Authorial Control and World Building

[Alcuin]

Arthur C. Clarke wrote the script of 2001: A Space Odyssey with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick; he also invented the geostationary satellite, such as weather (and spy) satellites.

Clarke’s third law,

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

sounds a lot like the confusion of Elves and Men over what Tolkien called magia versus goeteia in Letter 155 to Naomi Mitchison.
Wikipedia notes that Clark’s third law sounds a lot like American author Leigh Brackett in a short story, “The Sorcerer of Rhiannon", published in Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1942, p. 39 (I cannot find the context, nor have I read the story):

Witchcraft to the ignorant, … simple science to the learned.

Wikipedia also notes that during the Second World War, Clarke, who was British, had copies of Astounding smuggled to him by a friend because the British Government had banned their importation at the beginning of the war to make more room for food and munitions aboard ship.

Clarke served in the RAF in England during World War II. I do not know if he had any association with Tolkien; but perhaps there were friends in common. (Christopher Tolkien also served in the RAF, but in South Africa.) Whether or not this is so, I don’t think the observation that technology appeared to be “magic” was particularly novel: Edison and Tesla were both referred to as “magicians”.

Think about the technology we use every day. The internet, for one: that would look like magic to our not-so-distant forbears. Radio and television were referred to as magic: I still recall 1960s TV announcers proclaiming “the magic of television”, and I remember my mother (in the United States) weeping during the 1965 funeral of Winston Churchill, which was broadcast from London by satellite: magic. Things we consider “simple” – electric lights, air conditioners, medicines, chemistry, metallurgy, much less automobiles and airplanes and submarines and spacecraft – all things our ancestors of just a century or two ago could easily be convinced were “magic”.

Some of you may be too young to remember Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, where Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo and Raphael are teleported back to early seventeenth-century Japan along with April O’Neill. April has a Sony Walkman with her: she’s captive in the castle of the evil Lord Norinaga when her walkman starts playing. Lord Norinaga and his guards jump back in fear, and April tells the English pirate in Norinaga’s court, Captain Walker, that she’s a witch, shrank five musicians, and imprisoned them in the little box; whereupon Norinaga has the guards chop the thing into pieces.

Tolkien said several times that the over-arching theme in Lord of the Rings is death. The theme is interwoven throughout the long tale from the Silmarillion onwards: the Elves have the life of Arda: to Men, they seem immortal. In fact, as Finrod reveals to Andreth (“Debate of Finrod and Andreth”, Morgoth’s Ring), at the end of Arda, Elves, too, die. He says Elves have heard of no hope of life beyond Arda, not even from the Valar whom they knew personally; while Men have the “Old Hope”, and as Aragorn told a grieving Arwen, “We are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

In Letters 212, Tolkien wrote,

To attempt by device or “magic” to recover longevity is thus a supreme folly and wickedness of “mortals”. Longevity or counterfeit “immortality” (true immortality is beyond Ea) is the chief bait of Sauron – it leads the small to a Gollum, and the great to a Ringwraith.

And in the long Letter 131 (to Milton Waldman), he said,

[The Elves] wanted to have their cake without eating it. They wanted the peace and bliss and perfect memory of “The West”, and yet to remain on the ordinary earth where their prestige as the highest people, above wild Elves, dwarves, and Men, was greater than at the bottom of the hierarchy of Valinor. They thus became obsessed with “fading”, the mode in which the changes of time … was perceived by them. They became sad, ... and their efforts all really a kind of embalming…

…At Eregion great work began – and the Elves came their nearest to falling to “magic” and machinery. With the aid of Sauron’s lore they made Rings of Power…

The chief power (of all the rings alike) was the prevention or slowing of decay (i.e. “change” viewed as a regrettable thing), the preservation of what is desired or loved, or its semblance – this is more or less an Elvish motive. But also they enhanced the natural powers of a possessor – thus approaching “magic”, a motive easily corruptible into evil, a lust for domination.

Elves don’t want change: hence the Rings of Power. Men don’t want change, either: they fall to fear of death, envy the Elves, and the Númenóreans launch an quixotic assault upon Valinor, ending with not only the destruction of the invading armada, but the destruction of their island and a collapse of their civilization. Though they revived in the northwest of Middle-earth (Arnor and Gondor), they never overcame their fear of death, and continued to engage in futile attempts to prolong their lives.

Finrod told Andreth that for Elves,

Our hunter is slow-footed, but he never loses the trail. Beyond the day when he shall blow the mort, we have no certainty, no knowledge. And no one speaks to us of hope. … And yet at least ours is slow-footed, you would say? … True. But it is not clear that a foreseen doom long delayed is in all ways a lighter burden than one that comes soon.

I think the intent behind Tolkien’s work is the languages he created: every language needs a speaker, and the speaker needs a story. For Tolkien the philologist, how the speakers of his language perceive life and death is important to knowing how the language will change. That both longevial Elves and short-lived Men speak the same tongue, living together and witnessing the outcomes of one another’s lives and modes of living, also affects the language. Death in the near-term, opposed to hope in the long-run, is what divides the two groups; otherwise, they would be mostly indistinguishable.

[Belegorn]

I understand the machine to be those magical artifacts that allow one to do things quicker than normal, that is the enhancement of one's abilities, and also results in less of the exercise and growth of one's own inherent abilities. So here I am weilding Vilya. It enhances my own powers without any natural development on my own part.

[Gothmog, LoB]

@Alcuin:

I certainly agree with you that and Clarke that uninitiated people might see and interpret technology as 'magic' if they live in a society in which 'magic' is a thing.
I mean, one can argue that a decent portion of humanity in our day and age wouldn't cry 'Magic!' or 'Demons/gods!' if some sort of seemingly divine (extraterrestrial) entity would show up. We know there is no magic and that technology could be interpreted as magic by a culture/mindset in which magic is still thought to be *real*. But the majority of humanity is actually (or should be) beyond that point.

But I'd assume Clarke and Tolkien wouldn't be on the same page there. Clarke is writing science fiction from a modern/rational point of view. His ontology (if there is any in his stories) most likely doesn't include Cartesian dualism or anything of that sort.

Tolkien writes stories were magical creatures like elves and dwarves actually show up. Equating magic with technology in those stories would we very confusing indeed. For the reader elves, dwarves, angelic beings, etc. would be innately magical and not so because they use incredibly advanced technology.

Both magic as magic and technology as technology are essentially a thing in Tolkien's world. And thus equating or intricately connecting these two (or rather: only the negative aspects of these two as Tolkien sees them) leads to all sorts of strange effects.

For instance, the question how 'magic' as magic is working in Tolkien's world when it can be (at least partially and in its negative aspects/design) be replaced by primitive industrialization-like machines. Wouldn't Dark Lords like Sauron (and would-be Dark Lords like Saruman) use technology and magic for rather different things. Technology/machines for producing or destroying stuff on a grand scale (weapons, armor, etc.) whereas magic would still be used for all those other magical things like the Rings of Power, the palantíri, special magical blades, and so on. Not to mention that the innate 'magical power' of an Ainu would always be present in them, and enable them to create effects they would never be able to duplicate with technology and 'the Machine'.

I hope I can get across what I'm trying to say. I think the whole mortality angle is a different matter. Effects that can be accomplished by the Rings of Power aren't really possible with technology as we know it (and we can safely say that even very advanced technology wouldn't be able to affect 'the soul' because we know it doesn't exist - although, of course, advanced technology might be able to store and preserve memories, generating some sort of weird 'immortality').

If you want to write about the bad aspects of technology/machines it is a very problematic and not easily decipherable way if you do it by using magical artifacts which have powers we would usually understand as 'magical' rather than 'technological'.

Originally Posted by Belegorn

I understand the machine to be those magical artifacts that allow one to do things quicker than normal, that is the enhancement of one's abilities, and also results in less of the exercise and growth of one's own inherent abilities. So here I am weilding Vilya. It enhances my own powers without any natural development on my own part.

I get that in principle, of course. But how this is to be imagined in actuality, is my eye sight getting better, do I become quicker of mind and body, more intelligent, do I get more creative, etc. if I wear a Ring of Power? Is it really that? If so, this has little to do with technology because that only affects the outside world not what's within you - especially if we are talking about 'the Machine'.

[Belegorn]

Originally Posted by Gothmog, LoB

I get that in principle, of course. But how this is to be imagined in actuality, is my eye sight getting better, do I become quicker of mind and body, more intelligent, do I get more creative, etc. if I wear a Ring of Power? Is it really that? If so, this has little to do with technology because that only affects the outside world not what's within you - especially if we are talking about 'the Machine'.

No just a means to do things more effectively. Like a bulldozer rather than tons of men wielding shovels. I think the Rings did effect the bearers internally because for Elves they were meant to stay the fading that effected their bodies. Fading of course is the body eventually being destroyed, since they grow weaker with time. The spirit and the body of the Elves, which Finrod believed to be derived from the taint of Melkor, could not long endure together. So the body basically became but a memory held by the spirit. I think that this was the reason that mortals felt stretched while bearing these Rings because the effects were meant to be borne by immortals, not mortals. The machine, however, to me, is about the use of devices to make the use of inherent abilities more effective in their application. We are to some degree, in M-E dealing with such devices, Rings of Power.

[Marwhini]

The dangers of Post-Modernism abound. And I tend to be immediately suspect of anyone who cites Foucault.

There is a reason Tolkien placed such a heavy emphasis upon words:

They have specific meanings.

And there is a reason that "Author" and "Authority" have the same roots.

Suggesting that the Author, or the designated heir of a work, has the last word on that work, even if they are dead. Although being dead does present problems for unanswered questions, it does leave the answered questions as rather fixed.

With that in mind, there is a difference between the works of an author (an "authority" on their work/creation) who says "Things are X, Y, and Z, in this world.", and the works of an author who says "I just laid out the framework, and every reader brings something different to the work in question."

Of course these two poles are rarely absolutes, but there are authors who lie very much closer to one pole than the other.

And it very much seems that Tolkien lies very much closer to the former pole than the latter. As the context of his work forbids some interpretations (Frodo and Aragorn as Sub-Saharan Africans, or Mandarin Chinese, just as a couple of examples we can easily rule out), and it fairly closely constrains it to certain types of imagery and cultures within our world, whether allegorically, or simply as Archetypes (something Tolkien was himself unaware of, but that is irrelevant as to whether he was affected by them, just as his being unaware of how Gravity functions makes him no less affected by it).

But there remains still rather a lot of "wiggle" room for interpretation of his works.

MB

[PrinceOfTheHalflings]

Originally Posted by Alcuin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke ...

Clarke served in the RAF in England during World War II. I do not know if he had any association with Tolkien; but perhaps there were friends in common.

Arthur C. Clarke and C.S. Lewis corresponded between 1943 and 1954 (some of the letters have been published: http://www.amazon.com/Narnia-Space-O.../dp/0743475186).

Clarke met C.S. Lewis, and Tolkien was also present at one meeting. They spent an afternoon at an Oxford pub, the Eastgate, discussing various matters. Tolkien certainly read some science-fiction, and no doubt at least read Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) because it was highly praised by Lewis.

This contains many of Lewis' comments regarding that particular novel:

https://schriftman.wordpress.com/200...solute-corker/

As I recall, Clarke thought highly of The Lord of The Rings - although I can't find a specific quote, other than a quote from him comparing Frank Herbert's Dune to The Lord Of The Rings that was on the back cover of the first paperback edition of Dune around 1970:

"DUNE seems to me unique among modern sf novels in the depth of characterization and the extraordinary detail of the world it creates. I know nothing comparable to it except THE LORD OF THE RINGS."

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by PrinceOfTheHalflings

As I recall, Clarke thought highly of The Lord of The Rings - although I can't find a specific quote, other than a quote from him comparing Frank Herbert's Dune to The Lord Of The Rings that was on the back cover of the first paperback edition of Dune around 1970:

Also, in Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, Heywood Floyd references The Lord of the Rings when describing the surface of the moon Io, quoting part of the description of Orodruin:

Do you remember how I introduced you to The Lord of the Rings, when we were kids back at that Oxford conference? Well Io is Mordor: look up Part Three. There's a passage about "rivers of molten rock that wound their way . . . until they cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth." That's a perfect description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter century before anyone ever saw a picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art.

I always thought that quote was a little odd from an intertextual point of view, because I feel as if Orodruin is meant to look obscene and horrifyingly grotesque, whereas Clarke seems to be trying to convey a more neutral impression of awe at natural phenomena.

To contribute something more on-topic, Professor Tolkien's personal interpretation of the themes of his work is interesting when it appears that he to an extent sees ideas of humility and moral necessity in The Lord of the Rings not as themes in themselves but rather components of his ideas about Fall, Mortality and the Machine. This may be something not unusual with creative people, however; it is always possible that there are ideas or even stories which seem very clear to them but have not necessarily been conveyed on paper in a way which every reader will notice. I think Professor Tolkien is a minor case; I've noticed more egregious examples in interviews where defensive writers (especially for television) seem to have swathes of additional characterisation and plotting in their heads that they have never conveyed to the audience, and become frustrated when the confused audience is revealed to not be composed of mind-readers!

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

To contribute something more on-topic, Professor Tolkien's personal interpretation of the themes of his work is interesting when it appears that he to an extent sees ideas of humility and moral necessity in The Lord of the Rings not as themes in themselves but rather components of his ideas about Fall, Mortality and the Machine. This may be something not unusual with creative people, however; it is always possible that there are ideas or even stories which seem very clear to them but have not necessarily been conveyed on paper in a way which every reader will notice.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I think in the Letters, Tolkien was describing the underlying impulses that informed his story but where manifested imperfectly, or perhaps obscurely metaphorically, in the actual story itself.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

GLoB:

I think you're looking at the Machine/Magic issue a bit orthogonally, using "magic creatures" for Elves and Dwarves whereas "machines" means things that operate mechanically with cogs and gears, a primary-world frame of reference.

Think of Machines instead as "devices that harness the laws of physics for material ends"- given that in Tolkien's universe "magic" is one of the laws of physics. Elves and dragons are as natural as horses and men. In a universe so constituted, with what we call "magic" as one of the inherent forces of nature, one can build a tool or machine that uses heat, pressure, leverage, runes, spells, and/or enchantments: ultimately the issue is making a labor-saving device which alters physical reality according to one's desire, whether Grond or a Great Ring.

Magia/goetia is a bit different, since here Tolkien is talking about illusion or vision not actual physical effect. He's trying to distinguish the "deceits of the enemy"- illusions calculated to deceive, such as Sauron's trap for Gorlim - with "faerian drama" which is intended as Art even if thickheaded mortals confuse the effects as "real", and with things like the Mirror of Galadriel or the palantiri which present Truth even if in a confusing manner.

[Even that distinction isn't a bright line; the Dead Marshes could be seen as an exercise in Art according to a dark Sauronian aesthetic, whereas Finrod's "arts" disguising himself and Beren as Orcs were clearly aimed at deception]