Bibliographic data for The Hobbit.

Today is the 49th anniversary of The Silmarillion. Next year is the big one! Speaking of the Tale of the Silmarils and all things Elvish . . . You how Isildur is pronounced ee · seel · door, right?…

J.R.R. Tolkien was a master of restraint. Don’t believe me? Oh, sure, the running internet-meme joke is that he describes every tree, but that’s precisely what he doesn’t do. Does…

In The Lord of the Rings, in “A Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” (from Appendix A) we learn that Aragorn’s birth name was Estel, which means “hope” in Elvish (Si…

Rush is the real article. What you see (and hear) is what you get. In this era of “alternative facts,” religious and political hypocrites, and legions of performative actors and rage-ba…

With the third season of The Rings of Power coming later this year, Amazon is starting up its promo material. This—combined with ongoing political turmoil, war, and the powerful “charismatic&…

Okay, I’ve seen Masters of the Universe (MotU). Here are my initial thoughts not just as a fan of speculative fiction but as a big fan of He-Man since I was six years old. I’ll do my be…

I have been so busy with the logistical (and less fun) parts of finishing The Silmarillion Primer, and life in general, that I haven’t had time for very much else. But I’m here to say r…

The Rings of Powers Season Three press release is out now. I’d like to comment on just one passage from it.

Did you know? If you owned a particular book that came out in 2003 (23 years ago!), you would read that Wizards of the Coast proposed that you could potentially ride a gelatinous cube in your game.…

I learned that one of my favorite musicians passed away a couple of days ago: Máire Brennan of Clannad. Not very big news in the States, I’m afraid, but it’s a big loss for anyone with …

This is the blog post version of the talk I gave at the New York Tolkien Conference last summer (2025). It also revisits a few of the things I said in my Mythmoot talk from a few years before. But …

This might be hard to articulate, but I’m going to give it a try. It’s not complicated in itself, just complicated to convey, maybe. Now, I don’t mean “radical” in the…

TikTok video by Jeff LaSala

After my relative disappointment with Del Toro’s Frankenstein*, I established in my mind—and in a post on the subject—a new expectation, a new rule, that I absolutely know Hollywood would nev…

In the real world, what we in the Tolkien fandom call the primary world, Orcs are not a race. They’re a mindset, an ideology, the basest outlook of humanity. Tolkien certainly thought so. (Il…

News broke last Friday about the passing of Neil Peart, the drummer, lyricist, and philosophical heart of the Canadian band Rush. His departure from the circles of our world far, far too early (he was...

Turn to page 17.

Writer / Sr. Prod. Editor (Macmillan/Tor) | Husband | Dad | *Mere* Christian | RUSH fan | Gamer | Tolkien nerd | D&D dork | Eberron geek | Raveloft dweeb | WotC novelist/gamer

With Frankenstein fresh on the brain and in a lot of online media discourse, this seems like as good a time as any to float my pet theory that I’ve never heard anyone else discuss. Maybe it&#…

I admit, I’m a bit surprised at how polarizing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein seems to be. It’s revealed how many book fans are out there, I guess, which is great. If there was…

Although J.R.R. Tolkien famously disliked allegory, he admitted there is always applicability to be found. Anyone who reads his work with any bit of care or critical thinking can find a thousand ap…