Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

Posted: **15 Sep 2008 17:41**

Sole Man wrote:
Baraka Bryan wrote:true. they'll probably come to tolkein next and try to convince him of their ability to makr money for the company. probably have it down to a formula where they can projcet the earnings of a book using variables of word-count, reading level, and font size of the series and original author's name on the cover.
I'm sure they would if Chirstopher Tolkien wasn't already doing that...

Isn't that strange? DUNE is compared to the LORD OF THE RINGS, and now we have the sons of both Authors basicaly raping the franchise for all its worth. hmm...

Er, as far as I've heard (haven't read any myself yet) Christopher Tolkien has been doing a pretty good job, and has done exactly what we have been asking KJABH to do - let people see the notes he's working from. Sounds like he's being honest about what is his own imagination and what his father himself created - I don't think he's earned being compared to BH.

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 03:12**

I've read most of Unfinished Tales, and Christopher Tolkien did some amount of editing and adding, but it blends in so well with what his father wrote you actually can't tell. I've not gotten around to the other stuff, but i would say Christopher has done a damned good job of keeping his father's legacy to the world going, whihc is the exact polar opposite to the raping and outright butchery committed by BJA.

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 03:15**

I've read the History of Middle Earth, and I actually wish BH would do what Christopher Tolkien has done - take the time to organize his father's papers, and publish them with explanatory commentary.

CT has spent years on the series, poring over manuscripts and typescripts - some barely legible after over half a century - trying to be as accurate as possible in tracing the development of his father's mythology. There was serious work involved, and he displayed nothing but respect for his father's work, and for his father's intentions as to how the work should be published.

It's not perfect, but given the immensity and complexity of the task, it will still probably be considered the definitive study of Tolkien's work on Middle-Earth. Comparing his work to KJA's rape of Dune is not at all fair to CT.

HBJ

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 03:48**

Whatever the quality of Christopher Tolkiens work, freely admitting that some things are qualified guesses, while striving hard to interpret the notes (which he published), puts him in an entirely different class than Brian.

You don't see him trying to squeeze in a story of the hobbits journey back to the shire, where they meet Belkor, who broke free and battled him using the super-secret TRUE ring of power, which is really a good thing, because sometimes you need a lot of firepower to battle evil stuff.

(The sad part is, that is not even an exaggeration).

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 04:46**

Christopher Tolkein in most cases wouldnt even take BH/KJA's phone call/Request. If he did, it would be to bring them into his spidery trap, then he would smack them senseless, giv'm a good wedgy and send them on their way for the desecration they have done to Dune.

In the pizzaro world, He might take their calls, and Im sure BH/KJA would do some kind of alternate ending or alternate thread, where Aragorn or Boramir, maybe even Lady Galadriel takes the ring of power, relieveing frodo of it, and march across the lands to eventual ruin.

or something stupid like that.

Trang.

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 08:04**

The key word here is...work. It would take REAL WORK to organize FH's materials and publish them. REAL WORK to create a concordance of the Dune books (just the REAL ones, the ones by FH).

Brian seemingly doesn't have it in him, either intellectually or otherwise, to do the job. Kevin isn't even interested. (It would be "boring", like all that Tolkien shit. And where's the creativity? Where could Kevin express his creativity?!

) And obviously no one in the rest of the family (the HLP) has the intelligence or strength of character to force Brian to let someone else do it.

Ah, the worthy descendants....

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 12:15**

SandChigger wrote:Brian seemingly doesn't have it in him, either intellectually or otherwise, to do the job. Kevin isn't even interested.

Completely agree, Chig. I doubt that Brian is capable of doing a "History of Dune" series. KJA wouldn't be interested because it wouldn't sell as well as 47 cheesy Dune add-ons that only take a few months to write.

And to be honest, the HoME series probably wasn't a huge financial success, I don't think. The books weren't huge bestsellers, because they didn't have a wide appeal. They weren't fiction, they were a scholarly analysis of a whole bunch of drafts of the same set of stories. It takes an author and a publisher capable of looking beyond the numbers to publish something like that.

Given the opportunity to publish a NYT bestseller (or whatever), do you think KJA's ego will let him pass that up in favour of a more scholarly, respected work?

Do I really have to answer that question?

HBJ

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 14:50**

Sorry, I was thinking of the CHILDREN OF HURIN (Or whatever it supposed to be) Wasn't that exactly like the unfinshed tales of something, I don't know...

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 19:08**

Hunchback Jack wrote:...take the time to organize his father's papers, and publish them with explanatory commentary.

CT has spent years on the series, poring over manuscripts and typescripts - some barely legible after over half a century - trying to be as accurate as possible in tracing the development of his father's mythology. There was serious work involved, and he displayed nothing but respect for his father's work, and for his father's intentions as to how the work should be published.

It's not perfect, but given the immensity and complexity of the task, it will still probably be considered the definitive study of Tolkien's work on Middle-Earth. Comparing his work to KJA's rape of Dune is not at all fair to CT.

HBJ

I have been always saying that at DN.

What C. Tolkien have been done with the J.R.R. Tolkien should be a example to be followed by B.H. However I think everybody here had shown that he isn't capable of that.

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 19:40**

Sole Man wrote:Sorry, I was thinking of the CHILDREN OF HURIN (Or whatever it supposed to be) Wasn't that exactly like the unfinshed tales of something, I don't know...

Yes and no.

Tolkien started to write a greatly expanded version of the Children of Hurin, but never completed it. He intended this version to be published separately from The Silmarillion (which includes a shorter version of the same story). What was completed of this expanded tale was included in Unfinished Tales.

The Children of Hurin book is CT's attempt to construct a complete, expanded narrative of the tale, as his father intended, using existing material. It is basically the Unfinished Tales version, with material from The Silmarillion and other incomplete versions, to fill in the gaps. All the material originates from JRRT manuscripts, and CT does very little editing. As a result, some chapters are very detailed, while others (taken from shorter accounts) remain very brief.

You could argue that the whole exercise wasn't really necessary, as the constituent material was already published in different places. I think it's nice to have a single, complete, expanded narrative of the tale, but I agree there's no new material to justify it.

What is clear, however, is that CT was guided by immense respect for his father's intentions and his work. He invented nothing, added nothing, and tried to keep his editorial changes to a minimum.

HBJ

Posted: **16 Sep 2008 19:51**

History will not look kindly upon the HLP, Hack #1, and The Other Guy, especially when compared to how many other literary estates have managed to respect and protect their properties.

If they think they're being vilified now, they need only wait a few years. Once F/SF scholars and researchers clue in to how the HLP basically hired a hack whose only redeeming feature is that he is a fast "writer" (allowing them all to cash one check per year), everyone involved in the enterprise is going to need to wear asbestos undies to ward off the flames.

Posted: **17 Sep 2008 09:28**

There will be no bashing of Chris Tolkien!

While he be "milking" his father's universe and franchise, he does it in a very professional manner. He's published some of the best writing I've ever read. He never claims to be the author of any of the content (aside from commentary) in the HoME series, and for the writings that aren't his father's (CoH, Silm), he freely admits it to be his own, while providing his father's writing elsewhere verbatim.

Admittedly, he has an advantage... he likely has a lot more old material to work with than BH/KJA supposedly do (actually, has anyone ever seen this supposed notes? DUN DUN DUN!), but he does it in a much better manner than the nuDune authors.

Rock on Chris. \m/ Book of Lost Tales 4 life

Posted: **18 Sep 2008 14:43**

OK - so this is beating my own drum. But I know some people know have met with arnoldo and might find this funny. He did his usual 'throw latin fallacies at the argument' when he had no real response.

Lundse

Lundse2 wrote:Re. "plurium interrogationum".

I have actually taught argumentative theory (and formal logic) two semesters at university level - and I think I have yet to see you use any term correctly.

This is a great example...

-

The fallacy of the complex question (let's use the English terms for now, shall we?) is a way to sneak in a premise and you then accuse me (in other terms, for once) of strawmanning you.

This is not the same thing.

If I ask a loaded question, I am trying to somehow force you to agree to a premise burried, either explicitly or implicitly, in that question.
If I am strawmanning you, I represent you stance as weaker than it is, or just assume a weaker version of it and answer directly.

I did neither.

I did not ask a loaded question, but rather a pointed one:
Quote:
'...am I wrong that one does not need to outlaw cell phones if you are afraid of monstrous robots, or do you believe a cell phone can spontaneously transform (tm) into one?'

There is nothing buried in this, you do not have to accept any premise to understand it. There is, of course, a hidden analogy from cell phones to other, comparable cases - but there is nothing in the question which makes the assumption that all cases are analogous and you could, in fact, raise a valid response to it that there exists such non-analogous cases (you didn't, and I don't think you will).
The question actually works as a reductio ad absurdum - if your claim is really that one needs (as they did in the dune universe) to outlaw all machines in order to make sure they do not turn into a murderous, planet-spanning AI, then it would follow that such machines could somehow spontaneously transform into such a robotic murderer.

I did not make a strawman of your argument either, because I was asking you about it. If I had assumed (consciously) that your argument was weaker than it is, then I would be commited that fallacy. I did not, I was actually trying to reconstruct your argument as best I could - and I was asking if I got it right!!! If there was something I missed, please let me know.

PS: And please, please, start of at the easier end of the fallacies, if you have to quote them - I am not grading your homework again.
PPS: http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~walton/papers%2 ... terrog.pdf

Posted: **18 Sep 2008 14:48**

Arguing with arnoldo is like being in the special olympics, no matter who wins, you're still retarded.

Posted: **18 Sep 2008 15:12**

That guy is FUCKING HOPELESS. He stays just close enough to the line that it's easy to forget that he is honestly just trying to get a rise out of you. He will argue anything just to get people riled up, he is a grand master level troll.

I was honestly surprised when you forced him to admit he was full of shit when he said the existance of Israel prooves that YHWH is real. I was shocked when he withdrew the comment, he usually just keeps twisting the topics forever and refuses to amit defeat - if defeated he generally just stops posting in the thread.

Posted: **18 Sep 2008 22:47**

arnoldo was much more interesting when I believed that he might be a masters student researching the sociology and exchange patterns on Internet forums.

That explanation no longer seems plausible.

He's a troll, period. It's a waste of your good time even responding to him.

Posted: **18 Sep 2008 22:57**

SandChigger wrote:arnoldo was much more interesting when I believed that he might be a masters student researching the sociology and exchange patterns on Internet forums.

That explanation no longer seems plausible.

He's a troll, period. It's a waste of your good time even responding to him.

+1

Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

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