The Eighty-eighth Roving Ranger

IMPORTANT! TODAY!

A revised and enlarged edition of Tolkien's Letters will be published (Abre numa nova janela).
PLEASE NOTE: TODAY.
A live stream by the TolkienGuide team (Abre numa nova janela) on this and their Letters project!
Noon PDT; 2 PM CDT; 3 PM EDT; 8 PM BST; 9 PM CEST.

The Tolkien family was out in force with today's reveal of the Middle-earth Map as another gorgeous tapestry in Aubusson (Abre numa nova janela), including Baillie, Adam and Royd Tolkien.

Events & Shows

The Lord of the Rings Musical has announced a wide range of programs alongside its production as well as cast and crew (Abre numa nova janela).

The Tolkien Society's Seminar is coming up in July (Abre numa nova janela).

The Dutch Tolkien Society Unquendor will be celebrating its Slotfeest (Abre numa nova janela).

Sentieri Tolkieniani (Abre numa nova janela) is happening in the Turin area (no, Italy, not the guy!)

The British Library will have a major fantasy exhibition and is offering a fantasy study day (Abre numa nova janela) including Dimitra Fimi.

The Conference on the Performance of Old Norse-Icelandic Poetry at St. Hugh's in Oxford sounds like a blast (Abre numa nova janela).

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

Do look out for Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring (Abre numa nova janela).

The Prancing Pony Podcast had Brian Sibley as a guest, possibly thanks to Fall of Númenor (Abre numa nova janela). (Any reason is a good reason to invite him!)

David Bratman has written on R.W. Reynolds (Abre numa nova janela).

Franchise and Merchandise

The LotR: Return to Moria video game has a story trailer (Abre numa nova janela); and yes, the voice is Gimli from the PJ films, indeed - John Rhys Davies.

RoP (Abre numa nova janela) director Bayona has said in an interview (Abre numa nova janela):

I know the ending. I know where everything is heading to, and I'm super excited to see the whole thing, not only one story, in the whole story." [ComicBook.com]

Given the fact that Prime Video is also considering an ad-supported tie (Abre numa nova janela)r for their services future successes of the streaming content seems necessary. [WSJ]

The Tolkien Estate is now countersuing (Abre numa nova janela) the fanfiction writer Demetrious Polychron after he had sued Prime Video and the Estate for supposedly stealing his storylines for Rings of Power. [Bloomberg Law]

I completely missed Brandon Sanderson's podcast 'I have thoughts about Rings of Power (Abre numa nova janela)' from November 2022. At the 11 mins mark (Abre numa nova janela) he said:

"My end opinion of it was ... meh."

Why Sanderson's opinion should matter you? Who knows but he did break the Kickstarter record (Abre numa nova janela) last year with $40+ million for four upcoming novels and may be the most successful fantasy novel writer of our times (you may have never heard of.)

Lord of the Rings: Gollum has had a disastrous launch and Metacritic scores for PC (Abre numa nova janela) are at 39/100 and 34/100 for PS5 (Abre numa nova janela). The dev team have apologised (Abre numa nova janela) and promised to provide patches asap. While this was happening German magazines noted that development team Daedalic have already started on a second title - with national funding (Abre numa nova janela).

Don't forget: Magic will have its Middle-earth field day on June 23rd (Abre numa nova janela).

Inter alia & Back in the day

Good Omens 2 (Abre numa nova janela) now has an official trailer. And yes, if you are an actual Terry Pratchett fan you will know that Pterry and Gaiman actually plotted part 2 (Abre numa nova janela). [Youtube]

And let's not forget the Ahsoka trailer (Abre numa nova janela). [Youtube]

Star Wars: The Old Republic seems to be on the move (Abre numa nova janela). [IGN]

And Mark Hamill mentioned in an interview: (Abre numa nova janela) "(...) they don't need Luke anymore." [CBS News]

An increasingly negative side effect to massive fantasy and science fiction shows is the fan tourism - Dubrovnik, which played a major part in Game of Thrones, is now limiting visits (Abre numa nova janela). Fun fact: you can look up visitor predictions online (Abre numa nova janela). And you can read up on this sensitive topic with the Dubrovnik Times (Abre numa nova janela).

John D. Rateliff mentioned a new journal (Abre numa nova janela) called UKL.

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]

For the month of June: Trial memberships at Steady

If you feel like having a look at what I am doing you can now opt for a trial membership (Abre numa nova janela) - available for the next couple of weeks!

Additional news provided in recent weeks to my members at Steady

RR+: A new and revised edition (Abre numa nova janela) of 'Letters'
RR+: Tolkien Lectures - and yes, two of them (Abre numa nova janela)
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