The Ninety-ninth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

February 16, 1974. On the advice of Christopher Tolkien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), The Tolkien Society (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) appoints J.R.R. Tolkien as Honorary President in perpetuo.
February 17, 1938. Tolkien writes Letter #23 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) on publishing Mr. Bliss; the book would only come out in 1982.
February 18, 1937. Tolkien's poem "Knocking at the Door (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)" is published in The Oxford Magazine - aka The Mewlips.
February 20, 1968. Tolkien writes Letter #300 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), mentioning Lewis’ words “We were talking of dragons, Tolkien and I / In a Berkshire bar…”
February 23, 1945. Tolkien writes a long letter (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), published in the Catholic Herald on the derivations of “convent” and “Coventry (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)”.
February 28, 1949. Tolkien writes Letter #119 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), hoping for a ‘sabbatical’ after ‘years of service’, wishing to ‘finish a few things’.
February 29, 2004. The 76th Academy Awards (Öffnet in neuem Fenster): The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) wins 11 Oscars out of 11 nominations.
I know this is not about Tolkien’s life and works but wanted to include it as I remember very fondly participating in a pyjama party and celebrating the wins as if my national team won the football world championship; also, another leap year.

The National Library of Scotland has quite a brag (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) for its readers.

All dates are taken from Tolkien Gateway (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Events & Shows

The Tolkien at UVM conference is celebrating its 20th anniversary with The Psychologies of Middle-earth. [hybrid; TolkienVT.org (Öffnet in neuem Fenster); Robin Reid (Öffnet in neuem Fenster); Facebook (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

In one of the recent Graham Norton Show episodes (Season 31, Episode 17) both Sir Ian McKellen (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and Michael Sheen were guests - the former being mistaken for Michael Gambon, the latter for Gollum (that is, Andy Serkis!]

“I was once followed out of a restaurant by someone screaming Gollum! Gollum! Gollum!”

The Tolkien Society has made the presentations of last year’s Tolkien and Religion in the 21st Century (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) seminar available. [Youtube; h/t to Tom Emanuel (Öffnet in neuem Fenster))

John Garth will give his talk Inventing on the hoof: How the Riders of Rohan suddenly became Anglo-Saxon as part of the Tolkien 50th Anniversary Seminar Series (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) on Feb 23.

The Hobbit is shown Feb 23-March 3, in Northfield, Minnesota, by the Purple Door Youth Theater (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) (also, listen to this podcast with the director (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and the team; it is based on the Patricia Gray adaptation).

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Scholarship and Fandom

The nomination round for the Tolkien Society Awards 2024 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is open until March 8th.

Douglas A. Anderson has something on Tolkien and Beerbohm (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

NASA has named the resting place where the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) landed after a rotor failure: Valinor Hills (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Tom Hillman has some thoughts on Arwen’s Green Grave (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Trotter with the Tolkien Guide team has done a great piece on Tolkien and the Swan Press (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Artist Miriam Ellis (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) has made a short film out of her drawings - Bag-End to Bree (by the book) (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Youtube]

For those interested in Charles Williams and C.S. Lewis in connection with Tolkien - the Canadian ebooks site Fadedpage (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) has several works available freely. (h/t to Bruce Charlton (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)) Please note: Canadian law applies.

Dennis Wise has some notes on the new edition (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) of Letters.

Franchise and Merchandise

It is always lovely to see a first-time-viewing report on the film trilogy (or the books, for that matter!) - in this case by Athena Scalzi (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and the extended edition of FotR (yes, the name is a bit of a giveaway). I particularly like this bracketed line ☺️

(Also, I never got the hype around Aragorn before, but dang. I definitely understand now.)

Amazon Prime Video’s spending on content (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) has risen, with a mention of LotR: RoP [Variety; compare this opinion on Netflix vs. Disney (Öffnet in neuem Fenster); Financial Times]

In the last couple of years I have seen thousands of real estate ads - literally, thousands! - loosely inspired by Tolkien’s works - very loosely - but finally we have a reliable definition of a ‘hobbit house’ (Öffnet in neuem Fenster):

"(a) rounded front door, a large bay window and a skylight."

Anything signed by Tolkien has become incredibly precious so the antiquarian market has seen many new players entering the market in recent years with steadily rising prices. Reid Moon of Moon’s Rare Books (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) now has two books in his vaults, one a gift from Tolkien to his wife Edith, and one a gift from Edith to her husband. Spoiler: One of them gave away a novel by Agatha Christie (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Instagram]

“Boring? Elves aren’t boring? They’re the greatest creatures in all of Middle-earth.” (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) You may ask why Kevin Bridges still knows this line from a certain trilogy he never actually said on screen. [Jonathan Ross Show]

Alasdair Beckett-King’s humour may not be to everybody’s liking but his Every Epic Quest (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) to me is absolutely hilarious. [Youtube; h/t to Soni Alcorn-Hender (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

Cameron Rasmusson has J.R.R. Tolkien’s Life in Languages (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) with the latest edition of MultiLingual (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [pdf download]

Yes, MtG will get us more and more cards: Hasbro CEO wants two Lord of the Rings-sized sets of Magic cards every year (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Polygon; Hasbro Q4 report (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

Guess who profited off this? Right, Embracer (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Variety; Reuters (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]
Please note that out of 153 video games in development in June 2023 only 124 remain - 29 games gone. So beautiful investors’ numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt. [IGN Germany (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

By the way, if you need any proof at the wide range of “Tolkien-inspired work”, take this short trip to the Ukraine and its Hobbit House military-use shelters (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), a 3d printed ‘white tower’ (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in Switzerland, or environmental education in a Hobbit Hole (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in south-east Alaska.

Available now and until #RovingRanger100 and on until March 8th: trial memberships with the Tolkienist at Steady

Alan Sisto of the Prancing Pony Podcast, John Garth, members of the Tolkien Guide team and one of the world's leading Tolkien linguists have already joined my in my Steady adventure 🤩

Inter alia & Back in the day

George R.R. Martin takes a rather grim, yet rather understandable view (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) on the future, looking back.

Rob Maslen has an exceptional two (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)-parter (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)on the unfortunately forgotten writer Mary Fairclough, a contemporary of Tolkien’s.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has received a very special SATURN award (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) this year. And Star Trek’s Discovery will start showing its fifth and final season on April 4 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [StarTrek.com]

Carl Weathers has passed away - to me he will always remain Apollo Creed but later in his career he played an important part with the Mandalorian (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Star Wars]

Interestingly enough, 25 years after their first release Episodes I-III of Star Wars get their celebrations (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Empire]

The discussion on the recent Hugo awards is not abating. If you are interested in this, the reporting via File770 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is the best way to go; this Esquire (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) article is interesting but missing many things. An in-depth article has illuminated the issues (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and many people, including John Scalzi (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), are now coming together and working on a solution that this will not happen again.

This absolutely splendid interview (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) does not only talk about the Discworld games being redone - but that King Charles III might have a say in it. Terry Pratchett would probably have a laugh at that. Immediately after Rhianna Pratchett chimed in! (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

The Boy and the Heron by Studio Ghibli sounds like a must watch (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [INDAC]

All Super Bowl movie trailers (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), including Deadpool 3, Wicked, Kung Fu Panda 4, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes etc. (h/t to PhantaNews (Öffnet in neuem Fenster))

BookTok plays an ever bigger role in publishing: TikTokers help drive Sarah J Maas ‘romantasy’ boom for Bloomsbury (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Guardian]

It is not new that ‘tech bros’ love (and usually willingly misinterpret) Tolkien but with the latest LLM to hit the so-called A.I. charts the name says it all: Smaug (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). I have read too many scifi novels to find this exciting:

In the near future, AI, not humans, will build applied AI systems. Data scientists will play a supervisory role, instructing and evaluating the results produced by Generative AI agents. [Source (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

And it comes as no surprise tech bros know they might get away with stealing the works of others and making money off of it because the US legal system is hardwired to such abuse: OpenAI Scores Court Victory After Copyright Lawsuit From Sarah Silverman Is Partially Dismissed (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Forbes] Right now the lies being shared ever more quickly by so-called “A.I.” are being called “hallucinations”: The New York Times’ AI copyright lawsuit shows that forgiveness might not be better than permission (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [The Conversation]

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As this is 2024 I would like to note that this newsletter is 100% human-made, curated by me, Marcel R. Bülles. This also holds true for everything I write with my blog and here at Steady.