Karen Haber - Meditations on Middle Earth

MEDITATIONS ON MIDDLE-EARTH

MEDITATIONS ON MIDDLE-EARTH . Copyright 2001 by Byron Preiss Visual
Publications, Inc. All right reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles or reviews. For information address
St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010

Editor: Karen Haber

Project Editor: Howard Zimmerman

Designed by Gilda Hannah

Interior Illustrations copyright John Howe 2001

Jacket illustration by John Howe

copyright 2001 John Howe/Sophisticated Games, Ltd.

The Beat Goes On copyright 2001 Karen Haber.

Introduction copyright 2001 George R. R. Martin.

Our Grandfather: Meditations on J. R. R. Tolkien copyright 2001 Raymond E. Feist.

Awakening the Elves copyright 2001 Paul Anderson.

A Changeling Returns copyright 2001 Michael Swanwick.

If You Give a Girl a Hobbit copyright 2001 Esther M. Friesner.

The Ring and I copyright 2001 Harry Turtledove.

Cult Classic copyright 2001 Terry Pratchett.

A Bar and a Quest copyright 2001 Robin Hobb.

Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings copyright 2001 Ursula K. Le Guin.

The Longest Day copyright 2001 Diane Duane.

Tolkien After All These Years copyright 2001 Douglas A. Anderson.

How Tolkien Means copyright 2001 Orson Scott Card.

The Tale Goes Ever On copyright 2001 Charles de Lint.

The Mythmaker copyright 2001 Lisa Goldstein.

The Radical Distinction... A Conversation with Tim and Greg Hildebrandt copyright 2001 Glenn Hurdling.

On Tolkien and Fairy-Stories copyright 2001 Terri Windling.

A B YRON P REISS B OOK

www.stmartins.com

ISBN 0-312-27536-6 ISBN 978-0-312-27536-5

First Edition: November 2001

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of Paul Anderson

CONTENTS

PREFACE:
THE BEAT GOES
ON

N ow it can be told: I lived with an elf.

Actually, she was my college roommate. She had, in fact, a perfectly good birth name, but she chose to call herself Arwen Evenstar, and put that name in the tin frame on the door to our room. Her boyfriend was, of course, Strider. Despite his moniker he preferred drag racing to walking.

I was not as nice to heror to himas I could have been. Maybe I had elf issues. But I really didnt want to live with an elf, especially one who typed fan letters to Jerry Garcia at 2 A.M. on my typewriter.

Not that I had anything against J. R. R. Tolkien, you understand. Thirty-odd years ago I had, of course, read The Lord of the Rings. It was practically a rite of passage.

Tolkien surprised me. I hadnt expected to like his books. Hobbits? Wizards? Nevertheless, the power of his storytelling reached out, grabbed me, and would not let go. This was a bit dismaying. Here I was, a sophisticated high school sophomore, reading the same books as those contemptible little nerdy freshmen.

And yes, I felt the magic. Hated Sauron. Was disgusted by Gollum. I have to admit that I preferred Bilbo to Frodo; and Sam got on my nerves with all that unwavering loyalty. I had an even harder time with the heroic elves (see elf issues, above). I was probably just a wee bit too old and hormonally activated to fall completely under the hobbits spell. But I enjoyed the books.

I might have enjoyed them even more had I made the interesting connection between hottie elfs and Mr. Spock as Esther Friesner had (see her essay for the details). Speaking of odd crossings in the field, does anyone else remember watching Leonard Nimoyon a black-and-white TV, of coursecrooning in a baritone only slightly deeper and more supple than Chers, the lyrics to the song Bilbo Baggins? I remember a fragment about the bravest little hobbit of them all... It was a silly tune, and I was embarrassed to witness a sacred science-fiction icon making this unexpected transgenre move. But there, for anyone with the ears, pointed or not, to hear, was the steady percussive influence of J. R. R. Tolkien infiltrating yet another aspect of pop culture.

Remember the Harvard Lampoon parody Bored of the Rings? This good natured on-target parody made riotous fun of Tolkiens heroes and villains. If I may lovingly quote two favorite giddy lines:

Aiyee! shouted Legolam. A Thesaurus!

Maim! roared the monster. Mutilate, mangle, crush. See HARM.

You must admit that the base material is powerful when even the parody continues to echo down the years.

Then I graduated from high school, was done with hobbits, and even Star Trek . Imagine, then, my surpriseand chagrinwhen I met Arwen. She was pretty, rather ethereal, with a lilting voice, and long pale hair. Come to think of it, she did make a convincing elf. (I never checked her ears, nor Striders.)

A mere twenty-five years later, latent karma has given me a chance to make amends for my cruelty to elves and their significant others by helming this collection of meditations about that seminal elfmeister, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the entity that is Lord of the Rings.

Aside from providing me with a college roommate dilemma, Tolkien set down the literary backbeat to my experimental reading years, circa 19681978. If you liked science fiction and fantasyand I didThe Lord of the Rings was unavoidable.

With the sudden availability of paperback editions of The Lord of the Rings in the late 1960s, the demand for fantasy fiction reached tidal-wave proportions. The books had been kept out of paperback by the hardcover publisher, but once that ban was lifted, thousands of readers rushed into the bookstores, bought the trilogy, and cried for more. The hunger for fantasy fiction, once aroused, becameand remainsinsatiable.

Publishers were not slow to notice. They, too, rushed: to find writers who couldand didproduce imitative trilogies. Soon the bookstores were flooded with huge hobbit-like tales, which also sold in amazing quantities. The rising tide began to float other, older, boats, among them Robert E. Howards Conan novels, once a cult phenomenon, now a new literary phenomenon. To its everlasting credit, Ballantine Books, Tolkiens paperback publisher, brought out its Adult Fantasy series, edited by Lin Carter, which made the classic fantasy masterpieces by James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, and Mervyn Peake available to modern readers.

An entire subsidiary Tolkien industry sprouted like toadstools on a barrow log: calendars, tarot cards, games, postcard books, posters, audio cassettes, maps, movies. Soon it seemed that everybody wanted to sit in and jam with the master.