"Yes, there are Orcs in it"

I thought "The Children of Hurin" was it. With its 2007 publication, the depths of J.R.R. Tolkien's excess materials had been thoroughly plumbed. Who was I kidding? At their booth, the Houghton Mifflin team proudly announced the publication this fall of "Tales from the Perilous Realm." Then, I realized that this was not a new work, but new packaging for old stories that have been around for many years, some dating to the 1940s. The book gathers several of the master's shorter works--"Farmer Giles of Ham," "Leaf by Niggle," "Smith of Wootton Major" and "Roverandom"--as well as a book of poems, "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil." On the one hand, it seems like just another publishing tactic to keep the Tolkien industry's momentum going long after fresh discoveries have dried up. On the other hand, here will be a good opportunity to reconsider some of his more obscure works.

Does Tolkien even need to have the final word on the universe he created? At the booth for Orbit Books, the publicists displayed galleys of "Orcs," which gathers a trilogy by Stan Nicholls that has sold well around the world. This will be its first U.S. publication. The striking image on the cover (right) drew a steady stream of visitors. When I approached sales director Gina Wynn, before I could even say a word, she smiled and said, "Yes, there are Orcs in it. Want a copy? I haven't been able to keep them on the shelves." If the convention response was any indication of future success, "Orcs" should do just fine this fall.

Nick Owchar

Comments

[Jake Seliger]

Funny that you should mention Children of Hurin, which was a major disappointment (see http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2007/06/15/children-of-hurin ); at least the newly packaged tales have more artistic merit, and perhaps the new packaging will bring more attention to them.

Also, if you're interested in Tolkien more generally, you might want to check out Lingwe (http://lingwe.blogspot.com ), which is run by an independent Tolkien scholar. Some of the posts on language specifics might be more esoteric than you want, but there's a lot of detail about Tolkien that's worth reading.

(Sorry for the text links -- HTML links don't seem to be enabled.)

[Matt Bell]

I haven't read "Leaf by Niggle" in years, but I definitely remember loving it at the time. Hard to say if I'd still like it as much now, but I'm interested to see a new group of readers discover it. (Although I do have to think that the main audience for these side-story books are hardcore Tolkien fans, who probably have most of these stories already anyway... Who's going to be buying this?)