83 years ago, Tolkien’s first novel, The Hobbit, appeared in Middle-earth. “The Lord of the Rings” followed 17 years later and the blueprint for modern fantasy literature was created. The author died 47 years ago. But although Tolkien is no longer with us, another book will appear in June 2021. It contains a lot of documents written by Tolkien that have so far remained closed to the public.
The font collection goes by the name of The Nature of Middle-Earth and does not tell a real story as we know it from other legacies such as the Silmarillion or Beren and Lúthien. Instead, be very here answered many open questions about the most famous fantasy world of all time
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Which questions should the book answer?
As with the numerous works that were published after Tolkien’s death, The Nature of Middle-Earth consists of the records that Tolkien kept throughout his life. A lot of them have already been published, but obviously not all. The Publishing Director Chris Smith denotes the new book as a “veritable treasure trove that allows the reader to look over Pr ofessor Tolkien’s shoulder as she is discovered.”
These questions should be answered among others:
- How does the immortality and rebirth of the elves work?
- What are the Valar (godlike spirits) exactly?
- What did the lands of the fallen Númenor look like and what creatures lived there?
- What exactly do the lands of Gondor look like geographically?
- Which peoples of Middle-earth can grow beards?
A couple of these questions are more hotly debated among Tolkien fans than one might think. Especially the question of bearded dwarf women has been asked a lot since the filming of “The Two Towers”. Whether this specific question is really answered exactly remains to be doubted.
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What could this book mean for pc gamers?
Of course there are also – or especially among PC players – a lot of Lord of the Rings fans. But the announcement of this new book could be very exciting for us for another reason. Video games in particular, regardless of whether they are mods or official versions, can benefit from an even more detailed representation of Middle-earth.
After all, games like The Lord of the Rings Online, The War in the North or the Shadow of Mordor let us explore places and relive events that were only marginally or not at all taken up in the novels. In order to present them as accurately as possible, developers fall back on such compilations from Tolkien’s pen. Just take the massive Middle-earth map that was recreated by fans in Minecraft:
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We may soon recognize a few details in some future games that were revealed in Nature of Middel-Earth.
