Meditations on Middle-Earth Read online

  Paul Anderson was born in the United States of Scandinavian parents, hence the spelling of his first name. He majored in physics at the University of Minnesota, then went into freelance writing. In 1953 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and married Karen Kruse, with whom he worked in close consultations and sometimes collaboration. Their daughter Astrid is married to their colleague Greg Bear and has given them two grandchildren. Anderson is best known in the science fiction and fantasy fields and had received numerous honors, including seven Hugos, four Nebulas, the J. R. R. Tolkien Memorial Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Among his fantasy works are The Broken Sword, Three Hearts and Three Lions, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, The Merman’s Children, The King of Ys (with Karen Anderson), Operation Chaos, and Operation Luna. Forthcoming is Mother of Kings. He passed away on July 31, 2001.

  Michael Swanwick has received the Hugo Award for best science fiction short story in both 1999 and 2000, in addition to previous Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. He is the author of five novels and sixty short stories, all science fiction or fantasy. His most recent novel, Jack Faust, was published by Avon. He had two short story collections published in 2000: Moon Dogs, and Tales of Old Earth. A new novel, tentatively titled A Feast of Dinosaurs, will be published by HarperCollins in 2002. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Marianne Porter, and their son, Sean.

  Esther Friesner is the author of twenty-nine novels and over one hundred short stories, in addition to being the editor of six popular anthologies. Her works have been published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, Russia, France, and Italy. Her articles on fiction writing have appeared in Writer’s Market and Writer’s Digest Books. Besides winning two Nebula Awards in succession for Best Short Story (1995 and 1996, from the Science Fiction Writers of America), she was a Nebula finalist twice and a Hugo finalist once. She received the Skylark Award from NESFA and the award for Most Promising New Fantasy Writer of 1986 from Romantic Times. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two children, two rambunctious cats, and a fluctuating population of hamsters.

  Harry Turtledove was born in Los Angeles in 1949. After flunking out of Caltech, he earned a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA. He has taught ancient and medieval history at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State L.A., and has published a translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle and several scholarly articles. He is also a full-time science fiction and fantasy writer; much of his work involves either alternate histories or historically based fantasy. Most recent releases include Colonization: Down to Earth, which continues the universe established in the Worldwar books, and Darkness Descending, a high-tech fantasy, also the second in a series. His alternate-history novella, Down in the Bottomlands, won the 1994 Hugo award in its category. An alternate-history novelette, “Must and Shall,” was a 1996 Hugo and 1997 Nebula finalist. “Forty, Counting Down” was a 2000 Hugo finalist. He is married to fellow novelist Laura Frankos Turtledove. They have three daughters, Alison, Rachel, and Rebecca.

  Terry Pratchett’s acclaimed Discworld novels have topped the bestseller lists in England for more than a decade, and sold more than twenty million copies worldwide. Pratchett’s unique brand of irreverent satirical humor has placed him in the pantheon of the most celebrated practitioners of literary parody around the globe.

  Robin Hobb is the author of the Farseer Trilogy (Assassin’s Apprentice, Royal Assassin, and Assassin’s Quest) and the Liveship Traders Trilogy (Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, and Ship of Destiny). She is currently at work on The Tawny Man. Book one is titled Fool’s Errand, and will see print in January or February of 2002. She resides in Tacoma, Washington. For more information, see the Hobb website at http://robinhobbonline.com.

  Ursula K. Le Guin has published over eighty short stories, two collections of essays, ten books for children, several volumes of poetry, and sixteen novels, including the Earthsea Trilogy, The Lathe of Heaven, and The Left Hand of Darkness. Among the honors her writing has received are a National Book Award, five Hugo and four Nebula Awards, the Kafka Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Howard Vursell Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

  Diane Duane is the author of over two dozen novels of science fiction and fantasy, among them the New York Times bestsellers Spock’s World and Dark Mirror, her popular Wizard fantasy series, and Venom Factor, a Spider-Man hardcover novel, plus other novels set in the Star Trek universe. She lives with her husband, Peter Morwood—with whom she has written five novels including New York Times bestseller The Romulan Way—in a valley in rural Ireland.

  Douglas A. Anderson published his first book, The Annotated Hobbit, in 1988. He corrected text in The Lord of the Rings in both the American and English editions, and both versions contain his introductory “Note on the Text” (U.S. edition, 1987; U.K. edition, 1994). He is also the coauthor (with Wayne G. Hammond) of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Descriptive Bibliography (1993). Other books he has edited include The Dragon Path: Collected Tales of Kenneth Morris (1995) and a reissue of E. A. Wyke-Smith’s The Marvellous Land of Snergs (1996), a children’s book originally published in 1927 that provided impetus for Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

  Nobody had ever won the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel two years in a row, until Orson Scott Card received them for Ender’s Game and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, in 1986 and 1987. Xenocide (1991) and Children of the Mind (1996) continued the series, and a new novel in the Ender’s series, titled Ender’s Shadow, was published in August 1999 (Tor Books). Ender’s Game is currently in development as a film, with Card as screenwriter. Perhaps Card’s most innovative work is his American fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker, whose first five volumes, Seventh Son, Red Prophet, Prentice Alvin, Alvin Journeyman, and Heartfire, are set in a magical version of the American frontier. Card has written two books on writing: Character and Viewpoint and How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, the latter of which won a Hugo Award in 1991, and has taught writing courses at several universities and workshops. He lives with his family in Greensboro, North Carolina.

  Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and musician who presently makes his home in Ottawa, Canada, with his wife MaryAnn Harris, an artist and musician. His most recent books are the novel Forests of the Heart (Tor Books, 2000) and Triskell Tales, an illustrated collection of short stories (Subterranean Press, 2000). Other recent publications include a trade paperback reprint of his novel Svaha (Orb, 2000) as well as mass market editions of his novel Someplace to Be Flying (Tor Books, 1999) and Moon-light and Vines, a third collection of Newford stories which recently won the World Fantasy Award (Tor Books, 2000). For more information about his work, visit his website at http://www.charlesdelint.com.

  Lisa Goldstein, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award finalist, has published eight novels, the most recent being Dark Cities Underground from Tor. Her novel The Red Magician won the American Book Award for Best Paperback, and her short story collection, Travellers in Magic (Tor Books, 1994), was highly acclaimed. Her short fiction appears regularly in many publications, including Asimov’s. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and their cute dog Spark.

  Glenn Herdling discovered J. R. R. Tolkien in 1978, when he and two friends adapted The Hobbit into a comic book to help fund their eighth-grade trip to Washington D.C. As reference for the characters, he consulted the J. R. R. Tolkien calendars illustrated by the Brothers Hildebrandt. That experience led him on the path to fulfill two ambitions in life: to work in the comic book industry, and to meet and work alongside Greg and Tim Hildebrandt. While still attending Bucknell University in 1986, he began his comic book career at Marvel Comics as an editorial intern. In 1995, he left Marvel to take a job as Creative Director at the studio of the Hildebrandt brothers.

  Tim and Greg Hildebrandt were virtually unknown as artists when they won the opportunity to illustrate the 1976 Ballantine calendar based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of
the Rings. They went on to illustrate the Tolkien calendars for the next two years, with the 1978 calendar selling more than one million copies. They then illustrated the bestselling novel by Terry Brooks, The Sword of Shanarra. For the movies, they painted a poster for a 1979 re-release of Barbarella, the 1981 fantasy film The Clash of the Titans, and the world-famous poster for Star Wars. The Hildebrandts then went on to write (with Jerry Nichols) and illustrate their epic fantasy novel, Urshurak. Their most recent artbook, Star Wars: The Art of Greg and Tim Hildebrandt, was released in stores on November 17, 1997. The next one, Greg and Tim Hildebrandt: The Tolkien Years, will be published in 2001 by Watson-Guptill.

  Terri Windling is a writer, editor, painter, and a six-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, as well as a passionate advocate of fantasy literature and mythic arts. As an author, she has published The Wood Wife (winner of the Mythopoeic Award), A Midsummer Night’s Faery Tale, The Winter Child, The Raven Queen, and others, as well as a regular column on folklore and myth in Realms of Fantasy magazine. As an editor, she has created numerous anthologies, many of them in partnership with Ellen Datlow, including the Snow White, Blood Red adult fairy tales series, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror annual volumes, Sirens, The Armless Maiden, the Borderland series (for teenagers) and A Wolf at the Door (for children). Previously the Fantasy Editor for Ace Books, she has been a Consulting Fantasy Editor for the Tor Books fantasy line since 1985.

  Table of Contents

  Preface: The Beat Goes On Karen Haber

  Introduction George R. R. Martin

  Our Grandfather: Meditations on J. R. R. Tolkien Raymond Feist

  Awakening the Elves Paul Anderson

  A Changeling Returns Michael Swanwick

  If You Give a Girl a Hobbit Esther M. Friesner

  The Ring and I Harry Turtledove

  Cult Classic Terry Pratchett

  A Bar and a Quest Robin Hobb

  Rhythmic Pattern in The Lord of the Rings Ursula K. Le Guin

  The Longest Sunday Diane Duane

  Tolkien After All These Years Douglas A. Anderson

  How Tolkien Means Orson Scott Card

  The Tale Goes Ever On Charles De Lint

  The Mythmaker Lisa Goldstein

  “The Radical Distinction . . .” A Conversation with Tim and Greg Hildebrandt Glenn Hurdling

  On Tolkien and Fairy-Stories Terri Windling

  Author Biographies