@RUTGERS.ARPA:milne@uci-icse (03/20/85)
From: Alastair Milne <milne@uci-icse>
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Hello. I read your article in SF-Lovers Digest about how J.R.R. was
the best English language SF author in the 20th century. In the article
you stated that he was fairly prolific. I have only been able to find
The Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Of Tree and Leaf.
Do you know of any other essays, short stories, novels that he had written?
Adthanksvance (thanks in advance)
Joe
HERMAN%UMDB@WISCVM.ARPA
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Joe,
I am sending this both to you and the net, both because I think other
people might be interested, and because I have grave doubts about whether
our mailer will succeed in getting this to your address.
Please allow me to clarify a little: I did not call Tolkien the best
SF author (in any language or century), both because his fictional works
are clearly fantasy, not science-fiction or anywhere near it, and because
I was not attempting to classify him as an author so much as to defend the
name of The Lord of the Rings (and, of course, because stating such a thing
as if it were a demonstrable fact, rather than an impression, however
powerful, would be ridiculous).
However, never in all my readings have I encountered anything that even
approaches The Lord of the Rings in stature, even the things I've read and
re-read with undiminished pleasure. Its impression on me is so strong that
I'll risk sticking my neck out and calling it "the best" with no more
qualification than a "probably". Which, as a subsequent message rightly
pointed out, is most unwise practice.
Some fictional works other than the ones you listed:
- The Silmarillion (posthumous; completed and edited by Tolkien's son.
The histories, broadly told in the fashion of heroic
ballad, of the First and Second Ages of Middle Earth.
Deals with many things that "The Hobbit" and "The Lord
of the Rings" refer to from the Elder Days)
- Unfinished Tails
(Further collected notes, on both the Elder Days and the War of the
Rings. Highly informative; excellent reading)
- The Road Goes Ever On and On
(poetry from Middle Earth, including Tolkien's analyses of some
Elvish poetry. I know this from references in other works; I have
yet to read it myself.)
- The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
(collected poems from the Shire, with a certain emphasis on those of
Bilbo and Frodo. Bilbo's epic poem "Errantry" is here, as well as
Frodo's "The Sea Bell", and the rather unsettling "the Mewlips")
- Leaf by Niggle
(a curious story about a shy and introverted artist obsessed with
the painting of a tree. Unrelated to Middle Earth).
His nonfiction includes at least one essay "On Writing Faerie Stories" (or
something similar: I forget the exact title) on the subject of writing fantasy;
since he held a chair in English at Oxford University, his duties required a
great deal of writing; and he did a considerable amount of translation from
Middle English (which is amazingly distant from Modern English).
There are also criticisms and analyses of Tolkien available. "Behind the
Lord of the Rings," by Lin Carter, is the primary one that comes to my
mind. And for cross-referenced glossaries of the myriad names and places of
Middle Earth, see Robert Forster's "Guide to Middle Earth", and "A Tolkien
Companion", whose author I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten.
One other point: when I said "prolific", I did not mean in the sense of
being a veritable book factory. I was thinking rather of Tolkien's ability to
pursue his explorations of the intertwined histories of Middle Earth, and its
languages and cultures, in seemingly unending depth and detail along so many
different paths, while never losing the beauty of the epic. Those explorations
have produced the works I listed above: not many, by some standards, but great
by almost any. This unceasing power in his writing is what I meant by
"prolific".
Alastair Milne