[pwalker8]

The Fall of Gondolin, likely Christopher Tolkien's last book (he is 94), came out this past week. Like pretty much all of Christopher Tolkien's books, it's basically an academic book based on the back story of LOTR from JRR Tolkien's notes. Like the rest of his books, it's certainly interesting to Tolkien fans who want to know as much as they can find out.

But this isn't really about that per se, but rather what might have been and what might be. Tolkien's world is a very rich world with a lot of back story. Most of the broad outline was included in the Silmarillion, a work that was unique in the Christopher Tolkien books in that is was truly a narrative that was co-written by Guy Gavriel Kay, a very good writer in his own right. Most of the rest of the books are more scholarly treatments that go into how the various stories and characters changed over the some 50+ years that J.R.R. Tolkien worked on it. Parts of the Fall of Gondolin date back to 1918 while Tolkien was recovering in hospital during WW I.

J.R.R. Tolkien died in 1973, at the age of 81. The Hobbit was published in 1937. LOTR was published in a three volume set starting in July 1954 and ending in Oct. 1955. The Silmarillion was published in 1977, some 50 years after the Hobbit. I've still got my first printing, first edition of the hard back that I bought in high school. Thus, The Hobbit comes out of copyright in the US in 2032, i.e. in 14 years.

There are quite a few writers who would love to play around in Tolkien's world. Terry Brooks' originally started writing stories based on Tolkien's works. This is, of course, the one of the arguments for releasing works into the public domain. Certainly, one could make movies for generations simply by using material from Tolkien's back story. They could also have a rich set of works set in the Tolkien Universe, much like the set of books set in the Star Wars or Star Trek universe. Perhaps the Tolkien family trust will go in that direction at some point, but I suspect not. More likely that we will see films based on some of the more famous parts of the history of Middle Earth mentioned in passing in LOTR, such as the Fall of Gondolin (which would make a great movie) and the Tale of Beren and Luthien (would in the right hands would make an even better movie)

But consider where we might be. If copyright laws had remained as they were back in 1978, we might be seeing a set of books by various authors set in Tolkien's world. Certain like the Star Trek/Star Wars universes, some very good, some bad, most somewhere in the middle. But most certainly, the high fantasy genre would be revitalized.