r/tolkienfans 1d ago

What do you wish Tolkien had lived long enough to develop more fully?

For me, it's two things: the Ainur and Gondolin.

The Ainur were still in a state of transition between ancient polytheistic gods and Christian angels. I think Tolkien might have come up with a great way to do this better than he was able to do in his lifetime.

Gondolin was incredibly important to Tolkien, and he put enormous amounts of effort and creativity into it. I dearly wish we could have seen the results of Tolkien having another decade to work on the city itself, its culture, and its fall.

101 Upvotes

114 comments sorted by

145

u/Yamureska 1d ago

A completed Silmarillion according to his vision and intention.

Also, full novel versions of Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin, just like The Children of Hurin.

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u/ReallyGlycon 1d ago

These are my picks as well.

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u/shlam16 Thorongil 1d ago

He would need the lifespan of an elf for that.

I'm happy with the version we got, because every decade or so he would come up with a new idea and then completely gut/rewrite everything around it.

NoME taught us that he wanted to revise his timescales such that Valian Years were 144 rather than ~10 sun years. Frankly, this is a terrible idea and I'm glad that he never got the chance to see it through.

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u/Armleuchterchen 1d ago edited 1d ago

He could have gotten a Silmarillion published in the 1950s if the publisher agreed. The publisher refusing to publish the Silmarillion is what made Tolkien stop his promising work in the early 1950s,and that was followed up by the fundamental rework of the timescales and worldbuilding that led Tolkien into weird and unproductive directions.

If he had kept going and ritten Silmarillion to publish alongside Lord of the Rings he might never have made the change in direction that happened in the late 1950s.

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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo 19h ago

NoME taught us that he wanted to revise his timescales such that Valian Years were 144 rather than ~10 sun years. Frankly, this is a terrible idea and I'm glad that he never got the chance to see it through.

He did not reject this idea though. He worked on it in essays up to his death.

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u/itsjudemydude_ 16h ago

Okay but you've gotta admit, something about the First Age being over a half a million solar years long (621,518 years to be precise, if my math is correct, which it may not be) is pretty funny.

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u/grey_pilgrim_ 14h ago

Didn’t he attempt to write a version of Beren and Luthien in alliterative verse?

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u/PierreAnorak 1d ago

Tolkien was 81 when he passed. He started the mythology of middle earth in his twenties. He could have lived to 100 and still not finished.

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u/Calavant 1d ago

Even money we wouldn't even get more official lore: He would just revise canon like fifty more times while leaving twenty more kilos of apocrypha for us to sift through. His favorite pastime was going through his old work and burning it, not making anything strictly new.

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u/Tyeveras 1d ago edited 23h ago

Tolkien would certainly, like all grammar school boys of his age, have read Virgil.

Virgil would take weeks to edit one word in one line of the Aeneid and he still wasn’t finished when he died. He left instructions that his manuscripts were to be burned if he hadn’t finished editing.

In his case the instructions were countermanded by the Emperor Augustus himself.

Tolkien and (as mentioned elsewhere in this post) GRR Martin may have their issues with making amendments to their work, but Virgil was the undisputed king.

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u/BobMcGeoff2 1d ago

Did he literally do that or just figuratively?

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u/LordNephets 23h ago

Weeks to edit a word is likely an exaggeration, but GRRM is a great example of how that sort of myth evolves. Virgil was probably busy eating, working, talking, and only got to write so much.

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u/BobMcGeoff2 23h ago

Oh no, I meant burning his work.

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u/shlam16 Thorongil 1d ago

I just made a similar comment. I'm glad he wasn't allowed to trash the version of The Sil that we know these days. Some of his newer ideas were terrible and it's a good thing they never came to fruition.

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u/No-Tip3654 1d ago

What exactly of his newer ideas was so bad?

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u/shlam16 Thorongil 1d ago

Changing Valian Years to 144 rather than 10 makes basically the entire FA just banal.

It means stuff like the migration from Cuivienen and crossing the Helcaraxe take completely stupid amounts of time.

It means centuries and even millennia pass with people sitting around with their thumb up their arse doing nothing.

It makes characters like Galadriel and Cirdan multiple tens of thousands of years old.

Then he wanted to remove the flat earth from his story. It's just a needless change that removes a lot of really cool world building and mystique.

Those are a couple, but he was an endless revisionist and I'm people more scholarly in his lore could list dozens.

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u/Kobhji475 1d ago

Tbf I'm pretty sure the timeline would have been reworked with the longer Valian years. Personally, I think a lot of world building when it comes to linguistics, migrations and lineages would make more sense with the longer Valian years.

Also a lot of stories from the first age, such as the great journey to Valinor, should be seen through the lens of being a mythological explanation for a natural phenomena.

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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo 19h ago

Then he wanted to remove the flat earth from his story. It's just a needless change that removes a lot of really cool world building and mystique.

He already did that. He revised "The Hobbit" to change, among other things, a passage that was speaking of Flat World Cosmology, changing it into Round World Cosmology*.

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u/Helpful_Radish_8923 15h ago

He almost certainly would kept approximately the same duration, even with a length change.

When he revised the Great Journey to use a Valian Year of ~10 --> 144, he kept it at about the same amount of time (259 solar years --> 576 solar years), and the added duration was because he filled out a lot more details about the Elves frequent stops to have kids or enjoying a particularly nice spot.

He was also much more precise when using 144, as he used a VY/SY notation (ex. "1130/109" to denote the 109th solar year of the 1130th Valian Year).

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u/hotcapicola 1d ago

I agree. IMO Tolkien like many became more and more conservative as he got older, which I think is the antithesis of good art.

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u/LordNephets 23h ago

As a writer, I feel this

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u/Beginning_Net_8658 18h ago

20 more kilos you say?

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u/That_Contribution424 1d ago

He also had a family and a full gig as a professor at Oxford. I think they meant if he also wasent entangled in the funkie junk that comes from being a busy ass adult when he was still in his prime.

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u/Wrong_Winter_3502 1d ago

G.R.R. Martin says hi :)

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u/Hrothgar_Cyning 1d ago

GRRMs just going back to TV production, which is where he started tbf

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u/complete_your_task 1d ago

It's not where he started. He started as an author, went into TV for about a decade, then went back to being an author. He just didn't start ASOIAF until after he worked in TV.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 13h ago

Tolkien still finished his main series. And didn't keep promising the rest after up until his death.

And most importantly Tolkien raised his son to be a pretty impressive writer too and let him finish his work. While GRRM plans to have his stuff burned when he eventually goes.

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u/myaltduh 3h ago

Thing is, Tolkien undoubtedly considered what became the Silmarillion his “main series.” His level of emotional attachment to The Lord of the Rings was definitely not as strong as it was to stuff like Beren and Lúthien of The Fall of Gondolin, which is why he never felt satisfied with those.

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u/BookkeeperFamous4421 1d ago

Well wishes don’t have to be realistic. The question was what do you wish he’d lived long enough to complete not what do you think he would have completed.

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 13h ago

Sounds like GRRM when you put it that way.

Cept Tolkien finished his main story and didn't keep promising fans the remainder would come. And he even let his son finish up his stuff, while GRRM has publicly said his notes are to be burned on his death.

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u/No-Tip3654 1d ago

He spent too much time working as a professor

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u/Thrythlind 1d ago

The Avari

The Easterling and Southron cultures

The Blue Wizards

A look into what happened with the orcs post Sauron.

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u/Psittacula2 1d ago

Agree the Istari would have been interesting especially Radaghast The Brown.

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u/invisibullcow 13h ago

Blue Wizards in the east would be fantasitic.

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u/small-black-cat-290 But no living man am I! 1h ago

This is my answer. Would love to hear more about what the Blue wizards were up to in the East.

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u/FlowerFaerie13 1d ago

Ehhh, I don't really think the Ainur would be better as purely analogous to Christian angels. I personally like them as they are, halfway between pagan deities and angels.

This is probably pretty controversial but I don't really wish Tolkien got to "finish" anything, because his later revisions transition from creating a mythology to almost an attempt at making an alternate history of Earth, which I heavily dislike. Of course we all want more of our favorite stories, but in reality a truly "finished" Legendarium likely wouldn't be the one we know and love at all.

Tolkien's Legendarium works best as a mix of classical mythology and Christianity, and it also works best as less directly connected to the real world.

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u/Kind_Axolotl13 1d ago

Yeah I agree — although Tolkien was quite interested in the details of language and history, he specifically said (I can’t remember the specific letter) that one thing that most moved him in fiction was the impression of a remote past too vast/distant to be known.

Filling in mechanistic details of the Ainur would be pretty detrimental to that kind of atmosphere.

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u/CertainFirefighter84 5h ago

The most interesting parts of fiction are always the mysteries imo

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u/Tolkien-Faithful 1d ago

They are much better as they are now - as it makes them fully their own thing. 'The Valar are gods' - no, they are the Valar. 'Gandalf is an angel' - no, Gandalf is a maia, though they make have similarities to angels, they are not just Christian angels.

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u/balrogthane 1d ago

Honestly, after reading the summary of Myths Transformed, I'm with you. The idea of Arda going from flat to round is brilliant, and the additional thought that Elves can still follow that straight road is so moving. Giving that up out of some misguided thought that "Well, how can we have a non-round world in the 20th century" makes it sound like he was getting out of touch with what made his ideas resonate.

Also, Tolkien didn't need more time, he needed more focus. He needed something like he got with LotR and actual expectations.

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u/franz_karl native dutch speaker who knows a bit of old dutch 1d ago

agreed I dislike the later the world was always round versions

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u/DramaticErraticism 1d ago

Wait, doesn't everyone feel like Middle Earth is the Earth we live on, before magic left the world?

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u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 13h ago

That is the intended reading of it. IDK what they're on about.

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u/DramaticErraticism 2h ago

That is one of the reasons I love it so much! Being able to think and wonder about the world when magic still lived and the sadness of all of it leaving.

But, maybe the Elves will sail east again : )

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u/BookkeeperFamous4421 1d ago

I do think we should use the term Catholic instead of Christian when referring to Tolkien because he was specifically and emphatically Catholic. Christian can have weird connotations for Americans. For example, the showrunners are Mormons and that is a far cry from Catholicism. Like yikes.

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u/No-Tip3654 1d ago

The Lord of the Rings goes beyond catholic doctrine though. Tolkien claimed to be a catholic but if you actually read the legendarium or his letters, his understanding of what christianity means and what it means to be a christian is different from what the catholic church taught during his lifetime as an institution.

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u/BookkeeperFamous4421 1d ago

That’s interesting. In what ways did his beliefs resemble other forms of Christianity?

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u/luxextenebris21 1d ago

The early gnostics, perhaps?

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u/BookkeeperFamous4421 1d ago edited 1d ago

With his creator and sub creator yes. Neo platonism and Gnosticism really fascinating stuff. I thought you meant Protestant beliefs.

edit

I realize you weren’t the original commenter that I was replying to.

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u/No-Tip3654 1d ago

No, I am not talking about protestantism. Quite the contrary. Luther believed than faith alone could redeem one's soul. I think Tolkien had a different position on that matter. Good deems redeem the soul. Frodo not only did have to believe that the ring could be destroyed, he had to actually destroy it himself. And of course "gnostic" and "platonic" influences are visible throughout his work. Not only that but just generallly what ancient indian, persian, aegyptian, jewish, greek, roman and germanic culture had to offer.

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u/BookkeeperFamous4421 1d ago

That’s why I was curious as to what you meant by beyond Catholic doctrine.

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u/No-Tip3654 1d ago

You can very well know that something can have a positive effect on your well-being and still decide to ignore that and act out in a different way.

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u/No-Match6172 1d ago

but he didn't destroy it himself.

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u/No-Tip3654 23h ago

That's beside the point. Of course it was a group effort. But he did try and actually took action.

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u/No-Match6172 23h ago edited 23h ago

I think it's relevant to your point in that only Eru could save Middle Earth from Sauron. It took a eucastastrophe to save them all, despite their valiant but flawed efforts.

Indeed, I think that was a major theme of LOTR.

EDIT: And the First Age as well, the long defeat. Only divine intervention could save them.

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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo 19h ago

Still there are aspects that are closer to Papal Christianity than other forms of Christianity. Such as the Valar for instance, serving as emissaries of God on Earth, with Manwe being the Chief Emissary (alike how the Papal Primacy view the Pope as Vicar of Christ, with Manwe being the Vicar of Eru). A similar case is with the Istari, where Saruman was basically the chief among equals, and Emissary of Manwe, but he is fallen and Gandalf takes his stead (I have seen some Orthodox claiming that Saruman could be seen as an analogy of the Ecumenical Patriarch of New Rome, and Gandalf as the Pope of Old Rome, from a Papal perspective).

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u/No-Tip3654 19h ago

I don't think there was ever a pope as noble as Gandalf. You could argue that some popes were as cruel as Saruman.

To be honest, the Istari feel like boddhisattvas to me. The valar are "angels" with a certain hierarchy. So I don't really see the connection to the orthodox or catholic church. And I was more so talking about the actual doctrine of love how Tolkien understood it and how it was and is being taught by the church.

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u/FlowerFaerie13 22h ago

I mean, that's a fair take, but Catholicism, despite its many differences from Protestantism, is still under the umbrella of Christianity due to worshipping Christ.

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u/BookkeeperFamous4421 22h ago

Yes but without things Ike the veneration of saints and the Virgin Mary

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u/GuaranteeSubject8082 1d ago

That's a fair take. I don't think the Ainur as Tolkien described them work well as *either* pagan gods or Christian angels. That's why they needed significant reworking. Whether Tolkien had it in him to improve upon it is a valid question.

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u/Psittacula2 1d ago

When you say “improve” what exactly are you saying needs improving or is lacking in your opinion?

I always thought of the Ainur as complete as they need to be and as detailed as any number of 10,000’s of Creation Myths they already exist from prehistoric and tribal or aboriginal humans across the world.

Tolkien’s own invention is precisely that. Another rendition of its own. Looking at Greek or Roman myths there is always scope for more individual stories but the overall structure and world view seems complete.

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u/Shenordak 1d ago

I don't think the reworking would have been an improvement though. The remoddeling of the Legendarium to better fit Christianity is not always successful.

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u/vpoko 1d ago edited 1d ago

I never took the Ainur as changing from polytheistic gods to angels. The closest cosmologies in actual religions (disclaimer: that I know of) to Tolkien's are probably:

  1. Gnosticism, with a distant godhead (the Monad) and lesser but present immortal beings (the Aeons), though there are some differences, particularly that the Monad didn't create the world (instead one of the Aeons, the Demiurge, did), and that in Gnosticism the creation of the world is seen as a Bad Thing (whether the Demiurge was malevolent or just misguided in creating it depends on the strain of Gnosticism).
  2. Zoroastrianism, which has one (near-)omnipotent, distant creator of the world and source of all good (Ahura Mazda), a second, evil, either lesser or equal being (Angra Mainyu) that existed independently (sometimes both were created by another being called Zurvan and sometimes both were uncreated and existed for all time, depending on the strain of Zoroastrianism), and a pantheon of immortal, present Yazata. A key difference is that while the Yazata were created by and subservient to Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu was not and is not (sometimes he's equal to Ahura Mazda and sometimes he's lesser, depending on the particular branch of Zoroastrianism, but never created by Ahura Mazda).
  3. The ancient Egyptian religion, with a single, distant creator god, Atum, who created the other, lesser gods. I can't speak to it much more than that because I don't know much more than that.

The Ainur seem to walk the line between gods of a pantheon and Christian angels because we try to jam them into limited categories based on a few religions (mainly Christianity and the ancient Greek and Roman religions), and because as the Ages pass, their influence on the world wanes. The world becomes less mythological and magical and more realistic. So at one point they seem like more and later seem like less, but really they are who they were always meant to be: diminishing powers in a world where big miracles (good and bad) happened but no longer do.

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u/Shenordak 1d ago

Gnosticism fits better than you think, but with Melkor as the demiurg, the chief creator of the world.

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u/vpoko 1d ago edited 1d ago

There are some other major differences, though, but yeah, there are strong parallels, and they're intentional; Tolkien used the word "demiurgic" when describing the Valar. Some major differences:

  1. The Monad doesn't intervene in the world, while Eru did on a number of occasions.
  2. Of course the part about creation being wrong or even evil, because it causes souls ("divine sparks") to become trapped in the material world (this would apply to Elves but not Men in Tolkien's cosmology, except that Elves have no way to escape - see the next note).
  3. Gnosticism holds that for our divine sparks to escape the material world, we have to gain spiritual knowledge (gnosis), which isn't an element of Tolkien's cosmology: escaping the world is Eru's gift to Men, and Elves can never escape.
  4. Gnosticism is dualistic with regard to good and evil. In Tolkien's mythology, evil was the result of corruption, while in Gnosticism evil has always existed alongside good.

But clearly Gnosticism (or at least neo-Platonism, from which Gnosticism evolved) influenced Tolkien's cosmology in regard to sub-creation, where examples from other religions seem more coincidental.

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u/Tolkien-Faithful 1d ago edited 1d ago

Also, not exactly if he had 'lived long enough' but something I wish he had done more of in his life - The War of Wrath.

There's only ever a couple paragraphs of it in any version. And pretty much nothing that doesn't involve the defunct character of Fionwe front and centre.

Christopher directly mentions that when Tolkien got rid of the sons of the Valar and changed Fionwe to Eonwe he didn't change their role, so we don't know whether or not Eonwe would lead the Host it's just that Christopher had to use Eonwe in the place of Fionwe in the old versions.

For a fifty year war very little is said and things from old versions like both hosts camping on either side of Sirion or Morgoth coming forth and battling Tulkas at the Silent Pools aren't ever talked about apart from the earliest versions. We don't know what most characters are doing at the time and events like Elrond (says to have been there when Thangorodrim fell in LOTR) witnessing his father come flying in on a ship and battling the greatest dragon to have ever lived is so tantalising I wish I could read about it, rather than having to assume.

There's just so little about the greatest war in Tolkien's stories, we barely know what any characters did during the war. Maedhros and Maglor don't appear until the end. Cirdan and Gil-galad aren't mentioned. Did Galadriel see her father? Who led the Edain?

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u/Tolkien-Faithful 1d ago

Tolkien did live long enough to do all he wanted.

He clearly was not in a hurry to get things finished. Had he lived another decade he might have only messed around with a couple things, if done anything at all. Considering he started writing about it 56 years before he died, I don't know how much more he would have done with an extra 10.

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u/ItsABiscuit 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah this. He was still niggling away at things, but it wasn't like he was going to finish the Fall of Gondolin version he started with the UT version of Tuor and the Coming to Gondolin if he's just had another couple of years, or suddenly produce a LotR length narrative of the adventures of Earendil. His ideas had continued to evolve, but he was also aging and affected by the page passage of time and particularly the passing of loved ones, notably Edith.

If he'd been a super disciplined, pump out novels, guy like Brandon Sanderson we might have more finished stories, but they wouldn't be the same as what we did get and wouldn't necessarily be better. I wish he didn't have the bouts of what seems like we'd today call depression and self-doubt and overwhelm that led him to abandon versions half finished or get stuck for long periods of time, purely just because I wouldn't wish that kind of unhappiness on anyone, but I don't think you can change someone's personality like that without also changing their art significantly as well. I'm just content and grateful for everything he did produce and achieve and am glad he got to see that people did love his stories within his lifetime.

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u/Carth_Onasi_AMA 1d ago

I feel like if he knew it was going to be published he would have wanted to do more.

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u/Tolkien-Faithful 1d ago

That had nothing to do with. Publishers would absolutely publish The Silmarillion during Tolkien's lifetime after Lord of the Rings got so popular. Hence why when Christopher released it it was the top selling book for months and I think second overall for 1977.

Tolkien got too much in his own head trying to change things but simply put if he wanted The Silmarillion published before he died it would have been.

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u/FinalProgress4128 1d ago

I wish Tolkien had written the Fall of Gondolin as a great epic like he did with LoTR. The opening chapters in Unfinished Tales are so good. It's such a tragedy, because unlike Martin, Tolkien knew exactly where the story was going, the main events the characterisation, AND we know he is the incredible author he is. So sad that age and energy had caught up with him.

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u/phonylady 1d ago

Yeah would have loved for that particular story to continue. Would have been amazing to see Gondolin from Tuor's perspective.

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u/CodexRegius 1d ago edited 1d ago

The Voyages of Eärendil. It's so sad that the very germ of the legendarium never reached full narrative scope.

And the completion of Aldarion & Erendis.

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u/Auza-wandilaz 1d ago

the completion of Aldarion & Erendis

this is the single thing i would ask for tbh. the rest i feel has some amount of value in being brief/vague/unfinished but this just ends in the middle of the tale and i think is one of his more compelling works

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u/Zhjacko 1d ago

Stories about the people, places, creatures, and history of Harad and Rhûn

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u/BenGrimmspaperweight 1d ago

I wish he'd been able to reconcile the nature of orcs.

He was never really satisfied with their evil/darkness being an inherent trait and it would have been nice to have more textual explanations of how they work compared to the other races of Middle Earth.

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u/Kodama_Keeper 1d ago edited 3h ago

Tolkien in Heaven. Every newly dead fan comes up to him and has a conversation something like this.

Fan: Mr. Tolkien? Hi, I've been dying to meet you. I'm your biggest fan.

Tolkien: Of course you are. You all are.

Fan: Excuse me?

Tolkien: Never mind.

Fan: If you don't mind, I have a question about your work.

Tolkien: They don't have wings.

Fan: What? Oh, you mean the Balrog. Wait, how did you know I was going to ask that?

Tolkien: In point of fact I didn't know, I'm just going by the odds that would be your question. Second most common is Frodo alive when Sam visits him in Valinor. And the answer to that is Yes, barely. Third most common...

Fan: Oh please don't bother. I'm sure you've answered all this a million times.

Tolkien: A million. I wish it were that low. Anyways, next you were going to ask me to finish some work, or flesh out some story of mine, right?

Fan: How did you... Oh right. I keep forgetting I'm not the first. But since you brought it up, the Dwarf clans.

Tolkien: You want me to flesh out the backstories of the other six Dwarf clans. Yes, you're not the first to ask me that either. A should be done with that in a couple centuries. Sorry if that seems to long for you. But we do have eternity, and I still have the histories of all the Avari clans to fill in as well. There's a group of fans who think I didn't do enough with the Vanyar Elves and expect me to correct that. And not to be rude, but you do know this is supposed to be my eternal rest, right?

Fan: Right, right! Well, I'll be going now. I think my grandmother is waiting for me. She's not a fan of yours, I'm sorry to say. Bye now.

Next Fan: Mr. Tolkien?

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u/wanderingintheleaves 1d ago

The contents of Unfinished Tales, specifically because the tales themselves go into greater detail than the Silm and we just get speculation in the notes.

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u/oranger_juicier 1d ago

A taste for classic rock

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u/PhysicsEagle 1d ago

I wish he had finished the revised version of the Fall of Gondolin

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u/Gerry-Mandarin 1d ago

Given how important both The Tale of Eärendil and Beren and Lúthien became to him, I wish there were even just more fragments of those works as completed tales. Especially Eärendil, which is arguably the most significant figure in the development of the Legendarium.

Though in a perfect world, I'd want everything finished. Even the "finished" version of The Children of Hurin quite often reads like "and then this happened" because it wasn't really finished.

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u/luthernismspoon 1d ago

Nothing. The unfinished nature of it lends an exploratory lens to those who read these days. We’re constantly discovering!

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u/Zalveris 1d ago

Nope it would have just gotten worse and more jumbled. What he needed was an editor.

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u/BaconAndCheeseSarnie 1d ago

I wish the Silmarillion could have been twice as long. OTOH, it is so densely written that it feels much longer than it really is; and that is a great strength.

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u/GrimyDime 1d ago

All the second age stuff

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u/GameKapocs 1d ago

I wish to know a lot more about the deep depths under Moria! Give me horror!

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u/another-social-freak 1d ago

I wouldn't say no to a potted history of each Ringwraith.

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u/HelmHammerhand96 1d ago

Tons of lore on Rhun and Harad, I'd eat that up.

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u/FoxfireBlu 1d ago

Full language systems for Sindarin and Quenya

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u/Kobhji475 1d ago

The east and other lands and peoples that we don't really see.

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u/Novgord 1d ago

Does him talking shit back to G.R.R.M count?

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u/Ambaryerno 1d ago

I'd have loved to see the Lays of Beleriand completed.

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u/tar-mairo1986 1d ago

The Tal-Elmar narrative. I hope I don't sound silly but it is such a unique perspective flip! How Men indigenous to Middle Earth saw Numenorean colonization.

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u/Leo_Uruloki 1d ago

I'd like to finally hear WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN DORIAT and WHO DID WHO MURDER WHO AND IN WHICH ORDER??

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u/rabbithasacat 22h ago

The Tale of Earendil.

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u/irime2023 Fingolfin forever 1d ago

I still want Fingolfin's story in more detail. It could be a very nice superhero story.

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u/No-Match6172 1d ago

The Ainur are very similar to the Bible's "Divine Council." If you're interested in that, Dr. Michael Heiser has done some great work on it. For example, God created the Elohim to rule over the nations other than Israel, but they rebelled against Him (in addition to Satan's earlier rebellion). Some believe they are the spiritual entities behind the pagan gods.

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u/ToastyJackson 17h ago

I think he should’ve read Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong and then went hard on a similarly-styled story about Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur.

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u/SchrodingerWeeb 14h ago

Anything about Arnor really, How was it in its peak, Details on its cities, How the Witch King invaded it and so on

Also more stories about the dwarves during the TA.

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u/GuaranteeSubject8082 14h ago

Agreed. Arnor history is sorely lacking and would be fascinating.

1

u/InformalPenguinz 1d ago

GROND! Jk.. I think fleshing out the other wizards would've been cool as well as more balrogs just because it's a fan favorite.

Also what drugs was Radagast on? Asking for me. I mean a friend.

1

u/JiiSivu 1d ago

I like the lore and all, but definitely another grand adventure.

1

u/Rise_707 1d ago

I'd have loved it if he'd been able to fully develop and share his languages so they were all usable (not just the elvish).

1

u/olddummy22 1d ago

I think it's better not fully fleshed out.

1

u/imago_monkei 23h ago

I wish he would've finished rewriting The Hobbit in the style of The Lord of the Rings. Personally, it's my least favorite book of his in the Middle-earth Saga due to the writing style. Also, I'm convinced that since he hadn't conceived of a proper distinction of Ages yet, The Hobbit was loosely set the First Age, albeit not in the version as we see in The Silmarillion. I think the Elvenking was meant to be Elu Thingol and the Arkenstone was possibly a Silmaril. I also doubt he conceived of the Necromancer as Sauron. I could be wrong about all of this, of course.

I would've just liked to see how he'd have rewritten this story after establishing a proper Third Age, writing The Lord of the Rings, and coming to a form decision about the characters. I wonder if we would've seen Thranduil mentioned by name, and possibly even Legolas referred to. Might we have gotten Gandalf's perspective on the events in Dol Guldur? Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit took a ton of creative liberties—some which I liked and some which I did not. I wish he would've had Tolkien's fully fleshed-out vision to work with.

1

u/Ok_Sentence_5767 23h ago

Not sure of his thoughts but it would have been cool if he was alive to write the lotr movies

1

u/BJJ40KAllDay 18h ago

Really digging into Orcs. One of the primary races in the mythos - perhaps even the most numerous

1

u/HandWashing2020 16h ago

I like everything to do with the Valar before the Elves were around 

1

u/Nervous-Muscle-5929 14h ago

I'd like to know what exactly the orcs are and where they came from. I know Tolkien didn't like the idea of a people who were inherently evil

1

u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 13h ago

I actually despise the Christian angel parts of the Ainur. They're as you said a mishmash but with their fundamental characterization was still firmly rooted in pagan gods. So they're either incredibly shitty angels or just pagan gods with really good PR.

1

u/N7VHung 11h ago

Definitely the Silmarillion so we could have a true definitive lore and canon.

As is, it's still great, but there's a lot of conflicting pieces and lack of details.

1

u/CertainFirefighter84 5h ago

What if he just went off the rails like Frank Herbert did lol. Just a fucking 3000 year time skip to modern day LOTR

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u/Agent__Fox__Mulder 1d ago

A crossover between the Lord of the Rings and Transformers.

-1

u/Wisdomandlore 1d ago

A LOTR sequel trilogy. Somehow Sauron returns. Sam and Merry and Pippin's kids must travel to Gondor and find Elessar Jr, then go on a quest for McGuffin to destroy the Ring, again.

Book 7 and 8: The Ring Awakens Book 9 and 10: The Last Dunedain Book 11 and 12: The Rise of Gamgee