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Originally Posted by Sauron the White
I would love to see well written and carefully researched Middle-earth tales which fit in to the historical timelines that JRTT gve us. There are huge and chasmlike gaps that would make for very good stories.
I would like the author selected by the Tolkien Estate and would like that same author to recieve guidance and assistance to make sure the stories keep to the faithfulness of the ME that Tolkien created.
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This is the whole problem as I see it. This approach sidelines Tolkien, & reduces him to the status of a provider of synopses. No-one, but no-one, can write Middle-earth tales like Tolkien did - it was his creation. Its like asking for a composer to complete a few manuscript pages by Mozart, or a poet to 'finish off' a poem left unfinished by Dylan Thomas. These stories do not exist, & to get someone to knock them up is a completely pointless exercise.
Tolkien could (& did) change his creation as he wrote - everything from storylines, through characters, to the languages his characters spoke. Tolkien could take off on the maddest tangents, & make the most extreme changes (look at 'Myths Transformed). Who could be authorised to do the same kind of thing? No, what you'd get is yet more fantasy novels.
Middle-earth is JRR Tolkien, & JRR Tolkien is Middle-earth & that's the long & short of it. This is why, however you feel about the quality or otherwise of the movies, radio series or stage shows, they are not, & can never be, Middle-earth, because JRR Tolkien didn't make them. The only thing that anyone else can produce, whether authorised by the Estate or not, is a fake. I still say that those who want more M-e stories by other writers are like those who want more Dylan Thomas poems or Van Gogh paintings & decide that as there aren't any more, they'll get someone to knock up some more. The point is, however good these new M-e tales might be, they would be fakes. This is nothing more than an attempt to remove Tolkien from M-e, to treat it as though it is something that exists external to Tolkien.
Middle-earth is not a 'mythology'. Middle-earth is the vision of a man, who had specific experiences, lived in a specific time, believed specific things, a ferocious intellect who created a visionary masterpiece. 'Let's get Fred Bloggs to knock up another trillogy for the fans.' misses the point by a very, very long way.