[Child of the 7th Age]

Frankly, I think SpM's earlier post summed up the current situation with a fair degree of accuracy. There is little doubt as to the short-term answer to this question. There is little financial or literary reason for the Estate to open up the floodgates to one or more "authorized" extensions of Middle-earth. Whether we want more stories or hate the whole idea of any additions to the Legendarium, I doubt it's going to happen in the short term beyond what is registered on ephemeral fanfiction sites. So where does that leave us?

I would say that the ins and outs of what will happen in the next fifty years--which "products" or "expressions" are licensed and which are not-- hold only limited interest for me. What I am more interested in knowing is this: what will happen to Tolkien's writings and to Middle-earth 200 or 500 or 1,000 years from now? That seems to me a much more legitimate question, and one that does not have a clear cut answer. The Estate as a legal entity is unlikely to exist. Copyright will be gone. Will interest in Tolkien still be as strong and vibrant as it is today? Will people connect with the story and characters on some essential level, or will Middle-earth simply be regarded by a few interested scholars as a pleasant but anachronistic expression of the twentieth century?

Earlier in this thread--I am too lazy to lay my hands on it, Davem dismissed the idea that the body of Tolkien's writings could be viewed as mythology. I do not agree. I feel that if the Legendarium holds meaning -- real long term meaning that spills over into the future -- then Middle-eath will ultimately be viewed as a mythic creation rather than a series of discrete novels and poems. Interestingly, it's the work of Christopher that has made this possible. By presenting us with HoMe, we are given a wider picture of Tolkien's world than is possible from merely reading those stories that were published in the author's lifetime. It's also because of the work of scholars like Flieger and Hammond and especially Shippey. We understand to what extent Tolkien drew on existing myth and legend and history for his own subcreation, just as all true myth does.

And like other true myths, the Legendarium touches us because it explains something about how our world and feelings and values evolved. It does this by creating a world and a time that have no exact parallel in the historical framework of mankind as we know it. That is exactly what works like the Illiad and Odyssey or the Arthurian legends do. Some people see the Legendarium's meaning in the context of Christianity; others focus on faerie, on the natural world, the Norse/Finnish paradigm, or even the "post-modern" dispair of the Children of Hurin. But almost all who read Tolkien are seeing and hearing not just the specific characters he's created, but ghostly spirits of meaning that haunt the surrounding landscape.

If the Legendarium is nothing more than a number of specific, finite pieces of literature (however well crafted), then it would be inappropriate for anyone to try and write another story and say that it is a legitimate extension of Tolkien's Middle-earth. But if Middle-earth is more than that, if it comes to be regarded as myth or the creation of an alternate world, why can't we have other people continuing the same story some 500 years from now?

I'm not afraid about the quality of the stories that will be passed on. There are some dreadful retellings/extensions of the Arthurian legends, but there are also wonderful and vibrant expressions of these stories in the form of novels, poetry and drama. These adaptations have enriched our understanding; they have added to the orginal telling rather than diminished it in any way. Moreover, time and good taste has winnowed the good from the bad. We don't remember the potboilers. We do remember retellings by folk like Malory, T.H. White, Tennyson, and Charles Williams. The same is true for the ancient legends. I am willing to admit that Homer (or whoever he was) stands head and shoulders over all his later interpreters, but I wouldn't want to lose the latter, simply because they didn't supply the original genius. And, again, I don't think their adaptations in any way diminish what Homer accomplished.

Why can't it be the same for Middle-earth?