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Christopher Tolkien can be called many things. He hasn't always done the best job stewarding his father's world, erring on the side of conservatism and disappro

Christopher Tolkien can be called many things. He hasn't always done the best job stewarding his father's world, erring on the side of conservatism and disapproving of anyone else's work based on his father's (rightly or wrongly). And he's kind of a jerk. But the Brian Herbert comparison just means you've never read anything Christopher Tolkien actually published (or you never attempted to read Brian Herbert's terrible terrible work). The only publication where Christopher Tolkien embellished or added to his father's writings was The Silmarillion, published under pressure from their publisher to get it out the door as soon as possible after his father's death and when he was younger (relatively) and less sure about his bargaining position to leave his father's work untouched. The added narrative was mostly connecting prose, meant to keep the story more coherent, and one full chapter replacing a version that was hopelessly out of date compared to the rest of the updates his father had added over decades. He's repeatedly expressed regret about changing The Silmarillion (including again in this article), and has even laid out exactly what he added to the story so you can mentally edit it out. Every single other book (that would be 13 of them, I believe) that he's published has been literally a written guide to trying to piece together a chronological view of all the undated scraps of rough drafts and notes his father left behind. The only thing he adds are clearly delimited notes about why he thinks some scrap came next and summaries about how some minor change made elsewhere suddenly made ripples of changes through future drafts of other sections, which he then proceeds to include verbatim. In other words, there's no way to get less respectful of his father's work, short of leaving it unpublished. Again, he can be called many things (he really does seem to be like a total jerk, and there's no way any adaptation would have pleased him, even a word-for-word dramatic reading), but comparing him to Brian Herbert and what he did with Dune is beyond the pale. Yes, Brian Herbert's work is just that bad :)

jspthrowaway2 14y ago
Allow me to clarify that the reminding of Herbert that Tolkien triggers for me is not based upon the quality of the work -- and I think you and I are going to agree on how bad Herbert's is -- it's only the territorial and overbearing defense of a creation not his own, often with ill effect. In both cases, I wonder if we'd be better off had forward progress in the canon died with the author.
- magicalist 14y ago
  This and your comment above ("Some argued that elder Tolkien would not have published his notes and thoughts in that form") are a fair point, though Tolkien really did want to publish The Silmarillion for decades, he was just unable to find the time to finish it. I actually have some family members who feel the same way as you, and they've chosen to not read The Silmarillion at all because they prefer the off-handed hints and references to earlier times that pop in LotR to remain like that, rather than knowing the full stories. Personally, I've always loved JRR Tolkien's notion that these were legends, so conflicting drafts and different versions of tales were part and partial of that history, just as most mythological characters have sometimes conflicting and inconsistent stories told about them. While it does sometimes seem slightly strange that Christopher Tolkien spent basically his entire adult life helping with and then documenting his father's work, it's really not that different from what most people choose as their life's work. And while it might reduce some of the artistic aura around his works, I love seeing his thought process and how he evolved his world and characters. I really don't see much difference between reading the assembled published drafts and visiting Oxford and getting special permission to view the drafts, short of the fact that they've now been curated by the person most likely to be able to put them in close to the order they were actually written in. If it helps, think of them as an academic work, purely for the Tolkien scholars that came later, and not intended to be read cover to cover by most people. It's only an accident that there was enough commercial interest in Lord of the Rings to put these books in regular bookstores. Brian Herbert sinned unforgivably when he claimed that his books were based on his father's notes and unfinished drafts, so were basically the stories he was going to tell, while constructing the plots around characters that had only appeared in Brian's other made up Dune stories. He and his cowriter should also just not be allowed to write. They have a terrible, terrible way with words.
  - gbhn 14y ago
    As someone who suffered through the Silmarillion, I can attest that it sucks. If you read it, you'll wish you hadn't. Partly as a result of this, and partly due to other idiocy through the years, I have some schadenfreude knowing the Tolkien estate is mad about the movies (as was inevitable). Couldn't happen to better people. The stories would be much better off in the public domain. I don't think it's a huge surprise the world works this way -- think of Star Wars. Do you really think those stories are better off in the hands of George Lucas or Disney? It turns out heirs are really poor custodians. We don't have royalty either, for much the same reasons.
bmuon 14y ago
I take it you haven't read The Children of Hurin. It really has no comparison to the rest of Tolkien's work. Compared to the other books and collections, it feels like a John Grisham novel.
- pdonis 14y ago
  I realize this is subjective, but I didn't get that feel at all from The Children of Hurin. I thought it did a pretty good job of capturing Tolkien's style (and, of course, significant passages were taken verbatim, or nearly so, from the shorter versions in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales).
msie 14y ago
In other words, there's no way to get less respectful of his father's work Odd, from what you just said, it seems he was respectful of his father's work. I just found that sentence hard to parse.
- Two9A 14y ago
  "More" respectful, perhaps, was what he was going for. I've found it can be very easy sometimes to get the meaning of a sentence entirely flipped between thinking it and writing it out.
VeejayRampay 14y ago
Ahem.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_Tales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_Tales Not exactly prime rib eh?

jspthrowaway2 14y ago

Allow me to clarify that the reminding of Herbert that Tolkien triggers for me is not based upon the quality of the work -- and I think you and I are going to agree on how bad Herbert's is -- it's only the territorial and overbearing defense of a creation not his own, often with ill effect. In both cases, I wonder if we'd be better off had forward progress in the canon died with the author.

magicalist 14y ago
This and your comment above ("Some argued that elder Tolkien would not have published his notes and thoughts in that form") are a fair point, though Tolkien really did want to publish The Silmarillion for decades, he was just unable to find the time to finish it. I actually have some family members who feel the same way as you, and they've chosen to not read The Silmarillion at all because they prefer the off-handed hints and references to earlier times that pop in LotR to remain like that, rather than knowing the full stories. Personally, I've always loved JRR Tolkien's notion that these were legends, so conflicting drafts and different versions of tales were part and partial of that history, just as most mythological characters have sometimes conflicting and inconsistent stories told about them. While it does sometimes seem slightly strange that Christopher Tolkien spent basically his entire adult life helping with and then documenting his father's work, it's really not that different from what most people choose as their life's work. And while it might reduce some of the artistic aura around his works, I love seeing his thought process and how he evolved his world and characters. I really don't see much difference between reading the assembled published drafts and visiting Oxford and getting special permission to view the drafts, short of the fact that they've now been curated by the person most likely to be able to put them in close to the order they were actually written in. If it helps, think of them as an academic work, purely for the Tolkien scholars that came later, and not intended to be read cover to cover by most people. It's only an accident that there was enough commercial interest in Lord of the Rings to put these books in regular bookstores. Brian Herbert sinned unforgivably when he claimed that his books were based on his father's notes and unfinished drafts, so were basically the stories he was going to tell, while constructing the plots around characters that had only appeared in Brian's other made up Dune stories. He and his cowriter should also just not be allowed to write. They have a terrible, terrible way with words.
- gbhn 14y ago
  As someone who suffered through the Silmarillion, I can attest that it sucks. If you read it, you'll wish you hadn't. Partly as a result of this, and partly due to other idiocy through the years, I have some schadenfreude knowing the Tolkien estate is mad about the movies (as was inevitable). Couldn't happen to better people. The stories would be much better off in the public domain. I don't think it's a huge surprise the world works this way -- think of Star Wars. Do you really think those stories are better off in the hands of George Lucas or Disney? It turns out heirs are really poor custodians. We don't have royalty either, for much the same reasons.

bmuon 14y ago

I take it you haven't read The Children of Hurin. It really has no comparison to the rest of Tolkien's work. Compared to the other books and collections, it feels like a John Grisham novel.

pdonis 14y ago
I realize this is subjective, but I didn't get that feel at all from The Children of Hurin. I thought it did a pretty good job of capturing Tolkien's style (and, of course, significant passages were taken verbatim, or nearly so, from the shorter versions in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales).

msie 14y ago

In other words, there's no way to get less respectful of his father's work Odd, from what you just said, it seems he was respectful of his father's work. I just found that sentence hard to parse.

Two9A 14y ago
"More" respectful, perhaps, was what he was going for. I've found it can be very easy sometimes to get the meaning of a sentence entirely flipped between thinking it and writing it out.

VeejayRampay 14y ago

Ahem.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_Tales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfinished_Tales Not exactly prime rib eh?