"The Moon in 'The Hobbit'' - Extended Edition, currently available for free

This Tuesday and Wednesday, the Kindle edition of this recent publication on astronomical phenomena in "The #Hobbit" and other works by #Tolkien can be downloaded for free: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B07BCK9FNT 

This edition includes much of the day-by-day timetable of events in "The Hobbit" published last year on this blog. It is thus twice as voluminous as the previous version and includes 90+ full-colour illustrations (hence the price of the print edition!).

Further, I have severely amended the section on Third-Age calendars, removing arithmetic errors committed in the previous releases. I have now been able to show that Tolkien had calculated his "millennial deficits" correct after all, despite previous claims to the opposite.

As a bonus I have added another, previously unpublished chapter: "Bell, Clock and Mantelpiece", on the different concepts of measuring hours in MIddle-earth and why clockmaking is an art restricted to Eriador. It shows that Tolkien was by all likelihood inspired by the Venerable Bede again, like he was with the names of the Shire months.

#JRRT #LordOfTheRings #LOTR

Marching through Lothlann

Ouch - I noticed a slight glitch in "Middle-earth seen by the barbarians". Browsing my old Tolkien editions I noticed that I had not been aware of the entry in the Grey Annals (History of Middle-earth, Vol. 11) which states that the Swarthy Men entered Beleriand via Lothlann, far in the north. On the general map of Middle-earth in Fig. 3 I had accordingly placed the arrow that indicates their route too far to the south, between Belegost and Nogrod. This minor error I have amended now, a matching sentence added in the text and the edited print file uploaded to CreateSpace, both for the colour and the b/w edition of the collective volume. The old two-volume edition I shall leave unedited: There is no point in amending a map that, the readers and I agree, is anyway of inferior printing quality.

A map of Europe projected on Middle-earth

This is another map I produced for the extended edition of "Middle-earth seen by the barbarians". It has Europe superimposed on the LotR map.

The basis for this exercise was Tolkien's statement in Letter 294, recently confirmed by the draft for the Pauline Baynes map, that Hobbiton was located at the latitude (and, implicitly, the longitude) of Oxford. An earlier, more tentative version of this map I had produced many years ago, but now I was delighted to find that my computations from back then have been confirmed by Tolkien's notes on the Baynes draft!

The present map also helped to identify the latitude of Erebor. Entering this value into the free astronomy software "Stellarium" then allowed me to run a set of simulations that showed the positions of the sun and moon in the sky at Durin's Day and, from there, to establish the entire lunar almanac of "The Hobbit". The results of this simulation are part of my other book, "The Moon in 'The Hobbit'" (see the links at the bottom of this page).

Middle-earth seen by the barbarians available in b/w or full colour!

Both extended editions of "Middle-earth seen by the barbarians" - full colour or b/w - are now available for purchase. They include the updated content of both original volumes that originally derived from essays published on Lalaith's Middle-earth Science Pages:

I - The Indigenous Peoples of Eriador and Gondor
Compiling the fragments on the culture and history of the pre-Númenóreans of Middle-earth from many different sources written by JRRT, with a special focus on the Dunlendings.

II - The Lossoth and the Forodwaith
The peoples in the far north about which very little is known. This chapter is accordingly short.

III - The Lost History of the Men of Darkness
Compiling culture and history of the various tribes and nations of Easterlings and Southrons, from Wainriders to Variags. This is quite the longest chapter.

IV - The Third Realm in Exile
A special chapter devoted to the Black Númenóreans and the history of Umbar, that other Realm in Exile besides Arnor and Gondor.

V - The mysterious King Bladorthin
About the one king who fits into no genealogy of the kingdoms of Middle-earth and the probable history of his kingdom

Two Appendices discuss the etymology of the name Bladorthin and the arithmetical approach to superimposing a grid of latitudes and longitudes on the LotR map.
A third Appendix, not previously published, discusses certain elements of the recently discovered draft that Pauline Baynes referred to in her 1969 map of Middle-earth and what they additionally reveal about the barbarians of Middle-earth.

The luxurious full-colour edition is available from here:
http://www.amazon.com/Middle-earth-seen-barba…/…/ref=sr_1_4…

 For readers with a smaller purse, a less expensive b/w edition is available, too:
http://www.amazon.com/Middle-earth-seen-barba…/…/ref=sr_1_5…