A non-profit group dedicated to the advancement of audio in games has nominated LOTRO: Mines of Moria for a couple of music awards including game Music Of The Year. You can read more about it right here as well as listen to excerpts. The track Khazad Dum is up for best coral song as well. The full list of nominations can be found here.

Lance Owens sends along word that the lecture ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: An Imaginative Life’ is now available online: A series of three lectures examining Tolkien and his imaginative experience is now becoming available online in audio and illustrated format. The lecture series runs from February 10 to March 17, 2009 at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. As the series is completed, all lectures will be made available for online listening and viewing. The first lecture is now available here. For more information visit gnosis.org/tolkien Continue reading “‘J.R.R. Tolkien: An Imaginative Life’ Lecture Online”

From AP and our friends at Houghton Mifflin: NEW YORK – An early, long-unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien is coming out. “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun,” a thorough reworking in verse of old Norse epics that predates Tolkien’s writing of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, will be published in May by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. According to Houghton, the book will include an introduction by Tolkien and notes by his son, Christopher Tolkien. J.R.R. Tolkien, whose fantasy novels have sold millions of copies, died in 1973. “The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun” was written in the 1920s and ’30s, when the author was teaching at Oxford University.

Last night I was watching ‘The Antiques Roadshow’, a long-running TV programme on the BBC in the UK. It involves members of the public bringing antiques and so on to show to experts, in order to get more information about them, and a valuation. Those of you in the UK can see the programme on the BBC’s iPlayer for the next five or six days, here.The interesting bit is about 35 minutes 45 seconds into the programme. For those of you who can’t view iPlayer, I’ll give you a rundown. A lady had brought in her copy of ‘The Hobbit’, a first edition from 1937. In about 1940-41, she had lent the book to a friend. She forgot who she’d lent it to, and her friend forgot who she’d borrowed if from, presumably not thinking to look inside the fly-leaf, where the owner’s name was written. Continue reading “TV Watch: Hobbit on ‘The Antiques Roadshow’”

Elven x sends this in: This week’s guest on Fictional Frontiers with Sohaib is Michael Regina from TORN (our own Xoanon) And with lots to talk about and a full summary of what’s been happening in the realms of Middle-Earth Please feel free to comment on the show and the discussion! Fictional Frontiers is aired Sundays at 11am Philadelphia time. You can listen online at WJNC1360AM Philadelphia, listen to the podcasts, or visit the Fictional Frontiers website.

Continue reading “Fictional Frontiers Transcript”

Aaron writes: I have put forward a Naming Proposal to the NZ Geographic Board to name a stretch of the Upper Waiau River between Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau as “Anduin Reach“. This section was not only featured strongly in the Fellowship of the Ring but it is now a tourist attraction as well, soon to be more popular as a new Cycle Trail is destined to run down it’s bank. I need some assistance from the public in the form of feedback as part of the new naming procedure so I thought I should ask your team what they think. The “reach” is a two km (1.25 miles) straight stretch of river down stream of Boulder Reach 6km North of Manapouri Township. All I need is some public feed back to forward to the Geographic Board so they know that people value the need for a name.

It is said if you give a story a place name it lives in the real world and I think the Anduin Reach has got a fighting chance to earn a real place in New Zealand’s folklore. If any one else wants to add to this submission just comment at 2359510@gmail.com or on my YouTube Video Scrapbook Page.

Continue reading “‘Anduin Reach’ Naming Effort..You Can Help!”