The One hundred and fifteenth Roving Ranger

Have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Abre numa nova janela)

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

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Events & Shows

More Perilous and Fair: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy (Abre numa nova janela) (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 (Abre numa nova janela)is coming [May 2025; Kansas City]

The Fall of Doriath (Abre numa nova janela) musical stream will happen Nov 30/ Dec 1.

'The ‘Key-spring’ of The Lord of the Rings?' (Abre numa nova janela) is on with Stuart Lee in Oxford. [Eventbrite]

Tolkien Society Hybrid Seminar 2024 – Tolkien as Heritage (Abre numa nova janela) with TS of Serbia.

LotR: War of the Rohirrim (Abre numa nova janela). Dec 13th.
— IMAX Premiere and fan screening at Lucerne (CH); the Tolkienist as GoH (Abre numa nova janela).

The Lubbock Community Theatre in Texas will do the Hobbit in March 2025 (Abre numa nova janela).

Theatre review: The Hobbit is an inventive love letter to the joy of pretending (Abre numa nova janela) [Stir; Vancouver]

The Hobbit will be played in Lithopolis, Ohio (Abre numa nova janela) in April 2025 (Abre numa nova janela). [Broadway World]

The Hobbit (Abre numa nova janela) will also hit Philly in April/ May 2025.

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

Scholarship & Fandom

Ardacraft: Ten years of building Middle-earth in Minecraft (Abre numa nova janela)[Youtube]

Diana Glyer has “From Enemies to Allies: The Unlikely Friendship of Lewis & Tolkien” (Abre numa nova janela) [Youtube]

Tom Hillman has The Repentance of Angels: a Curious Departure in Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela).

Miriam Ellis has Christopher Tolkien: Steward of a Star (Abre numa nova janela).

doubtfulsea has You’ve Got Mail (Abre numa nova janela).

David Bratman has a short review of the CJRT Centenary Conference (Abre numa nova janela).

A review of Nólë Hyarmenillo. An Anthology of Iberian Scholarship on Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela) [Fafnir]

A sculpture in support of reading - in the form of a bench - uses Tolkien’s Hobbit as one of its legs (Abre numa nova janela). [LA Times]

Addiction in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and the real world: Insights for physicians (Abre numa nova janela)[The DO]

Some of the papers presented with the CJRT Conference are already available with the Journal of Tolkien Research (Brown and Larsen) (Abre numa nova janela).

Merchandise & Franchise

A new board game: Duel for Middle-earth (Abre numa nova janela) [Repos Production; similar to 7 Wonders Duel - review (Abre numa nova janela) with BGG]

Also a “trick taking game” from Office Dog/ Asmodee (Abre numa nova janela).

The Lord of the Rings™ Roleplaying for 5e Now Available on D&D Beyond (Abre numa nova janela) [Free League]

Elevenses is delayed until January (Abre numa nova janela) [Portland Herald]

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

The Hobbit Folio Society (Abre numa nova janela) edition sold - 1,000 copies - in less than 10 mins [Instagram]

Have a look at this VFX breakdown (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) [Daily Mail; media bias (Abre numa nova janela)]

Tolkien Tourism has exploded in recent years; a recent example is to be found in Kelvin Edge, Whiting Bay, Isle Of Arran, North Ayrshire (Abre numa nova janela) [Scotland]

Audiobooks are booming, thanks to streaming subscriptions (Abre numa nova janela) [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 (Abre numa nova janela). [Lakota Times]

Excellent interviews on Star Trek with Nana Visitor (Abre numa nova janela) [trekmovie.com (Abre numa nova janela)]

Tom Emmanuel has: George MacDonald's Post-Christian Imagination (Abre numa nova janela).

Kirk and Spock get a final farewell (Abre numa nova janela) in “AI” rendition. [Youtube]

Research on the situation in the US but let's assume it holds true everywhere: Misinformation exploits outrage to spread (Abre numa nova janela)online [Science]

Only when the assisted dying bill passes will I stop feeling angry about Terry Pratchett’s final years (Abre numa nova janela) [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 (Abre numa nova janela) [Variety]

Of course the girls are reading horny fairy books. It’s cheaper than travel and more fun than therapy (Abre numa nova janela) [Guardian]

Fingolfin’s Findings LXVI: Moorcock never really read LotR (Abre numa nova janela) [The Tolkienist with Steady; paywall]

Ansible 449 (Abre numa nova janela) has been published.

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