September 04, 2023

54. The Pleasures of the Robot Dancehall.

55 minutes

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: The Lost Road. In

1937, Tolkien agreed to C.S. Lewis’s suggestion to try to write the kind of

stories they enjoyed but didn’t see good examples of to their liking. Lewis’s

efforts turned into what has been termed the Space Trilogy, starting with Out

Of The Silent Planet. Tolkien’s goal was a time travel story called The Lost

Road, but outside of a few chapters and some potential outlines, it never got

any further, with the success of The Hobbit and his resulting focus of

attention being The Lord Of The Rings stopping any further development. It was

eventually published in the Christopher Tolkien-edited series The History of

Middle-earth, and was revealed to be a fascinating if very incomplete early

conception of what Númenor was, including some of its key protagonists and

antagonists at the time of its fall. How much does the story’s self-evident

autobiographical angle play into how we should regard the surviving chapters,

and what do his choices about how to refocus or rewrite the story of his own

life suggest in turn? What import do the specifically metaphysical elements of

the story have for both Tolkien and his own conception of not only the

legendarium but how he regarded language? Building off our previous discussion

of the specifically Númenorean chapter in our episode on The Fall of Númenor,

what is it about that sequence that is so unusual for Tolkien’s general

writing on Middle-earth, and how does it fit within the larger context of this

story as it is told, or as much of it as we have? And finally, have you all

pre-ordered Jared’s book yet? Really, you should.

Show Notes.

Jared’s doodle. I mean the whole

skull thing is just plain rude.

Jared’s novel The West Passage is up for

preorders! And

you can see the cover art there as well, done by Kuri Huang – check out her

work!

Elliott Bay Book Company is indeed a great

Seattle bookstore, check it out if you’re ever there.

Deadline’s report about the rescheduled release of The War Of

The Rohirrim, along with TheOneRing.net’s further

report also noting the potential production crunch

that had been previously looming. (As a compare and contrast, here’s Vulture’s

piece on the production nightmare of Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse and Screenrant’s summary of a paywalled Insider

article on the much more humane Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant

Mayhem production.)

A summary of Embracer’s money sillies. Well well well.

The musical revival does seem to have landed rather well! Here’s a fun little

promo video, an engaging video

review from an attendee, and TheOneRing.net’s

own report. (And of

course, once more, here’s our own episode on the original

production.)

The Lost Road! It’s a curio,

that’s for sure, but an interesting one even in all its flaws and lacunae.

C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy.

It’s interesting…if a little uneven, let’s say.

As noted at various points, the Númenor chapter was already discussed on its

own a bit in our episode on The Fall of

Númenor.

Want to know something about the Lombardic language? Well there’s always

Wikipedia…

As for Middle-earth metaphysics, our episodes on The Nature of Middle-earth and the

Valar are there for you!

The Worm Ouroboros with

the framing device with Lessingham. A common trope!

Sycld Shefing! He got around.

Corn? Maize? Here’s a little more about

it.

So the actual Alboin was…not pleasant.

And you better believe the skull

thing was known by

later artists.

Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and

Salt, if you’d like

to know more. (And then there’s Harry

Turtledove and then etc.)

Our “A Secret Vice” episode,

considering Tolkien’s compulsion to create languages.

Support By-The-Bywater and our network,

Megaphonic. Thank you if you do.

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

4.8

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