Writing the Special Editions Part I: The Writer Compares Himself to Tolkien*

* - Just a little, and that's Christopher Tolkien; not J.R.R.

If you're a Tolkien fan, you've likely at least heard of The History of Middle-earth series (as well as other, similar works).

My Tolkien shelf

In J.R.R.'s lifetime, only The Hobbit and the three Lord of the Rings books were published.  The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and other books came later, but here's the thing: they were compiled and edited by his son, Christopher.  After Silmarillion was published in the '70s, Christopher embarked on what proved to be a monumental four-decade-long task of gathering, cataloguing, editing, and publishing seemingly all of his father's writings on Middle-earth.  And this entailed much more than what we saw in both Hobbit and LotR.  Much, much more.

What does this have to do with me?

Well, whereas Tolkien wrote from 1914 all the way until his death in 1973, I started writing Lords of Kobol in 2009.  My efforts to organize and catalogue changes for Special Edition are much less monumental than Christopher's.  Still, it can seem daunting at times.  Here's a look at what files are open on my PC at any given moment:

Click to embiggen

On the far left, there's the LoK SE docx file.  I use the split-view so I can read a chapter up top and then type my commentary in the bottom portion.  I'm bookmarking and hyperlinking to and from the commentary as I go.  Note that the page length is currently nearing 1,200 pages.  About seventy of that is commentary, thus far.

In the center, that's the "LoK.doc" file.  The first draft of all three books in one.  Created in September '09 and finished in March '10 (six months ... which I still find hard to believe).

Bottom right is the "LoK discards" file.  It includes chapters written for subsequent drafts that went unpublished and even a couple of chapters that were published and got removed.

Top right is a series of PDFs.  Note the tabs: each one is a different version of Book One published across the last decade and change.  (I occasionally published a new version of the book a couple of times each year, but that was often to add links to another book of mine or to update website links and the like.)  This way, I can see that one chapter was present in 2011 when the book was first published, but that it's missing in 2014.  At that point I have to figure out why I removed it ...

(Not pictured: image viewer, which I have open so I can check maps and such.)

I created the SE file a few months ago, pasting in all five books.  Then I returned to Colonies briefly to write that one-off chapter detailed in the previous blog post.  Last week, I came back to the SE to organize things and I made the fully linked table of contents.  Over this past weekend, I started reading and commentating in earnest.  

We seem to be on track for that December release date.

Thanks for reading.

SimCity and Middle Earth

Given all the hate being flung SimCity 5's way, I thought I'd reminisce about SimCity 4 and present some of the mods I made way back when.

Yes, that's Middle Earth.  I made the biggest possible map, broke it up into appropriate "city" borders and then manually sculpted the topography to match, as close as possible, Middle Earth as presented in Tolkien's works.

(For a stupid-huge version of the top map, click HERE.)

As you can see, I made buildings, too.  Left, the Argonath on either side of the Anduin; center, the Black Gate of Mordor; right, the Golden Hall of Meduseld (difficult to see, but it is laden with horse motifs).  I just dropped them on the map so I could make screencaps for this post.  That's why the ground around them doesn't match up.

Those are the least interesting buildings I made.  I actually built Isengard, complete with the dark tower Orthanc.  It was huge ... gaping pits rent the ground and smoke spewed into the air, surrounded by orcish machinery.  Taller than that, Barad-dûr, complete with an eye atop the tower that bathed the obsidian structure in a hellish orange glow.  The crowning achievement, however, was my Minas Tirith.  Humongous.  Trebuchets, statues, the fountain, the White Tree, the Tower of Ecthelion, all manner of buildings and gates, the Hallows in the rear abutting the White Mountains ... it was all there.

Unfortunately, the PC that housed those greater creations died a few years ago.  If I get some spare cash and time, I might extract the hard drive to see what can be recovered.  Oh well.

As for the big map, here are what the numbers represent:

1. Grey Havens
2. The Shire
3. Bree/Midgewater/Old Forest
4. Rivendell
5. Mirkwood
6. The Lonely Mountain
7. The Misty Mountains (including the three major peaks)
8. Lothlórien
9. Fangorn
10. Isengard
11. Rohan, complete with Helm's Deep and Edoras geography
12. Emyn Muil/Falls of Rauros
13. Dead Marshes
14. Gondor, with Pelennor, Pelargir, Ithilien, Osgiliath
15. Mordor, with Udun, Cirith Ungol, etc.

There are many other details loaded in there, too, like a pool of water by the western gate of Moria where the Watcher lies in wait.

I also loaded in mp3s of the movie soundtracks so that's what I listened to as I played.

My big plan was to mod just about everything.  I'd make low-end houses, mid-range and high-end houses to conform to Hobbit and Middle Earthy appearances, markets, Green Dragon Inns, ditto police stations, schools and so on.  I did make a water wheel that acted as a water pump and a lit-up party tree that served as a power station.  I made a Beacon of Gondor, too (with flames), but I didn't have a purpose for it.

Anyway, time got away from me and I just stopped working on it.

Hmmm.  Ten years ago.  What happened.  Oh, yeah.  My son.

Thanks, kid.