h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, that was a pretty comprehensive breakdown. I bet everyone was just waiting for a LotR entry to get into PR so they could launch into these conversations about Miar and Valair and Gollum's third cousin.

You've got your work cut out Luth, I would have gone for a collaborative entry myself!

Still, it's coming along well, like the improvements.

Psyc

'Miar and Valair and Gollum's third cousin'

Good luck getting this in, I can imagine we'll be arguing for ages over it. I haven't read LOtR and don't want to either. So I might pop in and look at the guide ML.

It might be fun to add that Tolkien's publisher was expecting something on the scale of the Hobbit...

A good entry, written at a sensibly high level for newcomers to Tolkien. Just a few comments:

You say Bilbo is Frodo's uncle in the bit about the characters and his cousin in in the bit about the plot. Cousin it is. Bilbo did not raise Frodo, Frodo's parents died when he was 22, Bilbo adopted him as his heir some years later.

Frodo lives at Bag End with the ring for 17 years before anyone realizes it is the One Ring.

I wouldn't say Elrond is "kindly". Wise, yes, and good.

You mention that Galadriel is a keeper of one of the three rings, but not that Elrond and Gandalf have the other two.

Aragorn does not take the Paths of the Dead to "face up to his Destiny", he does it because looking in the Palantír of Orthanc he sees the Black Ships heading for Gondor from the South, and takes the Paths to intercept them. Aragorn does not bring the Dead to the battle at Pelennor fields, the Dead help him take the Black Ships, and then Aragorn brings the Gondorian soldiers from the coast into the ships to relieve Minas Tirith.

Frodo serves as Mayor of the Shire for a time, before Sam's tenure.

In earlier comments, HonestIago says that Galadriel is the oldest Elf in Middle Earth at the time, but I don't think that's true, and your statement that she is "one of the oldest" is better. Her real claim to fame is that she is the grand-daughter of Finwe, High King of the Noldor in Valinor, which makes her the most noble of the High Elves left in Middle-Earth.

Who would you say is older - Cirdan? I agree though that 'one of the oldest' would probably be better.

Sorry, missed something there - Gandalf had suspicions about the ring long before he threw it into the fire at Bag End. Are you taking that into account in the 17 years? Perhaps you are - my memory is a bit fuzzy on dates and the length of time Frodo was at Bag End.

I'm pretty sure that Gandalf had more than a nagging suspicion about the ring, but that was only confirmed when he went back to Bag End and Threw the ring on the fire.

Cirdan was certianly older than Galadriel, but I think either she or Celeborn might have been the oldest of the Vanyar in Middle Earth at the end of the Forth Age.

On the whole I have to agree with GreyDesk, that this is probably beyond what the original entry needs to be concerned with. However, as a huge Tolkien geek I still can't help myself. Eru save us!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to translating sayings of Yoda into Klingon.

Ahem! Galadriel was not a Vanya. She was a Noldo. But that is not at all important to this entry. "One of the oldest" will certainly do.

And what's more, there's a little uncertainty about Celeborn's descent. Nobody knows for sure wheter he is Silvan, Noldo, Sindar or something else entirely...

Well I'm leaving it as one of the oldest, I am also planning on:

1. Rearranging the characters and editing bits (such as Sauron and the Ring)

2. Mentioning the books and movies differ

3. Telling about LOTR publication

4. Just giving a link to the Tolkien article

Let us know when you've done that and we can start getting picky.

It won't be until the end of next week as I have lots of neasty AS exams

Círdan is one elf who is definitely older than Galadriel, since he is one of the Teleri who decided not to move to Valinor at all (until the Fourth Age), whereas Galadriel was born after the Noldor had moved to Valinor.

It is not known how many other elves in Middle Earth at the end of the Third Age were still around since those days, but there's no reason to suppose that Círdan was the only one. There were elves in Lorien and what was known to the Hobbits as Mirkwood continuously from within a couple of centuries of their awakening in Middle Earth.


Zube

Gandalf mentions that the elves had made many rings as trials in the craft before Celebrimbor forged the three, the seven and the nine great rings, or Sauron the One. Since the Rings of Power were all set with stones, Gandalf knew Bilbo's ring was not one of those, and Saruman, the Wizard who was really into rings, had assured the White Council that the One Ring was gone forever.

So Gandalf assumed the Ring was one of the lesser rings for many years, although he was curious enough to do his own research, and to set Aragorn to track down Gollum and question him.

He certainly would not have left the One Ring sitting in Hobbiton for years on end while the Enemy's power grew if he had known.


Zube

Thanks Gnomon, I ment to say Calaquendi. My bad.

Just to play the Bombadil card one more time:

Tolkien gave more space to Bombadil than he gave to either Galadriel or Arwen (for example). Surely there was a reason he did that. Personally, I can't understand why Jackson even imagined leaving Bombadil out of the film and I don't quite understand why he is left out of this entry. I've always felt that Bombadil is perhaps the most important character in the book (in competition with Sam), although it seems that there are few in the world who agree with me.

Here's how I sum up the Lord of the Rings:

Bombadil and Goldberry
Sam and Rosie
The Ents and the Entwives.

Everything else is a grandiliquent footnote to these relationships, and these relationships are a footnote to Beren and Luthien, which, of course, are a footnote to Mr. and Mrs. Tolkien.*



Oh yeah: Aragorn and Arwen are in there too.



__________________

*see their epitaphs.

oh. and:


did anybody want to bring up Wagner's Ring operas?

I once tried pointing out the similarity between the two to a LoTR geek... I won't make that mistake again