The One hundred and fifteenth Roving Ranger

Have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Si apre in una nuova finestra)

Due to the increase in interesting and entertaining pieces of news on all things Tolkienian the Roving Ranger will return to a weekly schedule on January 3rd, 2025, the birthday of the Professor.

Life and Works

Nov 30, 1932. Father Christmas (Si apre in una nuova finestra) writes a letter (Si apre in una nuova finestra) to Tolkien's children.
Dec 1, 1913. Tolkien is elected president of the Stapledon Society, a student body at Exeter College (Si apre in una nuova finestra).
Dec 3, 1955. Tolkien's poem Imram (Si apre in una nuova finestra) is published in Time and Tide (Si apre in una nuova finestra).
Dec 4, 1947. Essays Presented to Charles Williams (Si apre in una nuova finestra), including "On Fairy-Stories (Si apre in una nuova finestra)", is published.
Dec 6, 1961. Tolkien writes Letter 235 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) (Pauline Baynes & Adventures of TB).
Dec 11, 1953. Tolkien writes Letter 142a (Si apre in una nuova finestra) (on Sir Gawain and LotR).
Dec 12, 1967. Tolkien writes Letter 299 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) (Green’s review on Smith).

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Events & Shows

More Perilous and Fair: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy (Si apre in una nuova finestra) (OMS 2025 by the Mythopoeic Society)

The UK Tolkien Society is now branching out - event-wise - into the West, that is, the United States: Westmoot 2025 (Si apre in una nuova finestra)is coming [May 2025; Kansas City]

The Fall of Doriath (Si apre in una nuova finestra) musical stream will happen Nov 30/ Dec 1.

'The ‘Key-spring’ of The Lord of the Rings?' (Si apre in una nuova finestra) is on with Stuart Lee in Oxford. [Eventbrite]

Tolkien Society Hybrid Seminar 2024 – Tolkien as Heritage (Si apre in una nuova finestra) with TS of Serbia.

LotR: War of the Rohirrim (Si apre in una nuova finestra). Dec 13th.
— IMAX Premiere and fan screening at Lucerne (CH); the Tolkienist as GoH (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

The Lubbock Community Theatre in Texas will do the Hobbit in March 2025 (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Theatre review: The Hobbit is an inventive love letter to the joy of pretending (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Stir; Vancouver]

The Hobbit will be played in Lithopolis, Ohio (Si apre in una nuova finestra) in April 2025 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Broadway World]

The Hobbit (Si apre in una nuova finestra) will also hit Philly in April/ May 2025.

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 & Fandom

Ardacraft: Ten years of building Middle-earth in Minecraft (Si apre in una nuova finestra)[Youtube]

Diana Glyer has “From Enemies to Allies: The Unlikely Friendship of Lewis & Tolkien” (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Youtube]

Tom Hillman has The Repentance of Angels: a Curious Departure in Tolkien (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Miriam Ellis has Christopher Tolkien: Steward of a Star (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

doubtfulsea has You’ve Got Mail (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

David Bratman has a short review of the CJRT Centenary Conference (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

A review of Nólë Hyarmenillo. An Anthology of Iberian Scholarship on Tolkien (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Fafnir]

A sculpture in support of reading - in the form of a bench - uses Tolkien’s Hobbit as one of its legs (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [LA Times]

Addiction in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and the real world: Insights for physicians (Si apre in una nuova finestra)[The DO]

Some of the papers presented with the CJRT Conference are already available with the Journal of Tolkien Research (Brown and Larsen) (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Merchandise & Franchise

A new board game: Duel for Middle-earth (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Repos Production; similar to 7 Wonders Duel - review (Si apre in una nuova finestra) with BGG]

Also a “trick taking game” from Office Dog/ Asmodee (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

The Lord of the Rings™ Roleplaying for 5e Now Available on D&D Beyond (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Free League]

Elevenses is delayed until January (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Portland Herald]

You can now get your very own War of the Rohirrim weapon in the cinema (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [MSN] | see also WotR: "An All New Story" Featurette (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Youtube] | see the full NYCC WotR panel (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Youtube] McFarlane Toys has WotR swag as well (Si apre in una nuova finestra); see Boxoffice Theory forecast (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

The Hobbit Folio Society (Si apre in una nuova finestra) edition sold - 1,000 copies - in less than 10 mins [Instagram]

Have a look at this VFX breakdown (Si apre in una nuova finestra) of LotR: RoP, season 2. [Youtube] | The $808M series that's the biggest flop in TV history... and there's still three seasons to go (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Daily Mail; media bias (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

Tolkien Tourism has exploded in recent years; a recent example is to be found in Kelvin Edge, Whiting Bay, Isle Of Arran, North Ayrshire (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Scotland]

Audiobooks are booming, thanks to streaming subscriptions (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Economist; paywall]

The most popular musicians on Spotify this week included plenty of familiar names, from Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars to Billie Eilish. But also riding high in the streaming platform’s charts were some unexpected stars, including Jane Austen, J.R.R. Tolkien and Boris Johnson. [my emphasis]

Inter alia & Back in the Day

LotR: RoP to be translated into Cherokee (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Lakota Times]

Excellent interviews on Star Trek with Nana Visitor (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [trekmovie.com (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

Tom Emmanuel has: George MacDonald's Post-Christian Imagination (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Kirk and Spock get a final farewell (Si apre in una nuova finestra) in “AI” rendition. [Youtube]

Research on the situation in the US but let's assume it holds true everywhere: Misinformation exploits outrage to spread (Si apre in una nuova finestra)online [Science]

Only when the assisted dying bill passes will I stop feeling angry about Terry Pratchett’s final years (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Independent]

Denis Villeneuve Says ‘Star Wars’ Got ‘Derailed’ by ‘Return of the Jedi’ and ‘There’s No More Surprises’ in the Franchise: ‘I’m Not Dreaming’ of Directing One (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Variety]

Of course the girls are reading horny fairy books. It’s cheaper than travel and more fun than therapy (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Guardian]

Fingolfin’s Findings LXVI: Moorcock never really read LotR (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [The Tolkienist with Steady; paywall]

Ansible 449 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) has been published.

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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. Also, the average time of curating this newsletter ranges from 12-16 hours.