I'm sure the following has been addressed (and driven such a cleft between Tolkien fans the likes to which only the issue of Balrog wings can compare):
Though Christopher Tolkien has forbidden it, is it possible that an uber-talented writer with a Ph.D.-level knowledge of Tolkien's legendarium/languages could contribute new tales to the Middle-Earth canon? The stories wouldn't even have to be
new per se...perhaps this imagined writer could take some of the stories from the
Silmarillion and flesh them out into fully-realized, three dimensional tales. From the creation of Arda to the dawn of the Fourth Age, Tolkien laid down about *16,000 years of history, and while we already know how all of the major conflicts are resolved, there is a virtually bottomless wealth of unmined material that the right scribe could do wonders with.
Is this something that fans would accept? Would any writer worth his/her salt be willing to undertake such an endeavor, knowing that they would be scrutinized by fans the world over for the rest of their life (just look at how many
Dune fans Frank Herbert's son has alienated)?
*Based on a timeline from The Encyclopedia of Arda (
www.glyphweb.com/arda)