The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[nana77]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Maybe only the Silmarillion, which was completed and he had submitted before his death.

I'm not convinced about all the edited works based on his notes that Christopher has released.

The "Prelude to Dune trilogy" and several others are written by Frank Herbert's son Brian, within Anderson (I recall having bought it just by looking at its thickness, then realized it was a slighty different thing); iirc it was made from some notes found several years after the Frank's departure.
Not to mention several works by Howard, also:

The Conan stories were increasingly edited by de Camp and the series was extended by pastiches until they replaced the original stories. In response, a puristic movement grew up demanding Howard's original, un-edited stories. The first boom ended in the mid-1980s. In the late 1990s and early 21st century, the "Second Howard Boom" occurred

*I didn't knew he made also "historical stories": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert...orical_stories

[nana77]

Did not understood why on almost all the translations from the serie I'm reading (Libra Editrice, most published around the '70s), mostly translated by Roberta Rambelli (which is great), she choosed the word "magazzeno" instead the usual "magazzino" (as for warehouse).
Now got it but the site that explains it already says it's unusual, as it's not a synonymous, but a regional (almost settentrional) variation, barely used in writtings.
It says the latin medieval word was yet magazenum, but changed within a french and then english interpositions.
Fun, btw, that she wrote several novels, within a male's pen name, which was the use on that period (on SF's genre).

Rocky Docson, Hunk Hanover, Joe C. Karpati, Jgor Latychev, R. R., John Rainbell, A. Robert

[nana77]

*from the latest translation in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
This is the literal retranslation in english, e.g. what I do understand from the writings:

On the other bed, his wife Iran opened her eyes, grey and offs, flicked the eyelids and within a sob she closed them again

literally:

Nell'altro letto, anche sua moglie Iran apri' gli occhi, grigi e spenti, batte' le palpebre e con un gemito li richiuse.

The original, in "Blade Runner", as DADoES

Now, in her bed, his wife Iran opened her gray, unmerry eyes, blinked, then groaned and shut her eyes again.

The previous italian translation version mentions "unmarried" as "something else than jovial", this newest version just skipped it.
Well, "unmerry eyes, of a wife, in her bed", is quite a niche thing to say (great, Philip Dick) .

[Courant]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Maybe only the Silmarillion, which was completed and he had submitted before his death.

I'm not convinced about all the edited works based on his notes that Christopher has released.

Christopher edited the Silmarillion, which wasn't totally completed. The posthumous works of Tolkien included stories, poems and essays which were completed and some published elsewhere as well as uncompleted works. Not all of them have to do with Middle Earth.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Courant

Christopher edited the Silmarillion, which wasn't totally completed. The posthumous works of Tolkien included stories, poems and essays which were completed and some published elsewhere as well as uncompleted works. Not all of them have to do with Middle Earth.

The Silmarilion had been submitted by JRR to the publisher and returned. It was complete, though the publisher wanted some changes. I've no doubt Christopher edited it.

The rest of the Christopher edits of unpublished Middle Earth stuff may not have been stuff that JRR had ever intended to be other than notes. IMO they detract from the main 3 Middle Earth works JRR did submit.

[Courant]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The Silmarilion had been submitted by JRR to the publisher and returned. It was complete, though the publisher wanted some changes. I've no doubt Christopher edited it.

The rest of the Christopher edits of unpublished Middle Earth stuff may not have been stuff that JRR had ever intended to be other than notes. IMO they detract from the main 3 Middle Earth works JRR did submit.

I don't know where you are getting your information. Here Christopher explains in his own words that the Silmarilion wasn't finished when his father died. He mostly pieced together different texts into a single narrative. Tolkien sent part of an early draft of the Silmarilion to his publisher after the success of the Hobbit and they asked him to write a sequel to the Hobbit instead. The most of the stuff Christopher published is in The History of Middle Earth series. Although some of them appear to be novels, these are basically Tolkien scholarship and contain both rough drafts and commentary. I think The Silmarilion and The Children of Hurin are the only ones that are novels and both required finishing by Christopher. Tolkien was a bit of a perfectionist and revised his works often, but also started a bunch of works that he didn't finish. However, a lot of his works were rather short, so there some of his posthumous books are just reusing previously published material. Interestingly, the most recent published book, The Bovadium Fragments, was published in 2025 after both the author and editor had died.

[Adam Scribentis]

The Silmarillion is a prose epitome of lots of "lore," not really novelistic in its style (as CRT acknowledges in the intro. to The Book of Lost Tales). The Children of Hurin is closer to what we would normally think of as a novel, although "tragic prose romance" is probably a better description. Thanks for the reference to The Bovadium Fragment, which I hadn't heard of before.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Adam Scribentis

The Silmarillion is a prose epitome of lots of "lore," not really novelistic in its style (as CRT acknowledges in the intro. to The Book of Lost Tales). The Children of Hurin is closer to what we would normally think of as a novel, although "tragic prose romance" is probably a better description. Thanks for the reference to The Bovadium Fragment, which I hadn't heard of before.

The one and only time I read The Silmarillian, I didn't like it. It wasn't a novel. It was like reading a text book.

I may take another go at it someday. I've not read any of the books published after Toklien's death.

[Sirtel]

I read the Silmarillion and liked it, but then I already knew it wasn't a novel. I haven't read any other stuff published after Tolkien's death. Not interested.

[andyh2000]

I couldn't finish the Silmarillion. It felt like reading the begats and I just gave up.

[Courant]

I really liked the Silmarillion, but it isn't for everyone. The genre is history, but not like a text book, the language is richer. It is similar to the historical books of the Bible, Herodotus or sagas like Heimskringla than to chivalric romances.