5 ms·

Sounds like another Silmarillion.

by everyone 4y ago

thriftwy 4y ago
More like another "The Children of Húrin".
- dmitriid 4y ago
  To be honest, it's a transparent cash grab by the Tolkien Estate first, and anything else a distant 1000th.
  - bowsamic 4y ago
    Do you not think that Tolkien fans want this?
    - alpaca128 4y ago
      Of course many want this. Which is why this kind of cash-grab works in the first place.
      - bowsamic 4y ago
        So the Lord of the Rings was also a cash grab based on the success of the Hobbit? That's a strange idea
        bombcar 4y ago
        What’s funny is the publishers asked for another Hobbit, and Tolkien even started writing one (the early chapters have a more hobbity tone with thinking foxes, etc) but then went in a completely different direction and depth.
    - 3np 4y ago
      Wouldn't be much of a cash-grab if nobody bought it, would it?
      - bowsamic 4y ago
        No but I don't think literally all products are "cash grabs". To me that implies a lack of care for the source material or anything besides money. As I asked the other commenter, do you also think that the Lord of the Rings was a cash grab riding off of the success of the Hobbit?
        recursiveturtle 4y ago
        I don't get the comparison. This effort (by others' comments: a rearranging and editing of existing materials, with new illustrations?) with LOTR (a wholly original, although related, trilogy) gives me false from the areEqual() call. There's a market. Fans will buy. Money is good. Some would say the repackaging is worth it. From an originality-perspective, others wouldn't -- still, more, considering its "timely" release. If you are in that second camp, this is the very definition of a cash-grab.
        bowsamic 4y ago
        > gives me false from the areEqual() call. I can't talk to you seriously if you engage with me in a childish way
    - dmitriid 4y ago
      This is not aimed at fans. This is pure and simple scraping the very bottom of the barrell to try and pretend that there's a story somewhere to try and re-capture audiences. "LotR and The Hobbit brought us billions, and fantasy genre is doing quite well, so why not strike iron while it's lukewarm"
  - scott_paul 4y ago
    Yeah, sounds like it's just a rehash / re-compilation of Christopher Tolkien's work. I'll pass.
oreally 4y ago
Would it be worth reading?
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  TIL silmarilion was edited by someone other that Tolkien himself. I found it an amazing read, arguably better than hobbit and the Frodo books.
  - sn41 4y ago
    Wasn't that Christopher Tolkien, JRR Tolkien's son? I think he was instrumental in even other works, including the maps in the original Lord of the Rings by his father.
  - nottorp 4y ago
    Silmarillion was sort of Tolkien's backstory/worldbuilding notes though. If there was any other unpublished material worth publishing, his son would have already done it. Hard pass on this new one.
    - nextaccountic 4y ago
      This is a misunderstanding. Firstly, Christopher published tons of material after the Silmarillion: the whole History of Middle Earth series, plus Unfinished Tales, Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, The fall of Gondolin, and some other books. But more importantly, JRR Tolkien intended to publish the Silmarillion as an actual book with a canon narrative, just like Lord of the Rings, but he died before doing so. The Silmarillion, as published, was the product of an earlier thinking of Christopher Tolkien that tried to reconcile different versions of unfinished materials, written in a large timespan (a lot of it even before Lord of the Rings), into a single coherent piece. That is, to do the job of his father. At some places, Christopher had to write stuff almost from scratch, to fill gaps that his father intended to write but never managed to. And he did all this in just 4 years, with the help of just one other dude. So Christopher wasn't just the editor of the Silmarillion, he was also its uncredited co-author. Christopher later thought that presenting The Silmarillion as the authoritative work containing a single narrative, instead of showcasing the multiple, contradictory narratives that Tolkien wrote over the years, was too reducing and misleading. If Tolkien had managed to publish the book, he would have blessed a single coherent narrative as canon, but he didn't. As such, Christopher decided that his next work, The History of Middle Earth series (HoME for short), would actually showcase all draft versions and not just the one that Christopher decided to be canon. In this sense, HoME works better as the worldbuilding notes than the Silmarillion (and also other books like Beren and Lúthien, that describe many drafts of the story rather than just the one in Silmarillion) Here's what Christopher has to say about this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion#Posthumous_publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion#Posthumous_pu... > Because J. R. R. Tolkien died leaving his legendarium unedited, Christopher Tolkien selected and edited materials to tell the story from start to end. In a few cases, this meant that he had to devise completely new material, within the tenor of his father's thought, to resolve gaps and inconsistencies in the narrative,[3] particularly Chapter 22, "Of the Ruin of Doriath".[4] > (...) > As explained in The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien drew upon numerous sources, relying on post-Lord of the Rings works where possible, ultimately reaching as far back as the 1917 Book of Lost Tales to fill in portions of the narrative that his father had planned to write but never addressed. In one later chapter of Quenta Silmarillion, "Of the Ruin of Doriath", untouched since the early 1930s, he had to construct a narrative practically from scratch.[T 21] Christopher Tolkien commented that, had he taken more time and had access to all the texts, he might have produced a substantially different work. In his foreword to The Book of Lost Tales 1 in 1983, he wrote that[T 22] > > by its posthumous publication nearly a quarter of a century later the natural order of presentation of the whole 'Matter of Middle-earth' was inverted; and it is certainly debatable whether it was wise to publish in 1977 a version of the primary 'legendarium' standing on its own and claiming, as it were, to be self-explanatory. The published work has no 'framework', no suggestion of what it is and how (within the imagined world) it came to be. This I now think to have been an error.[T 22] > If there was any other unpublished material worth publishing, his son would have already done it. I think this underestimates the huge job of publishing Tolkien's manuscripts. HoME was published from 1983 to 1996 and spans 12 volumes and some 5400 pages, and still doesn't contain everything!

Sounds like another Silmarillion.

thriftwy 4y ago

More like another "The Children of Húrin".

dmitriid 4y ago
To be honest, it's a transparent cash grab by the Tolkien Estate first, and anything else a distant 1000th.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  Do you not think that Tolkien fans want this?
  - alpaca128 4y ago
    Of course many want this. Which is why this kind of cash-grab works in the first place.
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      So the Lord of the Rings was also a cash grab based on the success of the Hobbit? That's a strange idea
      - bombcar 4y ago
        What’s funny is the publishers asked for another Hobbit, and Tolkien even started writing one (the early chapters have a more hobbity tone with thinking foxes, etc) but then went in a completely different direction and depth.
  - 3np 4y ago
    Wouldn't be much of a cash-grab if nobody bought it, would it?
    - bowsamic 4y ago
      No but I don't think literally all products are "cash grabs". To me that implies a lack of care for the source material or anything besides money. As I asked the other commenter, do you also think that the Lord of the Rings was a cash grab riding off of the success of the Hobbit?
      - recursiveturtle 4y ago
        I don't get the comparison. This effort (by others' comments: a rearranging and editing of existing materials, with new illustrations?) with LOTR (a wholly original, although related, trilogy) gives me false from the areEqual() call. There's a market. Fans will buy. Money is good. Some would say the repackaging is worth it. From an originality-perspective, others wouldn't -- still, more, considering its "timely" release. If you are in that second camp, this is the very definition of a cash-grab.
        bowsamic 4y ago
        > gives me false from the areEqual() call. I can't talk to you seriously if you engage with me in a childish way
  - dmitriid 4y ago
    This is not aimed at fans. This is pure and simple scraping the very bottom of the barrell to try and pretend that there's a story somewhere to try and re-capture audiences. "LotR and The Hobbit brought us billions, and fantasy genre is doing quite well, so why not strike iron while it's lukewarm"
- scott_paul 4y ago
  Yeah, sounds like it's just a rehash / re-compilation of Christopher Tolkien's work. I'll pass.

oreally 4y ago

Would it be worth reading?

rich_sasha 4y ago
TIL silmarilion was edited by someone other that Tolkien himself. I found it an amazing read, arguably better than hobbit and the Frodo books.
- sn41 4y ago
  Wasn't that Christopher Tolkien, JRR Tolkien's son? I think he was instrumental in even other works, including the maps in the original Lord of the Rings by his father.
- nottorp 4y ago
  Silmarillion was sort of Tolkien's backstory/worldbuilding notes though. If there was any other unpublished material worth publishing, his son would have already done it. Hard pass on this new one.
  - nextaccountic 4y ago
    This is a misunderstanding. Firstly, Christopher published tons of material after the Silmarillion: the whole History of Middle Earth series, plus Unfinished Tales, Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, The fall of Gondolin, and some other books. But more importantly, JRR Tolkien intended to publish the Silmarillion as an actual book with a canon narrative, just like Lord of the Rings, but he died before doing so. The Silmarillion, as published, was the product of an earlier thinking of Christopher Tolkien that tried to reconcile different versions of unfinished materials, written in a large timespan (a lot of it even before Lord of the Rings), into a single coherent piece. That is, to do the job of his father. At some places, Christopher had to write stuff almost from scratch, to fill gaps that his father intended to write but never managed to. And he did all this in just 4 years, with the help of just one other dude. So Christopher wasn't just the editor of the Silmarillion, he was also its uncredited co-author. Christopher later thought that presenting The Silmarillion as the authoritative work containing a single narrative, instead of showcasing the multiple, contradictory narratives that Tolkien wrote over the years, was too reducing and misleading. If Tolkien had managed to publish the book, he would have blessed a single coherent narrative as canon, but he didn't. As such, Christopher decided that his next work, The History of Middle Earth series (HoME for short), would actually showcase all draft versions and not just the one that Christopher decided to be canon. In this sense, HoME works better as the worldbuilding notes than the Silmarillion (and also other books like Beren and Lúthien, that describe many drafts of the story rather than just the one in Silmarillion) Here's what Christopher has to say about this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion#Posthumous_publication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silmarillion#Posthumous_pu... > Because J. R. R. Tolkien died leaving his legendarium unedited, Christopher Tolkien selected and edited materials to tell the story from start to end. In a few cases, this meant that he had to devise completely new material, within the tenor of his father's thought, to resolve gaps and inconsistencies in the narrative,[3] particularly Chapter 22, "Of the Ruin of Doriath".[4] > (...) > As explained in The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien drew upon numerous sources, relying on post-Lord of the Rings works where possible, ultimately reaching as far back as the 1917 Book of Lost Tales to fill in portions of the narrative that his father had planned to write but never addressed. In one later chapter of Quenta Silmarillion, "Of the Ruin of Doriath", untouched since the early 1930s, he had to construct a narrative practically from scratch.[T 21] Christopher Tolkien commented that, had he taken more time and had access to all the texts, he might have produced a substantially different work. In his foreword to The Book of Lost Tales 1 in 1983, he wrote that[T 22] > > by its posthumous publication nearly a quarter of a century later the natural order of presentation of the whole 'Matter of Middle-earth' was inverted; and it is certainly debatable whether it was wise to publish in 1977 a version of the primary 'legendarium' standing on its own and claiming, as it were, to be self-explanatory. The published work has no 'framework', no suggestion of what it is and how (within the imagined world) it came to be. This I now think to have been an error.[T 22] > If there was any other unpublished material worth publishing, his son would have already done it. I think this underestimates the huge job of publishing Tolkien's manuscripts. HoME was published from 1983 to 1996 and spans 12 volumes and some 5400 pages, and still doesn't contain everything!