The Ninety-ninth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

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

All dates are taken from Tolkien Gateway (Abre numa nova janela).

Events & Shows

The Tolkien at UVM conference is celebrating its 20th anniversary with The Psychologies of Middle-earth. [hybrid; TolkienVT.org (Abre numa nova janela); Robin Reid (Abre numa nova janela); Facebook (Abre numa nova janela)]

In one of the recent Graham Norton Show episodes (Season 31, Episode 17) both Sir Ian McKellen (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) seminar available. [Youtube; h/t to Tom Emanuel (Abre numa nova janela))

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 (Abre numa nova janela) on Feb 23.

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

For all events check out the International Tolkien Fellowship (Abre numa nova janela) [FB] and the Tolkien Guide Calendar (Abre numa nova janela).

Scholarship and Fandom

The nomination round for the Tolkien Society Awards 2024 (Abre numa nova janela) is open until March 8th.

Douglas A. Anderson has something on Tolkien and Beerbohm (Abre numa nova janela).

NASA has named the resting place where the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (Abre numa nova janela) landed after a rotor failure: Valinor Hills (Abre numa nova janela).

Tom Hillman has some thoughts on Arwen’s Green Grave (Abre numa nova janela).

Trotter with the Tolkien Guide team has done a great piece on Tolkien and the Swan Press (Abre numa nova janela).

Artist Miriam Ellis (Abre numa nova janela) has made a short film out of her drawings - Bag-End to Bree (by the book) (Abre numa nova janela). [Youtube]

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

Dennis Wise has some notes on the new edition (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) has risen, with a mention of LotR: RoP [Variety; compare this opinion on Netflix vs. Disney (Abre numa nova janela); 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’ (Abre numa nova janela):

"(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 (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela). [Instagram]

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

Cameron Rasmusson has J.R.R. Tolkien’s Life in Languages (Abre numa nova janela) with the latest edition of MultiLingual (Abre numa nova janela). [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 (Abre numa nova janela) [Polygon; Hasbro Q4 report (Abre numa nova janela)]

Guess who profited off this? Right, Embracer (Abre numa nova janela). [Variety; Reuters (Abre numa nova janela)]
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 (Abre numa nova janela)]

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 (Abre numa nova janela), a 3d printed ‘white tower’ (Abre numa nova janela) in Switzerland, or environmental education in a Hobbit Hole (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) on the future, looking back.

Rob Maslen has an exceptional two (Abre numa nova janela)-parter (Abre numa nova janela)on the unfortunately forgotten writer Mary Fairclough, a contemporary of Tolkien’s.

Star Trek: The Next Generation has received a very special SATURN award (Abre numa nova janela) this year. And Star Trek’s Discovery will start showing its fifth and final season on April 4 (Abre numa nova janela). [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 (Abre numa nova janela). [Star Wars]

Interestingly enough, 25 years after their first release Episodes I-III of Star Wars get their celebrations (Abre numa nova janela). [Empire]

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

This absolutely splendid interview (Abre numa nova janela) 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! (Abre numa nova janela)

The Boy and the Heron by Studio Ghibli sounds like a must watch (Abre numa nova janela). [INDAC]

All Super Bowl movie trailers (Abre numa nova janela), including Deadpool 3, Wicked, Kung Fu Panda 4, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes etc. (h/t to PhantaNews (Abre numa nova janela))

BookTok plays an ever bigger role in publishing: TikTokers help drive Sarah J Maas ‘romantasy’ boom for Bloomsbury (Abre numa nova janela) [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 (Abre numa nova janela). 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 (Abre numa nova janela)]

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 (Abre numa nova janela) [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 (Abre numa nova janela) [The Conversation]

According to German law I have to infom you all links to enterprises, artists, products etc. are [unpaid advertisements.] Some purchase links may earn me a small commission from Blackwell's, the bookshop of my personal trust.

If you are interested in my other Tolkien-related work please have a look:
The Tolkienist Blog (Abre numa nova janela) : Facebook (Abre numa nova janela) : Bluesky (Abre numa nova janela) : Instagram (Abre numa nova janela) : Mastodon (Abre numa nova janela) : Xitter (Abre numa nova janela)
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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.