The Sillymarillion Episode 0 - J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, an Introduction

Summary

Podcast Summary: Overdue – The Silmarillion Episode 0 - J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, an Introduction

Podcast Information:

• Title: Overdue
• Host/Author: Headgum (Andrew and Craig)
• Description: Overdue explores the books you've been meaning to read. Each week, Andrew and Craig delve into a new title from their backlog, ranging from classic literature to obscure plays and whimsical children's books, one overdue book at a time.
• Episode: The Sillymarillion Episode 0 - J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, an Introduction
• Release Date: July 11, 2025

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Introduction to The Silmarillion

Opening Remarks: Andrew and Craig embark on their inaugural journey into J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. They express anticipation and curiosity about tackling such a monumental work, especially considering its complexity compared to their previous discussions on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Notable Quote:

• Andrew [03:08]: "Welcome to the Sillymerillion Preciouses. It's a podcast by the Ones from Overdue, a book podcast about the books you've been meaning to read."

Background on J.R.R. Tolkien and The Silmarillion

Tolkien's Life and Influences: The hosts provide a comprehensive overview of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life, highlighting his academic background in Old and Middle English, his participation in World War I, and his membership in the Inklings—a literary group that included C.S. Lewis. They emphasize Tolkien's dedication to creating an extensive mythological universe, which culminated in The Silmarillion.

Development of The Silmarillion: Andrew explains that The Silmarillion was Tolkien’s attempt to craft a detailed mythos that went beyond the narratives of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The book encompasses the creation of Tolkien’s universe, the history of its peoples, and the intricate interplay of its languages and legends.

Notable Quotes:

• Craig [12:21]: "He's the closest you can get."
• Andrew [22:04]: "That way it kind of reminds me of like, I feel like a lot of people who write fantasy fiction kind of start with the world building."

Publication History and Christopher Tolkien’s Role

Initial Reception and Challenges: Upon Tolkien’s death in 1973, The Silmarillion faced significant challenges in publication. Publishers were reluctant, citing the work's complexity and deviation from the beloved narratives of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. It wasn’t until Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien’s son and literary executor, took charge that the book saw publication in 1977.

Christopher Tolkien’s Contributions: Christopher played a pivotal role in editing and compiling his father's extensive notes and drafts. The hosts discuss the meticulous effort required to transform decades of incomplete manuscripts into a coherent narrative. They also highlight Christopher’s collaboration with Guy Gavriel Kay, who helped navigate the complexities of Tolkien’s legendarium.

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew [16:47]: "He goes, famously, Craig, the book was unfinished before he died."
• Craig [43:26]: "It's very just like spilling out of him wherever he can put it."

Exploring The Silmarillion’s Content

Structure and Themes: The Silmarillion is divided into several sections, including Ainulindalë, Valaquenta, and Quenta Silmarillion. Andrew and Craig outline their plan to cover these sections over a series of episodes, beginning with chapters one to three in Episode 1.

World-Building and Mythology: The hosts delve into the depth of Tolkien's world-building, comparing it to ancient mythologies and emphasizing its foundational role in modern fantasy. They draw parallels between Tolkien’s work and other epic traditions, noting the deliberate creation of languages and histories that lend authenticity and richness to the narrative.

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew [35:10]: "Tolkien was always kind of operating, even when he was writing these very early stories, with some kind of frame narrative in mind."
• Craig [36:41]: "It's meant to be something that's being relayed by an entirely different person."

Reception and Critique

Critical Reviews: The hosts discuss the mixed reception of The Silmarillion, referencing John Gardner’s New York Times review. Gardner appreciated the mythological depth but critiqued the work for its lack of the engaging characterization and adventurous spirit found in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Gardner’s Analysis: Gardner highlighted how The Silmarillion differs in tone and style, often being more serious and less accessible to general readers. He noted that while the language and structure resonate with medieval literature, they may feel heavy and less relatable compared to Tolkien’s other works.

Notable Quotes:

• Craig [49:24]: "He says that none smoke a pipe and none wear a vest."
• Andrew [51:16]: "A lot of its high seriousness. None smoke a pipe and none wear a vest."

Christopher Tolkien’s Editorial Decisions

Editing Approach: Andrew and Craig explore how Christopher Tolkien approached the task of editing his father's extensive notes. They discuss his attempts to create a coherent narrative by streamlining the multiple drafts and minimizing the frame narrators, a decision he later reflected upon as potentially flawed.

Impact on the Narrative: The hosts suggest that Christopher’s editorial choices aimed to preserve the mythological essence of The Silmarillion, despite the inherent complexities and inconsistencies in the source material. They debate whether these decisions ultimately enhanced or detracted from the original vision.

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew [38:25]: "Some of what Chris Tolkien's doing is just like, taking all this stuff and identifying like, okay, these three names are actually about, like, the same person."
• Andrew [39:26]: "But some readers and commentators have pointed out over the years that by taking and arranging and adding to and editing his father's work... Chris Tolkien actually is helping do what J.R.R. Tolkien wanted to do in the first place."

Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes

Final Thoughts: Andrew and Craig conclude the episode by reflecting on the significance of The Silmarillion within Tolkien’s body of work. They express excitement for their upcoming deep dive into the book and acknowledge its challenging yet rewarding nature for dedicated fans.

Looking Ahead: The hosts preview their plan to explore The Silmarillion in detail across subsequent episodes, starting with the foundational chapters and gradually working through the intricate lore and narratives.

Notable Quotes:

• Andrew [47:37]: "So it's like all. Just like. It is all like stories on top of stories."
• Craig [55:00]: "But I'm not like a. You know, I wouldn't say I'm steeped in them. I don't know them back and forth."

Key Takeaways

1. Depth and Complexity: The Silmarillion offers a profound and intricate expansion of Tolkien's universe, delving into the creation myths and historical narratives that underpin The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
2. Editorial Challenges: Christopher Tolkien played a crucial role in bringing The Silmarillion to publication, navigating the complexities of his father's extensive and often unfinished manuscripts.
3. Mixed Reception: While lauded for its depth and mythological richness, The Silmarillion has faced criticism for its dense language and lack of engaging character development compared to Tolkien’s more popular works.
4. Legacy and Influence: The Silmarillion remains a cornerstone of modern fantasy, influencing countless authors and expanding the possibilities of world-building in literature.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Andrew [06:16]: "Silmarillion is not bad."
• Craig [12:21]: "He's the closest you can get."
• Andrew [35:10]: "Tolkien was always kind of operating, even when he was writing these very early stories, with some kind of frame narrative in mind."
• Craig [43:26]: "It's very just like spilling out of him wherever he can put it."
• Andrew [47:37]: "So it's like all. Just like. It is all like stories on top of stories."

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Next Episode Preview: In Episode 1, Andrew and Craig will delve into The Silmarillion’s initial chapters, exploring Ainulindalë, Valaquenta, and the beginning of Quenta Silmarillion. Listeners can subscribe via Patreon to access exclusive content and follow the series as it unfolds.

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Connect with Overdue:

• Website: overduepodcast.com
• Patreon: patreon.com/overdupod
• Email: [e-mail]
• Social Media: Follow us on social platforms for updates and share your favorite Tolkien moments!

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Thank you for listening to Overdue. Speak, friend, and goodbye.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a headgum podcast.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

You pull this rug out from under me every time.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

Mm.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

I like that. So this year, skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get your summer savings and shop premium wireless [e-mail] overdue. That's mintmobile.com overdue. There's an upfront payment of $45 for three months of a five gigabyte plan required. It's equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for first three months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. Please see Mint Mobile for details.

[Andrew]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any.

[Craig]

Well told tale, they will not shy.

[Andrew]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now.

[Andrew]

Welcome to the Silly Meridian Preciouses. It's a podcast by the Ones from Overdue, a book podcast about the fox you've been meaning to read.

[Craig]

My name is Greg.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. Is this your Gollum voice?

[Craig]

Well, Gollum, a weird, like, Looney Tunes.

[Andrew]

The patience. You just sound like that weird, like, Looney Tunes guy who's like, oh, no, you're right.

[Craig]

Oh, no, that guy.

[Andrew]

You know, I don't know anything about that guy or what his name is, but that's kind of what I mean.

[Craig]

I need us. I need a legendarium about the Looney Tunes Legendarium. Welcome.

[Andrew]

To be considered Space Jam 2 to be like a canonical work.

[Craig]

It's not. No. Welcome to our newest long reads series, Preciouses. This is. Is our miniseries on The Silmarillion by J.R.R. tolkien, question mark, question mark, bracket, other people, close bracket, parentheses, question mark, asterisk.

[Andrew]

His name is the one that's on the front.

[Craig]

Yes, that's true. That's true. And we like to dive deep into bigger works, sometimes works that might be fun to move through at a slightly slower pace. And we're here to do this together and have a good time, you know? Yeah, we're gonna go there and back again is the plan.

[Andrew]

We're there, back again. This is, I think of Wicked, like, in the context of the show because it's the one that we've read most recently. But this is one of those classic creative works where you, like, discover an artist that's not, like, new, but they're new to you.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

You're like, I really love this thing that I just found from this artist. What else did they do? They can give me another hit of this thing that I really liked. And then you run into. You run into something like the book Wicked or any Weezer album other than the first one. Or.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Like, I don't know if you have. If you examples come to mind that you can. That you can think of, but of things that are really close in a lot of ways, but, like, fundamentally different in a way that's like, off putting and repelling to new readers. Because we have a lot of people in the discord who are like, I can't wait to get further than page two in this book. Sure. Further than I've ever been before.

[Craig]

Sure. I don't. I'm struggling to think of a similar work of fiction or art. I do sometimes feel that way about, hey, I really like this sport. I think you should watch this sport with me. But only a bad team is playing today. And, like, you're not gonna actually appreciate the things about the sport. I'm gonna spend the whole time explaining how it could be better. Like, that's not a good sport experience.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And I feel like Star Trek is that way in that a lot of it is bad and that people who really like Star Trek also like bad Star Trek. You would not try to show somebody bad Star Trek and be like, look at this thing that I love. Don't you also love it?

[Craig]

Don't you love this trash? This beautiful trash?

[Andrew]

Silmarillion is not bad.

[Craig]

No, no, no. We're not saying that. That's a fair point.

[Andrew]

But what I am saying is I think there are a lot of people who read John Ronald Reuel, Tolkien's most known works. He's like the cornerstone of modern fantasy and also most of modern tabletop gaming, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. And they read those, they put them down, they were like, what else is out there? They found the Silmarillion because it's like the next biggest thing. And they're like, what is this?

[Craig]

What is it?

[Andrew]

What is this?

[Craig]

And the joke is on them is that he'd been trying to do this all along.

[Andrew]

Yep. This is actually the thing that the whole universe was focused on.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And Lord of the Rings is just the financially, commercially, like, palatable version of it that he could sort of backdoor into the world after the Hobbit succeeded.

[Craig]

So if you want to listen to us talk about Lord of the Rings a little bit more, we're obviously going to be doing it throughout this series. We have covered those books in like.

[Andrew]

The one hundred thirties.

[Craig]

Yeah. Ten. Almost ten years ago.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Episode 134, 135 and 136. We did the trilogy. We did the Hobbit a few episodes earlier than that at 131. You go back and listen to those if you want just to get a 10 year old take on the Lord of the Rings.

[Andrew]

We've said this before, but like, I cannot believe we did this one right after.

[Craig]

Well, I read all of them and I almost died.

[Andrew]

I can't believe we did that. Like just both from a. From a. I can't believe you had to do all that work in the course of three weeks. And also I can't believe we didn't stretch it out a little bit more to get more out of it, download wise.

[Craig]

We hadn't like codified the. When we do a big series, we both read them and like take up, like, you know, take some time with it. In between, we were.

[Andrew]

We were in between. We were Babies in the third 50 Shades of Grey books, as I recall.

[Craig]

But yeah, that was really the only one.

[Andrew]

We did those episodes. A lot of why we did those episodes, like that was because they had the number 50 in them. And so we did multiples of the number 50.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

As the episode.

[Craig]

That's all.

[Andrew]

That was our big brain idea.

[Craig]

That was it.

[Andrew]

And then episode 200 was like, what's the next big book we could think of? Oh, it's Infinite Jest.

[Craig]

Infinite Jest, which you read. Thank God I had already read it. Anyway, not a brag. We're going to do this as a six episode series with a episode zero, which is what you're listening to right now. Precious, preciouses, my preciouses, my loves. The next episode will be episode one. We'll talk about what all of this means, but I'll just, I'll read it all out up here so you know what's coming. We're gonna, we're gonna cover in the, in the first episode, I newlandale the Valikenta and the Quenta Silmarillion, chapters one through three.

[Andrew]

Craig and I just talked about this off mic, but I am not the kind of Tolkien nerd who goes into it for the language. I don't know, like canonical Elvish pronunciations most of the time. And I'm not going to be able to correct most things.

[Craig]

I know it's the Silmarillion.

[Andrew]

It is the Silmarillion.

[Craig]

And I know it's the Ainur or the Ainur, and that's what I got.

[Andrew]

I think you would just say Valaquenta. I don't think you would. Vala Quenta put a la Quinta.

[Craig]

Oh, fair enough, sweets, fair enough. You know, and then we're gonna do that in a few episodes. Episode two will be chapters four through 10. Chapters 11 through 16 will be episode three. Then chapter 17 to 20, then, then closing it out, chapters 21 to 24. And then in episode six, we will do the Aalabeth and the appendices and some closing thoughts, and then maybe we'll do a bonus at the end, who knows?

[Andrew]

Well, and then of course, also after, after we die, Henry and Simon will take our unpublished podcast fragments and edit them together into a sort of a cohesive podcast of work that you can then listen to.

[Craig]

Yeah, we've written that contract already that's set in stone. So, yeah, you've read this twice. You were bragging to me before we started.

[Andrew]

I've. I've read it twice. First as a, like a middle schooler who really liked Lord of the Rings and just wanted to Be like, look at me reading a big book. And everyone's like, okay, nerd.

[Craig]

Well, so you're cool enough that you were reading Lord of the Rings.

[Andrew]

Good luck not kissing anyone until you're like, 17, nerd.

[Craig]

You were reading Lord of the Rings before the movies came out.

[Andrew]

I was.

[Craig]

I. I'd never done that. Yeah. Okay.

[Andrew]

To the point where you could still buy books with, like, van art versions of the characters on them instead of, you know, the actors from the film.

[Craig]

I'd read.

[Andrew]

I think now we've come out on the other side of that where it's back to being art.

[Craig]

Art stuff. Yes.

[Andrew]

Instead of being like, Vivo Mortensen.

[Craig]

But I'd read the Hobbit when I was a kid and liked the Hobbit and saw the cartoon of the Hobbit.

[Andrew]

But I had rankin bass, like, 70s one. Yeah, nice.

[Craig]

But no, I never read this.

[Andrew]

And then I read it again as like a 20 something coming back to it being like, I didn't like this very much as a kid, but I must have been too young and stupid to get it.

[Craig]

And were you still too young and stupid to get it?

[Andrew]

That read did not leave a huge impression on me, except that I felt like it would be a good candidate for a long read series.

[Craig]

Sure. Okay.

[Andrew]

Like, I think there's a lot to chew on here.

[Craig]

I think there is, too. So let's dive into this context. Episode. As you might recall, J.R.R. tolkien, born in 1892, died in 1973. He's the author of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. He studies at Oxford. He fights in World War I. He teaches at Leeds in Oxford, focusing on old and Middle English. He's buddies.

[Andrew]

And he spends the rest of the whole rest of his life insisting that none of his work is to be considered as an allegory about either of the World War.

[Craig]

Well, he hates allegory.

[Andrew]

You can take that or leave it as you will.

[Craig]

He's friends with cs.

[Andrew]

I would just say you don't have to intend for something to be a way for it to be away.

[Craig]

Yeah, they form a cool little band called the Inklings. It's not a real band, it's just a literary group. But they didn't have rock bands back then.

[Andrew]

He's the closest you can get.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah. He starts in on this work kind of early. The earliest drafts that we have go back to 1925, though there are characters and themes developed in 1917 that go into a collection called the Book of Lost Tales. Reportedly, he wrote some of that while he was laid up in a hospital with trench fever.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Like, the very earliest stories from the entire legendarium, which is the official word that is used to refer to the entire Tolkien mythology, goes back to at least 1917, maybe a little earlier than that. Um. And, yeah, it's. I don't know. Okay, keep going. Keep going with Tolkien. Because once I start talking about anyone, Anyone or anything else, it's gonna get sucked into a bunch of rabbit holes.

[Craig]

Sure. I mean, I don't have too much else on him specifically that he, you know, he publishes the Hobbit after spending some time working on this, publishing some other things that are wholly unrelated. But he'd been telling the Hobbit, and.

[Andrew]

The Hobbit is meant to be wholly unrelated.

[Craig]

It is meant for sure.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Like, it is a separate children's. His son Christopher, while he was a child. And it was only later that it was sort of. I don't even know if retconned is the right word. But he did publish several editions of it after and was even working on one unpublished one that went even further to, like, better integrate it into the Lord of the Rings.

[Craig]

Sure. Yes. So he makes the Hobbit. The Hobbit sells very well. Everybody loves the Hobbit. He starts trying to get the Silmarillion published or get a deal for it, and initial responses are, go away. That's crazy. Make more Hobbit. That specifically calling it to Celtic was one note. Another.

[Andrew]

Gotten that note before, but now I want to.

[Craig]

Another word they used was. That was too obscure.

[Andrew]

It is certainly.

[Craig]

It is that. And so 17 years later, he finds himself writing the Lord of the Rings. Of course, he. He's been working on this the whole time. And in the edition that I read, there is included by his son a letter that JRR Tolkien had written to an editor of his, Milton Waldman at Collins. That is basically, he wanted Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings to be published together as, like, one big thing. And they didn't want that because they didn't. They didn't know. No, thank you. They didn't want to sell the Silmarillion.

[Andrew]

Well, at the time, when you're thinking about paper books, there are just, like, limits to physically how large you can make a book.

[Craig]

And so the letter that we have is a copy of the typescript that Waldman made of the letter that was sent to him. Corrections have been made. It's been published separately. I do love this letter. It starts out, my dear Milton, you asked for a brief Sketch of my stuff that is connected with my imaginary world.

[Andrew]

Let me go on for 20 pages, baby.

[Craig]

He talks about how great he is at languages and how much that shapes his work. He talks about it kind of as like a cross to bear. Out of these languages are made nearly all the names that appear in my legend. This gives a certain character a cohesion, a consistency of linguistic style, an allusion of historicity to the nomenclature, or so I believe that is markedly lacking in other comparable things. Not all will feel this as important as I do, since I am cursed by acute sensibility in such matters. And he also said he set off to write. He loves myths and legends and fairy tales. But he says, quote, I was from early days grieved by the poverty of my own beloved country. It had no stories of its own, bound up with its tongue and soil, not of the quality that I sought and found as an ingredient in legends of other lands. There was Greek and Celtic and Romance and Germanic, Scandinavian and Finnish, which greatly affected me. There's a lot of Finnish stuff in here, you. But nothing English. He says.

[Andrew]

He goes, famously, Craig, the book was unfinished.

[Craig]

Oh, wow.

[Andrew]

Before he died.

[Craig]

He says that the Arthurian stuff is a little too much the soil of Britain. I don't really know. He just seems, like, upset that it's not rooted in the language.

[Andrew]

I would need to know more about, like, yeah, this. The different specific little sub genres of thing that he's talking about.

[Craig]

I think he's upset.

[Andrew]

He's upset about it.

[Craig]

I think he's upset that, like, the Arthur stuff is like this mishmash of the existing, you know, mythology and belief systems of the people in that region with Christianity.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And a big thing in this one is that it is not explicitly Christian in any way, shape or form. There are some, you know, similar types of tales in the Bible, but it's not. He's not doing CS Lewis. He's doing his own thing out here. And then that letter, he's never turn.

[Andrew]

He never turns to you. And he's like, the lion is Jesus Christ.

[Craig]

No, he does not. And then that.

[Andrew]

But there. But there is like, God and like an angel who gets cast out. Like there. You know, there. There are familiar things here, but. Yeah.

[Craig]

He then gives a big old overview of what the book is going to be, which I kind of skimmed because I don't want to spoil myself. But he does talk about how it is deliberately not anthropocent. Anthro. The one where it's about men. Yep. It's about elves. That's his. He's drawing a very fine line there. It's not about man, it's about elves. He does say different than men. All stories are ultimately about the fall, kind of, you know, referencing some of the Judeo Christian imagery. There's gonna be some jewels before we get to the Rings, then towards, you know, the end, we're gonna get some of the Lord of the Rings stuff in there. So. Yeah, but then he dies and he doesn't get it published. And the day after he died, the New York Times ran an article with comments from his publisher who said, do not worry, there will be more Lord of the Rings. We are working on the Silmarillion. This is a quote from the article. The popularity of Tolkien is a phenomenon created by the paperback generation and its fondness for fantasy. Oh, this is from when it was published in it and it got to number one. It was Valentine's paperback editions that were grabbed up by college students in the late 1960s and became the basis of the cult that has responded so quickly to the new book. So it did. It did sell well upon release. Anyway.

[Andrew]

The first thing that makes me think of is just like, after Michael Jackson died and all the statements that came out, like, instantly, they were like, now that this famously exacting and finicky artist is dead, we can go through and publish all the stuff that he never wanted anybody to hear.

[Craig]

Yep. And I know you're going to talk more about Chris Tolkien, Christopher Robin Tolkien, but one of the hits that I, you know, recall seeing is that, well, and we'll talk about it, is how much did he do? How much did his dad do? And he goes on to publish in 1996 the history of Middle Earth, where he basically shows his work and like, dumps all of JR all JRR stuff, like in a Big 12.

[Andrew]

Yeah. I have a lot about. About sort of the. The posthumous works of J.R.R. tolkien.

[Craig]

So great, you want to hit me with.

[Andrew]

Published by Chris Tolkien.

[Craig]

Hit me with Chris.

[Andrew]

So.

[Craig]

Or whatever else you want to talk about next.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I mean, just. Just to. Just to center on Tolkien and his love of, like, myth and history. Earlier in his career, he'd published like a well regarded edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Produced a book called A Middle English Vocabulary. He did a translation of the myth Beowulf in the 1920s. That was one of the works published posthumously. It came out in 2014. But so while he's, you know, he's best known for these more accessible and character driven, like, narrative stories in the Hobbit and especially in the Lord of the Rings.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Like what, what does make those books the cornerstone of modern fantasy fiction and modern world building is that they are undergirded by this like extensive pre existing mythologizing and world building work that was happening as part of this like legendarium Silmarillion thing for like decades before they existed. Like he, he had this world, he had myths and the, the Lord of the Rings is, is explicitly written to be in that world and to reference those myths. And like, I don't know, probably in the back of his mind somewhere he's thinking, what if I breadcrumb this and it creates more interest in other. In people like publishing the Silmarillion thing finally. I don't know if that's.

[Craig]

Well, it sounded like he thought that you could get away with publishing them both at the same time. They just kept saying stop. We want the part that has characters in it, please.

[Andrew]

But so while I think at the time it was published, it was common to think of the Silmarillion as like this, this bigger like sequel thing that flows out of the Hobbit and of Lord of the Rings. It's way more accurate to think of the Silmarillion as a universe that he's created that the Lord of the Rings takes place in.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

That way it kind of reminds me of like, I feel like a lot of people who write fantasy fiction kind of start with the world building. Now I know like when I have done like a D and D campaign, I will often start with some kind of a, kind of a template or even a map or something. And then you. And then you make stories in it. Because the. Having a little bit of pre existing stuff set up beforehand just gives you some like guard rails and boundaries and helps helps you keep the story like feeling cohesive.

[Craig]

It's kind of hard to separate those now, right?

[Andrew]

Yeah, it is.

[Craig]

It super is like we Tolkien happens. And then Gary Gax is like what if D and D and what if.

[Andrew]

Lord of the Rings was a game?

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And then also insert fanfic with all your friends for Lord of the Rings.

[Craig]

And then also Warhammers. Like what if you know Lord of the Rings? And then Warcraft is like, what if we just ripped off Warhammer? Like it just goes and goes and goes. And then like you have all the tabletop stuff. You have generations of people who are now writers who did the thing which, what you're just saying, which is like, especially when you're doing a tabletop thing, you draw the Maps, but then you leave blank spaces. So you don't write the story. You write all of the stuff that could be referenced. Right. And you got to leave room for the characters to make choices and things like that. And then. Yeah. So now you're just like, well, we're all just swimming in this soup. I have some stuff on Guy Gavriel K. Which we'll talk about, because he did collaborate on this. And, like.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah.

[Craig]

One of the defining things of his career is trying to be, like, there's fantasy stuff that isn't Lord of the Rings, y'. All. Like, that's his main takeaway. For someone well spent a year on the Silmarillion, a reason to talk about.

[Andrew]

Him is because we're going to talk about Chris Tolkien and him being, like, his. His father's, like, literary executor and him being the person whose, like, name is on all of this posthumous stuff. But a lot of it. A lot of, like. Like Silmarillion, the History of Middle Earth stuff, the very similar, like, History of the Hobbit stuff. Like, a lot of it was done in cooperation with other people. Guy Gabriel K's name appeared on the COVID of early editions of the book and has now been mostly lase.

[Craig]

The.

[Andrew]

The one reference to him that you're gonna find is in, like, the front matter at the very end of Chris Tolkien's note, where he's like, thanks to Guy K. For helping me.

[Craig]

He does say that, doesn't he?

[Andrew]

Yes, he does.

[Craig]

When you were mentioning the. The tabletop thing, I was also thinking about what if. Because you get a little bit of this whenever. When, like, Lucas talks about Star wars where he's like, I wrote the Book of the Wills, and no one ever let me make it a movie.

[Andrew]

It was. It was 18 parts in the first.

[Craig]

Place, but my dog is named Chewbacca. And you're like, what are you talking about?

[Andrew]

It's not. It's not that I'm changing it. It's that you never saw the right version of it.

[Craig]

His wife's like, they're just laser swords, George.

[Andrew]

As time goes on, George Lucas proves to be more right about that is true. But I think. I don't know if that's just me aging or if it's like, me responding to a bunch of mediocre Star Wars. But we should have. We should have been thankful for what we.

[Craig]

But he wasn't out there, to my knowledge, writing drafts of the Star wars technical manuals, which I was reading in the 90s as part of my big EU phase where I was reading, I.

[Andrew]

Had seen the Just love you love the European Union. Well, then you were like, you know, what's. What's kind of another similar group of people coming together to accomplish something. Oh, it's Star Wars.

[Craig]

That should have been my answer when you were like, what's a thing that you got interested in but then you found a weird version of it that's very different is the eu but no, you know, I got into the movies and then I got into the video games and then there I'm reading these novels and then I'm reading big like legal pad size books about where they make X wings. And you're like, none. Of. What are we talking about?

[Andrew]

Where do they make X wings, though?

[Craig]

Oh, who makes them? I forgot.

[Andrew]

Oh, you don't know. Oh man, you don't know anymore. You already failed the test. You already failed the test.

[Craig]

Well, they're the T series. They've got S foils. I remember S foils.

[Andrew]

They do? Yeah. You gotta put them in an attack position. Oh, they're incom the other position.

[Craig]

They're Incom Corporation.

[Andrew]

Oh, okay.

[Craig]

They're based on the Z95 headhunter. Don't you. Please.

[Andrew]

I mean, I knew that part. I knew that.

[Craig]

They're plasma bolts, not lasers. Did you know that? Anyway, tell me about this, where else this book came from.

[Andrew]

So let's talk about Chris Tolkien for a sec. He was born in 1924. He died in 2020. He was already involved in original work. Like Tolkien was telling him stories from when he, Christopher was a kid, including stories that would become the Hobbit by the time Christopher is a teen and an adult. He's offering feedback on the Lord of the Rings and other work in that like milieu. He draws the original maps that appear at the front of the Lord of the Rings books.

[Craig]

I read that he was like in the service in World War II, like in another part of the continent somewhere, getting messages from his dad, like to read drafts of Lord of the Rings, you know, normal stuff.

[Andrew]

And, and he is. He's invited by his father to join the Inklings literary group that we talked about. And this is a. This is a group that included JRR Tolkien as well as CS Lewis. Unless you think that Chris Tolkien is alone in the. The nepotism. C.S. lewis brother is also in the.

[Craig]

Yeah, B.S. lewis.

[Andrew]

Wow. Wow. But he's. Chris is named as his father's literary executor and co author of the Silmarillion in 1967, six years before J.R.R. tolkien's death.

[Craig]

Oh.

[Andrew]

And he did not resign his position as the director of Tolkien's estate until 2017.

[Craig]

And he passed away in 2020. Right.

[Andrew]

Passed away in 2020. Relatively recently.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But if you think back to like 2017 and think suddenly, huh, the Lord of the Rings brand is kind of back and all over a bunch of stuff in it.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

It's because. It's because the control of it had passed it to people who are a little less.

[Craig]

Because wasn't there. Wasn't there like some early 2010 stuff where like Warner Brothers was like doing some merchandising and Chris Tolkien didn't like.

[Andrew]

It and I don't know a ton. Like he didn't love the Peter Jackson movies and he. So he was suing for some, like, financial damages. He had like a legal objection to the Hobbit movies, got dropped as part of this.

[Craig]

A lot of people had objections to those movies.

[Andrew]

Well, I mean, those. That this was before they were made instead of after. Most of. Most of the objections came after, but yeah. So most of his career from 1973, when his dad dies onward is spent going through an organizing and editing income, compiling and adding to his father's unpublished works, including the Silmarillion. He published a total of 24 volumes of this stuff during his lifetime, including a few, as I said, not related to Middle Earth and the Legendarium, just like other other myth things, the other posthumously published stuff just to know about that I have only dipped my toe into a little bit. Like I've got. I've not gone deep into most of the stuff. So there's the. So Silmarillion comes out in the 70s and is pretty financially successful. Some reviews kind of pan it a little bit, I think mostly because it is so different from.

[Craig]

I have the John Gardner review that I want to read some of at the end of this episode.

[Andrew]

Okay, sure. But, you know, it comes out and it does fine. So Unfinished Tales comes out in 1980 with a bunch of, you know, fragments of. Of other stories that are. That are scraped together. And then starting in 1983 and ending in 1996, there's the 12 Vol history of middle Earth series which unlike. So the Silmarillion is written as a sort of an in universe record of like this, this first age and like the creation of the world, which is.

[Craig]

Of a piece with the other works. Right. Like the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings have a kind of like. And this is the book that Bilbo wrote or.

[Andrew]

Well, we're gonna, we're gonna talk about frame narratives. This does not have a frame.

[Craig]

No, that's what I'm saying.

[Andrew]

But it is written in universe.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

So the History Middle Earth series is written more as a, like an outside. An outside of universe, like, compilation of every single thing that Chris Tolkien could possibly scrape together about other Middle Earth related tales. The. The 12 volumes go through JRR Tolkien's life pretty much chronologically. So you will, if you read these, you do get a better sense of what stories came first and, like, what sprung from what.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So you don't, you know, you don't actually get to Lord of the Rings until volume like 7 or something. Like pretty deep into it, relatively speaking. But yeah, there are other related stories of Middle Earth, a lot of drafts of what would become the Silmarillion, a lot of notes on the process of writing Lord of the Rings, letters, literary analysis, other odds and ends. And there is a separate two volume, the History of the Hobbit series that gives the same treatment to the Hobbit. Hobbit intentionally excluded from the History of Middle Earth because Chris Tolkien knew it was like, it was intended to be a separate thing, and it was kind of shoehorned into the universe later. And JRR Tolkien was never totally happy with how those two universes meshed, like, with the books as they exist today are mostly just left to, like, reconcile the lighter tone and the shallower world building of the Hobbit. Like yourself.

[Craig]

Yep. You're just supposed it's just the Hobbit over there.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's just the Hobbit. And then there are three expanded versions of some of the more like, narrative focused Silmarillion stories, all of which were, like, came pretty early. So the Children of Huron was originally written in 1918. I say originally written like a first version of it was finished. He did other stuff to it over many decades.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

But yeah, originally written 1918, published in 2007. There's Baron and Luthien, which is written in 1917 and then published in 2017. Then the Fall of Gondolin, which is written 1917, published 2018. And the Gondolin story is one of the very first about Middle Earth that exists. So these are all. The version that's in the Silmarillion is like a nugget of them, but they are all expanded into their own thing. So if you're looking to dip into, like, prequel Tolkien, that's more. I don't even want to say finished, but, like, it feels a little more like A narrative thing rather than like reading the Old Testament. I think those three are probably the places to go and that's why those stories were published like that.

[Craig]

Yeah. There's an interesting quote in the forward to the edition that I. That is probably the main addition that's out there from Christopher Tolkien, who says he's basically talking about like one of the considerations when he first sat down to do this is like, how do you present and make coherent a work that has spanned decades? And thus like initial stuff like that feels different than the stuff he was working on up to his death. Like both in like style and tone. He says, on my father's death, it fell to me to try to bring the work into publishable form. It became clear to me that to attempt to present within the covers of a single book the diversity of the materials to show the Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential. I set myself therefore to work out a single text, selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self consistent narrative. Chris, have you met a wiki? You, if you had only had a wiki, you could have included that edit history. You, you know, the, the. It's. Because it's like, it's a Talmud. Like it's basically a Talmud, you know, or to, to compile it requires one. Which was the history of series, sounds like.

[Andrew]

Actually, yeah, Like I, I imagine probably a lot of that scaffolding was made in service of like whipping the, the Silmarillion into some kind of like chronological shape.

[Craig]

Yep, yep.

[Andrew]

So, so let me. Okay, let me tie all this stuff together.

[Craig]

Please do.

[Andrew]

We've been talking about in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, Tolkien the Elder. Tolkien's interest and myth and like the handing down of stories manifests partly in this like frame narrative, this meta narrative that what you are reading is actually a series of stories, a series of books written and compiled and told from the perspective of the Hobbit character, particularly Bilbo Baggins and Frodo and Samwise Gamgee.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

So the. Tolkien was always kind of operating, even when he was writing these very early stories, with some kind of frame narrative in mind. Like the Ur frame narrative for all of this stuff originally is this Anglo Saxon mariner named Elfwine.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Who is essentially meant to be a bridge between. So if you're, if you were thinking of Middle Earth as Tolkien's stab at, like, an ancient history version of, like, of Britain and Europe and, like, what essentially becomes our modern world. Elfwine is this guy who exists, who is meant to be kind of a bridge between elves who are like, finally fading permanently out of the world, and modern humans whose. Whose age sort of. Who are coming into their age of dominance at, like, the end of the Lord of the Rings books. But yeah, he's. He's meant to be someone who speaks with elves and then record. I mean, the, the. And the frame changes a lot. There are different characters at different points who are delivering different, like, parts of the narrative and different voices, which can partially explain some of the differences in tone between some different sections of the Silmarillion. Like, especially when we get to the very end, there's a bit about the Second Age, like the. The stuff in between the main events of the Silmarillion and the. The start of the Lord of the Rings that is. That feels very different. And it's because it's meant to be something that's being relayed by an entirely different person.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

But, yeah, it's, you know, he. He spoke with the elves, he read some book of the Elves. He commonly a time traveler who inhabits the bodies of other, like, ancestors of his same name. And so he records and relays these stories to modern readers. And that's what kind of the legendarium is.

[Craig]

I love it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, this concept is always super floaty. Like, one thing to know about diving into posthumous Tolkien is that he's constantly changing and playing with stuff, and he's doing it over decades and decades and decades. And this sometimes leaks through to the multiple published versions of the Hobbit in Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, which I'm sure we talked about in our episode about it, Tolkien makes real world edits that he made to the Hobbit to make it mesh better with Lord of the Rings as stuff that Bilbo, the writer of the book in universe, lied about because of the early influence of the Ring of Power.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

So it's like all. Just like. It is all like stories on top of stories. And so things in his notes and in this legendarium are, like, unfinished and half formed to the point that you can be reading a single passage and it has, like, multiple stabs at, like, naming or spelling a character's name within the same passage. So, like, a lot. Some of what Chris Tolkien's doing is just like, taking all this stuff and identifying like, okay, these three names are actually about, like, the same person. And so I'm gonna kind of.

[Craig]

And there's a lot of that where he's like, well, the, the elves call them this name and the men call it this name and there's some other names that they use. Like there's. And, and that feels fine as I'm reading it in these first few chapters. Like, it's like, yeah, it's the type of text that it is. All these gods have multiple names. It's fine, whatever.

[Andrew]

But part of the. So a couple, just a couple things about this one that's like, let's smoke a huge blunt and like blow our own minds about Tolkien. And one that's just like an interesting note on the creative process is as part of the process of, as you were saying, reconciling a bunch of different tones and voices and things that were written at like, drastically different parts of J.R.R. tolkien's life, part of the editorial decision making that Chris Tolgian engaged in as part of the publishing of the Silmarillion was just to, to mostly try to delete those frame narrators.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

From, from the story.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Because they were just adding another layer on top of everything that was already messed, reconciled with everything else. And Chris Tolkien has said that. He later said that doing this was, quote, certainly debatable. And he says this, this I now think to have been an error.

[Craig]

Sure, sure.

[Andrew]

But, but, but some readers and commentators have pointed out over the years that by taking and arranging and adding to and editing his father's work and like putting his own twist on it and taking stuff out and whatever, whatever, there is a, you know, there's a school of thought that Chris Tolkien actually is helping do what JRR Tolkien wanted to do in the first place, which is you were giving this story, this myth, a kind of curated, handed down mythological quality that he always wanted it to have. And so part of, you know, part.

[Craig]

Of that's the big brain version of. It's okay that it's a little messy and came from someone else.

[Andrew]

That's the big. Yes, that's the big brain version of it. And you know, we've, we've as people who have read the Odyssey and the Iliad for different long read projects.

[Craig]

I dig it.

[Andrew]

Part of, part of it is like, why do these, why do these guys have like Bronze Age weapons in the. Part of it is just like, why. Why is there all this weird anachronistic stuff in here?

[Craig]

Yep, it's great.

[Andrew]

And yeah, so like the, the artifacts of that are whether unintentionally or intentionally, like, kind of accomplishing part of what Tolkien wanted to set out to do in the first place. I feel like Chris Tolkien gets a bad rap is like, oh, this. You know, this guy spent five decades of his life or whatever, just, like, republishing his dad's stuff. But I think he's properly understood as, like, an author in his own. Yeah, right.

[Craig]

And he's also, like, he, like, his father was like, a scholar of, you know, languages and Middle English and, like.

[Andrew]

And he's just. And then he's a scholar of this. Like, he's a scholar of this huge sprawling thing that. That a guy's brain just was spitting out for decades and decades and decades that really resonated with, or at least parts of it really resonated with people, and then the rest of it kind of flowed outward from there. But just the size and the scale of it is. It's hard to think of something else that is quite this way. I don't know. The fantasy authors we have now just put out a blog every six months whining about how hard it is to write books.

[Craig]

Yeah, well. And so, like, he does that. There is the thing, too, where he's doing this under. At least for the silmarillion, doing it under a little bit of time pressure. Right. Because as I said, the second that the elder Tolkien has died, his publisher is like, hey, we got this big stack of stuff. We're gonna publish it as soon as it's ready.

[Andrew]

Yes. Listen, I'm sure there's somebody at, like, at Ballantine Books or whatever, the JRR Jonah Jameson who's, like, chomping on a cigar, being like, oh, give me more Hobbits.

[Craig]

Who was it? It was. I need more Hobbits. Rainer. This is a. This is a Tolkien ass name. Excuse me.

[Andrew]

Whoa.

[Craig]

Rainer Unwin, chairman of George Allen and Unwin, said that much of the book he completed much of it before his death, but that its final form was unclear. It's rather like beads on a thread. The beads are there, but the thread is missing. And at the time of this publication, they didn't know that it was necessarily going to be Christopher, but they assumed it would be. In the meantime, the spokesman added, we hope to bring out a play written in verse and some other material handed over to us about two months ago. Good luck, everybody. That's from 1973, but no. So he enlists Guy Gavriel King to do some of the work with him in 74 and 75.

[Andrew]

And at this point, just. I. I Think it's best to imagine this as like, boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of completely unorganized.

[Craig]

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Andrew]

He's writing the earliest versions of this on, like, the back of other sheets of paper that have other stuff on. It is very. Just like spilling out of him wherever he can put it.

[Craig]

20 at the time. So he born in 1954, he's a Canadian author. He studies at the University of Manitoba. He is, you know, he goes on to get his law degree from Utoronto. He never practiced. We'll talk briefly about the rest of his career. He first novel, the summer tree in 1984 was part of the Fionavar Tapestry fantasy trilogy, which he wrote. But then he would go on to write a series of like, I guess what are called historical fantasies. The Lions of Al Rasan, the Last Light of the Sun, Isabel Under Heaven. All these books he like, are setting in historical places and, and like specific times and eras. But he doesn't riff on historical figures. Like, he's very specific that he always wants to, like, make up his own, which is why they are kind of classified as fantasy. But no, he is, you know, he's a philosophy student. He gets the call to help with this project because Tolkien's Christopher Tolkien's wife, or second wife, I guess, was Canadian and the families knew each other like he was already acquainted with the family. And in an article in The Guardian in 2014 where he talks a little bit about it, K says it was a massive, massive project and he did not want another fully fledged academic working with him. Family privacy anxiety, ego elements came into it. And at the time he saw the editing process in the classic senior academic working with the bright young graduate student, which is the template for so much academic work. He said he would spend days in a barn outside Oxford with Christopher or with the their JR's biographer, Humphrey Carpenter. And overall, the experience, K says, I learned a lot about false starts in writing. I mean that in a serious way. Tolkien's false starts, you learn that the great works have disastrous botched chapters that the great writers recognize that they didn't work. So I was looking at drafts of the Lord of the Rings and rough starts for the Silmarillion and came to realize they don't spring full blown, utterly completely formed in brilliance. They get there with writing and rewriting and drudgery and mistakes, and eventually, if you put in the hours and the patience, something good might happen.

[Andrew]

So did we talk in our Lord of the Rings episode about the fact that there was, there was a sequel that he wrote, like, a couple dozen pages of at one point.

[Craig]

I don't remember that. You might have told me that. It was 10 years ago.

[Andrew]

It was called, like, the New Shadow or something. That's not a great name. I mean, it's famously. He was a guy who would revise stuff, but he. So he. He takes this story that's set, like, I think, like, Aragorn's son is, like, king at the time. And there are these. You know, it's been a couple hundred years or something. And these. These people in Gondor or whatever, like, set up a little Sauron cult and start, like. Like, that's. That's the new form that evil is taking. And he wrote some of it and.

[Craig]

He was Kylo Ren.

[Andrew]

This seems like a bummer. I'm not gonna do.

[Craig]

Do anymore.

[Andrew]

Like, it's not. It's not working.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

But I. I can totally see why you would think that.

[Craig]

That.

[Andrew]

But also, like, that is. What would. That is. What would. That is what would happen. Like, I mean, look around you in real life right now and. And just kind of imagine what happens when some of the biggest horrors in human history are, like, fading from living memory. And what happens as as a result of that?

[Craig]

The new horrors come back. The new horrors come.

[Andrew]

So it's like this. This book is. It's big and it's long and it's weird and it's shaggy and it's inconsistent. And some of it's. Some of it feels a little Lord of the Ringsy, and some of it is like the Bible and. And it, like, barely hangs together, but it is. But it is fascinating. And it's not. I'm not going to even say that it's boring or that it's bad. It is not Lord of the Rings. It is not more Lord of the Rings.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

Which is, I think, what a lot of the people. A lot of people come to it looking for that. And it is not that it.

[Craig]

Honestly.

[Andrew]

But it's not. But it's not necessarily a bad thing that. It's not that. It's just. It's just too bad that there is nowhere else that people can go, really.

[Craig]

To get more of that style of thing.

[Andrew]

Yeah, yeah. Like, you. You can go and find some really fascinating little fragments of stories. Like, if you. There are some parts of the. Like the appendices to Lord of the Rings that are published in the Return of the King. The first couple of those have a lot of little bits that are, like, more narratively focused before it then, like, breaks down into like what the Elvish Alphabet is. Yeah, sure, if you are into that kind of stuff. There's a lot in the Unfinished Tales and in the history of Earth that is, that could be interesting to you. Like there, there is a lot more stuff about like Thor and Oak and Shield and like tying the Hobbit more explicitly into, sure. The world of the Lord of the Rings and making it be more about how like Gandalf is, is, is masterminding this plan all along because he knows if Sauron like rises up and the dragon is up there in the north, everybody's just going to get toasted from, from both ends basically. And like making it a more cohesive thing. Like there's a lot, there are a lot of interesting fragments in it. It's just, there's no one unified, like cohesive sequel to it that ever happened. No, it's kind of a bummer because, you know, if, if that had happened and it had been good, it would be great. But Tolkien himself didn't seem to think that he had another something like that in him, at least not in his lifetime. So like, yeah.

[Craig]

Speaking of response to this book.

[Andrew]

Sure.

[Craig]

As we close up here in our episode zero, I did find the New York Times review titled the World of Tolkien, October New York Times review, October 1977. This is by John Gardner, the author of Grendel, author of October Light Life and Times of Chaucer. He opens, it's a pretty good review in the sense that it gives decent context at least, you know, through the reviewer's mind. But at least it's like setting the stage.

[Andrew]

It's a good, it's a good review as opposed to it's a positive review.

[Craig]

I'm saying it, it is a review of quality to me about to embark on this project is what I said.

[Andrew]

Okay, yeah, it was useful to you.

[Craig]

Yes. He's like, everyone's pumped about it because everyone loved Lord of the Rings. And then he spends a paragraph being like, I didn't like much of his non Lord of the Rings stuff. It's kind of messy and non essential. And so it, you know, the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit shine brighter in comparison to his other stuff. And then he says, if the Hobbit is a lesser work than the Ring trilogy because it lacks the trilogy's high seriousness, the collection that makes up the Silmarillion stands below the trilogy because much of it contains only high seriousness. That is here Tolkien cares much more about the meaning and coherence of his myth than he does about these glories of the trilogy. Rich characterization, imagistic brilliance, powerfully imagined and detailed sense of place and thrilling adventure. Not that these qualities are all entirely lacking here, he says. And he shouts out the evil characters in particular, which we'll talk about, but says that there are other. There are other cool folks, but, quote, none smoke a pipe and none wear a vest.

[Andrew]

That is true.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And if you do, I mean, interesting to think of those as essential ingredients to most fictional stories.

[Craig]

Sure. He harps on the language being a bit on the nose. A little bit of Disney, a little bit of Prince Valiant, he says.

[Andrew]

So much of it is in this, like, this high register of, like, end. And indeed, thusly he spake. And, yeah, he puts, like, a whole.

[Craig]

Graph in here and you're like, from the first story that is like the Bible. And you're like, what are you doing? He does, like, make a lot of comparisons to the medieval literature and specifically Christian medieval literature, but it's not underpinned by, like, what does he say? What is finally most moving about the Silmarillion is not the individual legends, but the total vision, the eccentric heroism of Tolkien's attempt. What Tolkien lacks that his medieval model possessed is serene Christian confidence. Despite the affirmation of his creation legend, Tolkien's universe is never safe. Like Chaucer's, the providential plan seems again and again to hang by a thread above bottomless pits of disaster. You know, he says, our main feeling is tragic dread. Strange man, strange mind. Why would anyone do it? We keep asking as we read, why create a whole Christian, like, religion, a whole new creation myth to set beside those of the Greeks, the Jews, the Northmen, and the rest? Why write a mythic history, a Bible? Nevertheless, he has tried to do just that.

[Andrew]

So he seems anytime you get into a big string of questions, that's like, why? I was talking about this with somebody at work today about, like, the design of some icon in the new Mac Os, and if you start asking too many of those why questions, it's like, well, like, why do anything? You know, like, why does anything do anything? Why not just leave it all alone and never try and never, never strive and never accomplish anything? Like, why not do it? Well, no, that's always the corollary is like, why not do it?

[Craig]

That's kind of. I think where Gardner lands is like, well, he wanted to do it. And that's kind of interesting. But the question you find yourself asking from his perspective is, why do it this way? Why? Yeah, you know, and that that is interesting to him. I think so.

[Andrew]

I am like, I do think it's interesting that he's all. He's bringing this like Chaucer scholar is bringing in all this like Chaucer and medieval stuff.

[Craig]

Yeah. I mean, he's primed for. I mean he wrot. He wrote the novel. That's a riff on Beowulf.

[Andrew]

You say it's what he's primed for. I say this is just the guy who's only seen Boss Baby. This is the guy who's only read Chaucer, who's reading his second book and he's like, oh, I'm getting big Chaucer vibes.

[Craig]

Okay, fair enough. That's fair. So yeah, I'm excited to dive in here at the time of. This.

[Andrew]

Is in addition to being a work that a lot of people bounce off of. Like the people who, who like this at some level are like, only the. This is like a very. For hardcore fans only book.

[Craig]

Sure, sure.

[Andrew]

And so for you to be. You read the Lord of the Rings once a decade ago and you're. You like enjoyed it and you're. And you do this book podcast with me, your friend.

[Craig]

Uh huh.

[Andrew]

I just don't know. I don't know how you're gonna respond to it.

[Craig]

I have a soft spot for the films. I like the films. I'm not. But I'm not like a. You know, I wouldn't say I'm steeped in them. I don't know them back and forth. I don't. I'm gonna like, there's a lot of like, oh, I get that reference in response, you know, in response to things. Not like, ah, yes, my favorite part, you know, so we'll see. I liked what I've read so far and we'll talk about that next episode.

[Andrew]

Yeah, we'll just like there, there's. There's that reaction. But then like, where are you gonna be in it? Like episode five?

[Craig]

I don't know.

[Andrew]

I don't know either.

[Craig]

Hopefully we move at a pace that I'm still enjoying myself. We'll see.

[Andrew]

We'll see.

[Craig]

But yes. So, okay, this is episode zero. You can go and check out episode one on our Patreon. It'll be exclusive on Patreon for a little while until we start another series. So the only way to listen along is to be on that Patreon. Coming up next, the Ainulindale, the Vala Quenta and the Quenta Silmarillion, chapters one to three.

[Andrew]

Yes.

[Craig]

Which is like a nice little arc. It has a good little kind of closing bit at the end of chapter three. So that's what's coming up next. If you at home have a legendarium of your own that you want to tell us about, send us an email overdue podmail.com we can't promise that we're gonna publish it. It's probably too messy. Hit us up on social media with your favorite Lord of the Rings gifs. I won't recognize any of the ones from Rings of Power, but you know, I'm sure they're out there.

[Andrew]

Nobody will.

[Craig]

Find us on social media.

[Andrew]

Maybe our button show needs to be like the Rings of Power because like, I don't know man. If I still had a TV podcast, I've had a place to dump my thoughts about it, sure. But I don't.

[Craig]

So I can't find us on social media. Overdue Potter theme song is composed by Nick La Ranges Andrew if folks want to know more about the show and our legendarium, this podcast, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Verily, they could go to overdue podcast.com and see the books that we have read and are going to read. For the normal show, you'll start to see episodes of our last long Read project, Sit Me Baby One more time. Drop on the main feed at the rate of like once per month, I think after this.

[Craig]

Yep. Yep.

[Andrew]

But for the next several months, the only way to listen to all of those episodes again will be to go to patreon.com overdupod and subscribe. When you do that, you don't just get extra content. You help make the show that you apparently like.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

You buy us equipment, you buy us books. You bought me a lovely illustrated edition of the Silmarillion to augment my ebook copy that I already had.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And I appreciate that you did that for me.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

You also get access to our Discord community to bonus episode streams. We've been playing some games on the streams lately. Just like everybody. Chilling out, having some fun. When the games don't decide to like randomly single out a random listener. It's been a good time. And what else? Oh, the newsletter. Dusty bookshelves that comes out the first Monday of every month.

[Craig]

Ad free episodes.

[Andrew]

Ad free episodes. Also it's a big one.

[Craig]

Including of the long reads. You got to be a long read person to get to keep once they hit the main feed, some ads might sneak in there.

[Andrew]

Gotta be a long read person.

[Craig]

Gotta be a long reader.

[Andrew]

Don't want to hear where to make websites. Don't want to hear where to get good cell phone service. You gotta get those ad free episodes.

[Craig]

Because you already know. So. Yeah, come on in. All right, Andrew patreon.com what do we say at the end of every episode of the Sceney Marine?

[Andrew]

Speak, friend, and goodbye. Sam, that was a headgum podcast.