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From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:milne@uci-icse
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: J.R.R. Tolkein
Message-ID: <1018@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 20-Mar-85 00:59:04 EST
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Posted: Wed Mar 20 00:59:04 1985
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From: Alastair Milne <milne@uci-icse>


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

   Hello.  I read your article in SF-Lovers Digest about how J.R.R. was
   the best English language SF author in the 20th century.  In the article
   you stated that he was fairly prolific.  I have only been able to find
   The Lord of the Rings, Hobbit, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Of Tree and Leaf.

   Do you know of any other essays, short stories, novels that he had written?

                           Adthanksvance  (thanks in advance)
                                     Joe

   HERMAN%UMDB@WISCVM.ARPA

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

    Joe,

    I am sending this both to you and the net, both because I think other 
people might be interested, and because I have grave doubts about whether
our mailer will succeed in getting this to your address.

    Please allow me to clarify a little:  I did not call Tolkien the best 
SF author (in any language or century), both because his fictional works 
are clearly fantasy, not science-fiction or anywhere near it, and because 
I was not attempting to classify him as an author so much as to defend the
name of The Lord of the Rings (and, of course, because stating such a thing
as if it were a demonstrable fact, rather than an impression, however
powerful, would be ridiculous).

    However, never in all my readings have I encountered anything that even 
approaches The Lord of the Rings in stature, even the things I've read and 
re-read with undiminished pleasure.  Its impression on me is so strong that 
I'll risk sticking my neck out and calling it "the best" with no more 
qualification than a "probably".  Which, as a subsequent message rightly 
pointed out, is most unwise practice.

    Some fictional works other than the ones you listed:
    - The Silmarillion  (posthumous; completed and edited by Tolkien's son.
			 The histories, broadly told in the fashion of heroic
			 ballad, of the First and Second Ages of Middle Earth.
			 Deals with many things that "The Hobbit" and "The Lord
			 of the Rings" refer to from the Elder Days)
    - Unfinished Tails
	  (Further collected notes, on both the Elder Days and the War of the
	   Rings.  Highly informative; excellent reading)
    - The Road Goes Ever On and On
	  (poetry from Middle Earth, including Tolkien's analyses of some
	   Elvish poetry.  I know this from references in other works; I have
	   yet to read it myself.)
    - The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
	  (collected poems from the Shire, with a certain emphasis on those of
	   Bilbo and Frodo.  Bilbo's epic poem "Errantry" is here, as well as
	   Frodo's "The Sea Bell", and the rather unsettling "the Mewlips")
    - Leaf by Niggle
	  (a curious story about a shy and introverted artist obsessed with
	   the painting of a tree.  Unrelated to Middle Earth).

    His nonfiction includes at least one essay "On Writing Faerie Stories" (or
something similar: I forget the exact title) on the subject of writing fantasy;
since he held a chair in English at Oxford University, his duties required a 
great deal of writing; and he did a considerable amount of translation from 
Middle English (which is amazingly distant from Modern English). 

    There are also criticisms and analyses of Tolkien available.  "Behind the
Lord of the Rings," by Lin Carter, is the primary one that comes to my
mind.  And for cross-referenced glossaries of the myriad names and places of
Middle Earth, see Robert Forster's "Guide to Middle Earth", and "A Tolkien
Companion", whose author I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten.

    One other point: when I said "prolific", I did not mean in the sense of
being a veritable book factory.  I was thinking rather of Tolkien's ability to 
pursue his explorations of the intertwined histories of Middle Earth, and its 
languages and cultures, in seemingly unending depth and detail along so many 
different paths, while never losing the beauty of the epic.  Those explorations
have produced the works I listed above: not many, by some standards, but great 
by almost any.  This unceasing power in his writing is what I meant by
"prolific".

    

					Alastair Milne