No Longer Oneshot Row: The later years of J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1992)

I expect sword and planet will be much more popular. Maybe we'll see a decent John Carter movie, and one done sooner?

And please, please tell me that Barker's Tekumel books and the associated EPT game do better ITTL.
 
Honestly, Archibald, I don't know how Tolkien would react to someone suggesting he suffered from "shell shock" as it was called in his day, nor do I know that any modern psychologist would diagnose him with PTSD. But if anyone had an excuse to have PTSD he did! He was I believe one of perhaps three out of several dozen of his Oxford college year who volunteered for the Great War who survived it, and he was posted right in the worst of it.

So, without labeling himself a victim of PTSD or shell shock, Tolkien himself freely acknowledged that the Silmarillion was born in Flanders fields. Some little samples of his elven/fairy poetry from before the war, dripping with exactly the sort of sentimental sweetness and trivial prettiness he despised in later life, strongly imply that his mythic imagination was subjected to a trial by terrible fire, and objectively speaking there is no other way to see his experience.

Whether this origin in fire and pain has anything to do with the procrastination in bringing the deep material to press, so that OTL only the material mentioned in LOTR and smaller writings was published by him and it all mostly had to wait for his son to work it over, is an interesting question. Did he procrastinate (on writing a final and definitive version he judged fit to offer for publication) as penance as it were for having the luck to survive when so many of his cadre were struck down? That might be a Catholic conscience at work, perhaps!

Then again it could be his nature and that of the material, or how he perceived it. Generally when reading his stuff one gets the impression on some level JRRT was convinced this stuff was true. I would guess it was always a bit of dilemma for him; on some level he knows it is all fiction that he himself made up---but at the same time some other part of him believed he was revealing deep truths. This being the case, he naturally would struggle to get it right, to make the first published version also the definitive last word.

And yet when one reads the historic evolution of the major texts in the Middle Earth setting he did publish in his lifetime OTL, one sees two Hobbit stories that started out pretty light and free, with lots of contemporary notes (at least, contemporary in the sense of assuming all kinds of Modern age stuff though not so much redolent of the 20th century--definitely 18th century at the earliest) and pretty light, fun stuff assuming deeper and darker and ancient tones. The Hobbit of course was based on bedtime stories he told his children, and I think the first edition (which I never read, not as standalone text cover to cover anyway) already contains thousands of allusions to the deep time First and Second Age material he'd already spent a lot of time writing. But then he revised it heavily to harmonize it with LOTR, and in so doing he deepened it considerably, expunging all sorts of (relative) modernisms in favor of terms and allusions to the deep material, and of course rewriting the whole encounter with Gollum, and representing the previous published version as a fabrication of Bilbo's. I only can "track" these things with the help of footnotes to the annotated and illustrated edition published after his death OTL. Again though when one reads the drafts Christopher published later, in the 1990s, of the evolution of LOTR, one can see an even more drastic process whereby a very light-headed tale of several hobbits on another adventure turns into the epic we are familiar with. Then part of his response to the Ace Books appropriation of his material was to enhance the Ballentine authorized American edition with numerous appendices to Return of the King, which already go a long way toward indicating at least in outline form the deep canon he'd been working on all his life. The iterative process produces the impression a vast, definitive lore reaching back to antiquity--but would a version of the Silmarillion, published as he would have desired to stand on its own, back in say 1930 have given that impression? Or was all the painstaking rewriting itself vital to produce this impression?

But anyway, yes indeed, the core of this canon of his, the project of an English mythology and the fusion of pagan and Christian elements in his story of creation and downfall, all came out of his experience in the trenches, and he openly said so.
 
Going back to potential alternatives, could we not see a revival of the Unknown Worlds style of fantasy? Think the Harold Shea stories (by de Camp and Pratt), Eric Frank Russell's Sinister Barrier, L. Sprague de Camp's Divide and Rule, The Undesired Princess, and Solomon's Stone, Heinlein's Magic, Inc. and The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife, or works like that such as Fletcher Pratt's The Blue Star.

On the other hand, we might see another writer often featured in Unknown Worlds lay aside his other responsibilities and churn out a fantasy epos of ten-volumes each of 600 pages . . .
 
A Tolkien that kills the fantasy genre rather than popularize it? I don't buy it.

Mostly because the genre already existed for decades, ranging from Conan the Barbarian to Thomas Covenant, and though you might trim out some of the more Tolkienesque works like Sharrona, you will never put the genre genie back in the bottle.

Might be fun to see the genre that rises from this - maybe much more sword and scorcery stuff rather than Tolkien epics.
 
To clarify: TTL Tolkien doesn't kill the fantasy genre. He kills a particular type of fantasy (the post-1977 imitations). Fantasy exists, it just looks different.
 
I've been busy and unable to reply properly to the thread's premises and surmises.

I should be brief because I think I have to disagree with most everything; to say a lot would be to elaborate negativity.

Let me say this then--I don't think there is any way Tolkien would settle on the idea that Orcs are warped Men. The most important reason has to do with the eternal fate of human beings in Catholic teachings; Tolkien was a very devout Catholic, and highly educated in his own religion as well as on some other subjects. He would never intend anything in his expanded cosmos to contradict core Catholic doctrines. And Catholic orthodoxy is very clear on the nature and destiny of human beings. In this doctrine, we each have an immortal soul, destined for eternal life, and since the Fall of Man, one option is eternal damnation; the other is salvation at the hands of Christ the Redeemer.

There are a lot of potentially problematic aspects to this doctrine, which can cause someone raised to be a devout Catholic themselves, like me, to reject the whole thing and Christianity with it. But in principle, any human being, even those born and raised in highly adverse circumstances, can find salvation.

Therefore if Orcs are in fact twisted humans, their fate is deeply horrifying, for there is no evidence in Tolkien canon anywhere I can think of of even a single Orc seeking, let alone finding, redemption. There are no penitent Orcs, no instances of mercy or even a mere sense of justice being shown by any of them. Therefore the Orcs, if they were truly human at core, are a breed of humans who are damned from conception and exist only to suffer in eternity.

Because Roman Catholic doctrine has nothing definite to say about the status of elves, on the assumption they simply do not exist (and any medieval pronouncements are rendered moot by the claim that "real" elves, in Tolkien's view of them, are quite different than what medieval or ancient churchmen may have believed), Tolkien is much freer to have notions of how a just and gracious God will handle the warped, ruined Elven souls that come before His judgement. Perhaps, having been warped into mere misery, God will simply extinguish them; perhaps some form of opportunity for individual redemption will be offered them sometime in eternity. The question of the ultimate destiny of these evil and repulsive beings is at any rate obscured and mooted by the presumption they derive from Elves instead.

I have other reasons to think this too;

a) In the material world of Arda, Elves are tougher and stronger than Men--therefore the hideous tortures and foul manipulations of their bodies that Melkor would perform on them to batter them into Orcs would be less certain to simply kill them than the same treatment to Men;

b) Elves are of the stuff of Arda, woven into its fate, lacking the mysterious turn to Something Beyond that distinguishes Men; this ought to be helpful;

c) Elves Rule, Men Drool! Which is to say that, while we readers, humans in a Christian age reading a Christian human author, understand that there is a lot about Men that is not apparent to the powers of ancient Arda, in the perspective of the pre-Christian age, Men appear to all observers, themselves included, as a distant second best. Weaker, less wise, mortal, subject to diseases; in every way the Elder Children of Iluvatar appear superior, and mere humans seem to be a cheap knock-off. Compared to the muddy dun of mortal men "doomed to die," Elves are distinctly shiny objects! Why then should Melkor mess around with these breakable apparent Children of a Lesser God, when he can pervert and suborn what is clearly Eru Iluvatar's grandest creation, its natural apex--the Elves?

Now in fact, to Tolkien the Catholic and his post-Resurrection era human readers, the humans turn out to have a lot of claims to consideration, but these will not be known in advance, not even it seems to the faithful, mighty, ancient and wise Valar. Certainly Melkor has no way of anticipating the ultimate role Men will have to play in this cosmos.

d) Why should Melkor invest effort in the long term project of creating a breed of Orcish minions from Men, when Men appear to be very morally as well as physically weak and corruptible just as they are? Indeed it might seem to Melkor that he didn't have to create Orcs at all, for Men seem willing and able to fill the role! Humans as they are are corruptible in ways Elves are not. To get willing service out of Elves Melkor must torture them to the breaking point, but Men are willing to sign on to his campaigns of treachery, murder, and rapine by the horde. Surely Melkor would contemplate "perfecting" the human species to winnow out pity, compassion, mercy, or a sense of justice, but given how willing so many of them are to set these aside for glory and loot and power over others, it can't be a priority.

e) I'd put this point higher, except that it is a matter of canon detail rather than fundamental categories--but in the OTL published accounts anyway, Men come second in time, and by a very long interval too. Melkor has literally ages of time to practice his dark arts upon captured Elves, before the first Men appear. Of course Tolkien could revise that and have both peoples of the Children of Iluvatar be created at the same time; I really don't think he would since the whole concept of "elder" and "younger" people seems pretty central to his whole concept.
 
I've been busy and unable to reply properly to the thread's premises and surmises.

I should be brief because I think I have to disagree with most everything; to say a lot would be to elaborate negativity.

Let me say this then--I don't think there is any way Tolkien would settle on the idea that Orcs are warped Men. The most important reason has to do with the eternal fate of human beings in Catholic teachings; Tolkien was a very devout Catholic, and highly educated in his own religion as well as on some other subjects. He would never intend anything in his expanded cosmos to contradict core Catholic doctrines. And Catholic orthodoxy is very clear on the nature and destiny of human beings. In this doctrine, we each have an immortal soul, destined for eternal life, and since the Fall of Man, one option is eternal damnation; the other is salvation at the hands of Christ the Redeemer.

Tolkien in OTL never came to a definitive conclusion on the origin of the Orcs, but as of the 1960s, he did drop the Corrupted Elves idea in favour of the Corrupted Men version (see Morgoth's Ring: Myths Transformed). He wrote the following comment on the "Man" theory:

"This view of the origin of the Orcs thus meets with difficulties of chronology. But though Men may take comfort in this, the theory remains nonetheless the most probable. It accords with all that is known of Melkor, and of the nature and behaviour of Orcs – and of Men. Melkor was impotent to produce any living thing, but skilled in the corruption of things that did not proceed from himself, if he could dominate them."

In OTL he never rewrote the chronology to make this viable. In TTL, he does.

As for Catholic orthodoxy, Tolkien aimed to make his secondary world resonate with his faith, but recognised that the result was not being 100% compatible - after all, it was fiction.
 
Just found this timeline and I have to say, I found it very charming. :)

Still, I think we're probably better off with the OTL Silmarillion and fantasy being a wider and more popularly enduring genre. Though, who knows, maybe fantasy literature in this timeline is forced to be more creative, given the ATL backlash towards Tolkien imitators ?
 
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