all the pics form our trip sorted and uploaded. -M Those accessories look really well done...but the figures? Not so much. |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 3, 2018 0:18:32 GMT -5
On our trip, I did pick up some LOTR related toys at a cool shop in Eerie, PA called Actiontoyman, which featured 3 stories of toys and comics. He had a whole slew of the 12 inch Toy Biz LOTR figures among others (including some of the Toy Vault stuff I posted about above), but I limited myself to getting 1 of them, and 1 other figure from a different LOTR Toy Biz line, the 3 3/4 inch scale Armies of Middle Earth line, but in both cases I got a Nazgul...    I also have a line on getting a Frodo form the 12 inch scale line from a fellow collector over on the Mego boards. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2018 1:37:14 GMT -5
So Frodo arrived today. I got him form one of the dudes on the Mego Museum who saw me post about them and offered me Frodo essentially for the cost of shipping. He arrived today MIB and the box was unopened.  a look at the figure inside...  and a better look to see Sting and the other accessories Frodo comes with...  I think I am liking this line, and will keep my eye out for more as I go to shows and shops. -M |
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Post by Rob Allen on Sept 21, 2018 12:34:40 GMT -5
The Hobbit was published 81 years ago today. The people of this Earth were introduced to Middle-Earth on 21 September, 1937.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 24, 2018 0:29:41 GMT -5
Lego Helm's Deep... using over 150K bricks and 1700 mini figures...it's about the size of a ping pong table...      there's more pics in the linked article. That's just freaking sweet! -M
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Post by Deleted on Sept 25, 2018 19:46:10 GMT -5
The latest Tolkien additions to my burgeoning pile o'middle earth stuff... Fro the Tolkien shelf joining the Balrog and Nazgul Pops, a Treebeard Pop...  and another member of the Fellowship added to the Toy biz line I have started accumulating-Legolas whom I won in an auction at the shopGoodwill site for $10 + shipping...   -M |
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