The Eighty-sixth Roving Ranger

Life and Works

May 13, 1964. Tolkien writes Letter 256 (Abre numa nova janela), mentioning 'A new shadow'.

I could have written a 'thriller' about the plot and its discovery and overthrow – but it would be just that. Not worth doing. [Letters, #256]

May 19, 2006. The Ring of Words (Abre numa nova janela) is published; on Tolkien's work with the OED.
May 20, 1969. Tolkien writes Letter 310 (Abre numa nova janela), attempting to answer the question 'what is the purpose of life?'
May 23, 2013. The Fall of Arthur (Abre numa nova janela) is published.
May 23, 1973. Tolkien writes a letter (Abre numa nova janela) to his old friend Christopher Wiseman, adding the letters TCBS after his name.

Events & Shows

It's a minute detail but incredibly important to any exhibition: Preparing JRR Tolkien’s drawings for display (Abre numa nova janela). [Bodleian Libraries]

You may never have heard of him but there is a pretty good chance you have heard his music: David Arkenstone (Abre numa nova janela) (no joke, that's his name!) On tour with his latest album Music Inspired by Middle-earth, Vol. II. [Vancouver Sun]

The Tolkien Reserve Summer Bang (Abre numa nova janela) is happening (again).

The Sioux City Community Theatre (Abre numa nova janela) in Iowa has showings of their staging of The Hobbit in May and June.

Kalamazoo is happening and John D. Rateliff (among many others) is there (Abre numa nova janela).

A review of the Marquette exhibition (Abre numa nova janela) [PDF]

The Tolkien Lecture (Abre numa nova janela) will be your chance to have a pint with me - if you happen to be in Oxford at the time. Lamb & Flag, of course! And right after that we can meet up in Berlin with MetropolCon (Abre numa nova janela)! I know one or two decent places to have drinks there.

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

ANDUIN will change Tolkien research (Abre numa nova janela).

Artist Donato Giancola is having an open day in his studio (Abre numa nova janela) in Brooklyn, New York, on May 13th, including his Middle-earth inspired work. For those who can't be there you can win some nice things online.

A group of butterflies (Abre numa nova janela) have been named after Sauron; he is rather flighty, isn't he? The paper appeared with the Journal of Systematic Entomology (Abre numa nova janela). More background with the Guardian (Abre numa nova janela).

'It shows that, even among a group of very similar-looking species, you can find beauty among the dullness.'
[Dr Blanca Huertas (Abre numa nova janela), Natural History Museum, London]

The Middle-earth Reenactment Society (Abre numa nova janela) has just published its Summer 2023 issue of their newsletter, Edge of the Wild (Abre numa nova janela).

Franchise and Merchandise

Easton Press (Abre numa nova janela) have done a number of intro vids (Abre numa nova janela) over on Youtube.

WB Games are having a Spring in the Shire Sale (Abre numa nova janela) with Steam until May 15th.

ARRI (Abre numa nova janela) behind the scenes (Abre numa nova janela) video of Amazon’s LotR:RoP. [Youtube]

As far as I know The Rings of Power is the first production to be fully cloud-based.
[Producer Ron Ames]

VFX seem to be the news push recently with the show, see this interview (Abre numa nova janela) with Ron Ames and costume designer Kate Hawley.

LotR: Gollum is also showcasing its work, this time in Unreal Engine (Abre numa nova janela). Also, the game will take about 20 hours to play through (Abre numa nova janela).

The Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle-earth is available in all mobile stores, here is an in-depth talk (Abre numa nova janela) with one of the game's developers [trailer (Abre numa nova janela); Youtube]

• [With Google Play (Abre numa nova janela) it has a 2.5 out of 1,5k+ reviews so far.]

A list of fantasy and science fiction shows impacted by the Writers' Strike (Abre numa nova janela) [Gizmodo AU] And yes, LotR:RoP does not need its writers (Abre numa nova janela) to finish season 2. [Variety]

TORn has an interview (Abre numa nova janela) with WotC (Abre numa nova janela) art director Ovidio Cartagena on the upcoming MTG (Abre numa nova janela) LotR expansion. To understand how a trading card game implements the 'mechanic' of the One Ring see this post (Abre numa nova janela).

A lot of video games never get made. Timothy Cain of Troika Games (Abre numa nova janela) has finally released a demo (Abre numa nova janela) of a LotR game they suggested to Sierra in 2001.

Mattel is offering its Little People Collector LotR Weathertop Set (Abre numa nova janela).

LotR: Moria mentioned the upcoming Summer Game Fest (Abre numa nova janela) in its Discord - maybe we'll get some news on them dwarves then!

Inter alia & Back in the day

Always lovely to see when a new bookstore opens - Bound Books (Abre numa nova janela) in York, PA, put up the Hobbit and LotR (Abre numa nova janela) on opening day.

George R.R. Martin has a few things to say on the Writers' Strike (Abre numa nova janela).

The start of season 2 of Good Omens has been announced via Twitter - it's July 28th (Abre numa nova janela). And if you need to know why there is a second season in the first place do read Neil Gaiman's take (Abre numa nova janela) on it.

If you are feeling Trekkie today this new portal with 3d renditions of all Enterprises (Abre numa nova janela) might be for you. [Roddenberry Archive]

How to do Star Wars in about a minute - Robin the Frog (Abre numa nova janela) knows. [Youtube]

Hard to believe but at least this is good news: Babylon 5 (Abre numa nova janela) is returning as an animated movie.

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) : Twitter (Abre numa nova janela) : Instagram (Abre numa nova janela) : Tolkien-Discord (Abre numa nova janela) [de/en]

Additional news provided in recent weeks to my members at Steady

RR+: LotR: Gollum has a Precious Edition (Abre numa nova janela)
RR+: The Bod is archiving tweets (Abre numa nova janela) - including me 🤩
RR+: Tolkien Society Awards (Abre numa nova janela) - vote now open!
RR+: 70 years after (Abre numa nova janela) - Tolkien's lecture on Sir Gawain in Glasgow
RR+: Tolkien and Smith Conference (Abre numa nova janela), Corpus Christi College, Oxford
RR+: 'Lord of the Rings' (Abre numa nova janela) musical tickets now available
RR+: New Illustrated Edition (Abre numa nova janela) of 'The Hobbit' Announced
RR+: "Tolkien letters (Abre numa nova janela) shine new light on writer’s life and work"

What to look forward to in 2023 if you like Tolkien and all things Tolkienian

Meet and greet with the Tolkienist in 2023