The Ninety-ninth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

February 16, 1974. On the advice of Christopher Tolkien (Si apre in una nuova finestra), The Tolkien Society (Si apre in una nuova finestra) appoints J.R.R. Tolkien as Honorary President in perpetuo.
February 17, 1938. Tolkien writes Letter #23 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) on publishing Mr. Bliss; the book would only come out in 1982.
February 18, 1937. Tolkien's poem "Knocking at the Door (Si apre in una nuova finestra)" is published in The Oxford Magazine - aka The Mewlips.
February 20, 1968. Tolkien writes Letter #300 (Si apre in una nuova finestra), mentioning Lewis’ words “We were talking of dragons, Tolkien and I / In a Berkshire bar…”
February 23, 1945. Tolkien writes a long letter (Si apre in una nuova finestra), published in the Catholic Herald on the derivations of “convent” and “Coventry (Si apre in una nuova finestra)”.
February 28, 1949. Tolkien writes Letter #119 (Si apre in una nuova finestra), hoping for a ‘sabbatical’ after ‘years of service’, wishing to ‘finish a few things’.
February 29, 2004. The 76th Academy Awards (Si apre in una nuova finestra): The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) for its readers.

All dates are taken from Tolkien Gateway (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Events & Shows

The Tolkien at UVM conference is celebrating its 20th anniversary with The Psychologies of Middle-earth. [hybrid; TolkienVT.org (Si apre in una nuova finestra); Robin Reid (Si apre in una nuova finestra); Facebook (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

In one of the recent Graham Norton Show episodes (Season 31, Episode 17) both Sir Ian McKellen (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) seminar available. [Youtube; h/t to Tom Emanuel (Si apre in una nuova finestra))

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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) on Feb 23.

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

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Scholarship and Fandom

The nomination round for the Tolkien Society Awards 2024 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) is open until March 8th.

Douglas A. Anderson has something on Tolkien and Beerbohm (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

NASA has named the resting place where the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (Si apre in una nuova finestra) landed after a rotor failure: Valinor Hills (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Tom Hillman has some thoughts on Arwen’s Green Grave (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Trotter with the Tolkien Guide team has done a great piece on Tolkien and the Swan Press (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Artist Miriam Ellis (Si apre in una nuova finestra) has made a short film out of her drawings - Bag-End to Bree (by the book) (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Youtube]

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

Dennis Wise has some notes on the new edition (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) has risen, with a mention of LotR: RoP [Variety; compare this opinion on Netflix vs. Disney (Si apre in una nuova finestra); 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’ (Si apre in una nuova finestra):

"(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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Instagram]

“Boring? Elves aren’t boring? They’re the greatest creatures in all of Middle-earth.” (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) to me is absolutely hilarious. [Youtube; h/t to Soni Alcorn-Hender (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

Cameron Rasmusson has J.R.R. Tolkien’s Life in Languages (Si apre in una nuova finestra) with the latest edition of MultiLingual (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Polygon; Hasbro Q4 report (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

Guess who profited off this? Right, Embracer (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Variety; Reuters (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]
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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra), a 3d printed ‘white tower’ (Si apre in una nuova finestra) in Switzerland, or environmental education in a Hobbit Hole (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) on the future, looking back.

Rob Maslen has an exceptional two (Si apre in una nuova finestra)-parter (Si apre in una nuova finestra)on the unfortunately forgotten writer Mary Fairclough, a contemporary of Tolkien’s.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has received a very special SATURN award (Si apre in una nuova finestra) this year. And Star Trek’s Discovery will start showing its fifth and final season on April 4 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Star Wars]

Interestingly enough, 25 years after their first release Episodes I-III of Star Wars get their celebrations (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Empire]

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

This absolutely splendid interview (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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! (Si apre in una nuova finestra)

The Boy and the Heron by Studio Ghibli sounds like a must watch (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [INDAC]

All Super Bowl movie trailers (Si apre in una nuova finestra), including Deadpool 3, Wicked, Kung Fu Panda 4, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes etc. (h/t to PhantaNews (Si apre in una nuova finestra))

BookTok plays an ever bigger role in publishing: TikTokers help drive Sarah J Maas ‘romantasy’ boom for Bloomsbury (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [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.