As a Tolkien fan I have absolutely zero interest in any of these, no matter how well they could be written (and given what is happening with Amazon's The Rings of Power, that's not a given).

A fan of Tolkien's original stories is exactly that, not a fan of any story written by a random author with the same characters in it. There are plenty of fantasy novels that don't enjoy the same level of success for that reason.

There is no lack of elfves, dwarves, wizards, and dragons. What is lacking is Tolkien's talent.

Derivative works don't change the originals. They are still there. Obviously, if you're a purist, then don't consume any of the "newer" material.

Is the fear that a derivative would some how make the original less successful? or fail itself or reveal some character attributes that you don't like?

Don't people argue that basically all Star Wars movies and recuts post-1983 have basically just served to dilute the brand? I guess it's a bit more murky when you start arguing about the whole expanded universe of novels, video games, TV shows, theme park attractions, and whatever else.

But it does feel different when you invite new creators to step up to the plate and create new chapters in a story and then explicitly elevate those new chapters to the same level of canon as the original. This could even be said to apply to Lucas and the prequel trilogy, since Lucas did not direct Empire or Jedi, so the prequels were being made essentially be a completely different team than the originals (other than him).

All that to say— this could be done, but it would be really important to manage the branding of it. It's not an "LOTR sequel", it's "LOTR Legends — new stories set in Tolkien's beloved world", with the clear implication that canon 0 is LOTR, canon 1 is the Christopher Tolkien-edited works like the Silmarillion, and the "Legends" are canon 2. Anything not associated with the estate is canon 3, and the movies, video games, and TV show are not canon at all.

> Don't people argue that basically all Star Wars movies and recuts post-1983 have basically just served to dilute the brand?

Some of the expanded universe Star Wars is quite good. I personally loved the KOTOR game and the Yuzhaan Vong books while hating all the Disney movies. I suppose the same argument applies to the Silmarillion since it was heavily edited by Tolkien's son.

> Derivative works don't change the originals.

Often repeated as a mantra, but do they actually not?

Classic example: The plummeting of the rewatchability of Game of Thrones Seasons 1-4. Also, Star Wars.

They don't have to, it depends on the reader/viewer. Stephen King says pretty much the same about adaptations of his own work...however badly they've butchered "The Stand" on TV, it hasn't changed the original book.

I feel like this about a lot of derived works - there's tons of novels derived from video games as well, for example. But they all feel like fanfiction.

That said, there was a fantasy series I've read part of where the author himself started writing tons of spinoffs and whatnot; almost like writing fanfiction of their own works.

>There is so much potential in all these stories

potential for what? Making more money? I'm glad Tolkien's son actually had the decency to not squeeze his father's legacy for every penny. Within months of him stepping down at age 93 whoever is in charge of it now signed the contract with Amazon

Did he not?

After suffering through the Hobbit movies, I would completely disagree.

Adding salt to the injury, these movies destroyed the story in the book that Tolkien apparently wrote specially for his children. Talk about taking care of a legacy.

I guess it was difficult to resist the temptation, with so much money involved. But I don't see any other justification for those 3 movies apart from penny squeezing

Christopher Tolkien had no say in the Hobbit films (or any other prior films). JRRT himself sold the rights to film adaptions of his works to United Artists a few years before his death. The GP is correct that the Tolkien Estate sold the rights for the TV show to Amazon literally months after Christopher retired as director of the Estate... granted planning and negotiations had probably been ongoing for some time, but Christopher would've been about 93 at the time so presumably he was not deeply involved by that point.

They were just a bad adaptation and I quit partway through. But there are lots of bad adaptations. Dune was pretty ill-served until the most recent. It happens. You watch or not and move on. As well as adaptations that are a lot better than the original work.

> Making more money?

Honestly, what would it hurt? They can continue to publish the more raw works, you're not losing anything. I didn't finish the Hobbit films and I'm still alive.

I've been shot down by my friends numerous time for saying exactly the same thing.

Of course, as another commenter pointed out there's the Dune book which is an example of how not to do that. But, this is why it only works if the author that's chosen is a good writer and not a complete hack like Kevin J. Anderson who has never produced a single decent book (even outside the dune universe)

I agree with your side. Here’s my take. For some people, there’s a line you don’t cross. However, if the line is going to be crossed anyway, why not cross it in the best way possible? I’m inclined to believe that if done well, even those against it being done will end up finding appreciation for the next works.

This whole situation happened with Robert Jordan and The Wheel of Time series. It was considered a mess by fans but was a critical success.

Either way at least we got an ending. Thing is- the books had been meandering for a while, and it's quite possible Jordan would have whiffed at the end, but we will never know.

With Tolkien it's just been a shallow money grab since The Hobbit trilogy made off a super short book and after the Amazon series stuff I'm over it anyway.

It feels like at this point they should have people write universe books like Forgotten Realms or something. New books by new authors in the Tolkienverse.

ASOIAF will probably never be finished, and I'm OK with that.

I used to hate not getting to see how a story ends but after so many books/shows/series/movies always ending on cliffhangers to never be completed, I'm just over it.

Seems even storytellers die heroes or live long enough to become villains ;)

> Wheel of Time ... was considered a mess by fans but was a critical success.

Can you go into why it was considered a mess? I'm a relatively recent finisher of the series so I can't speak to the contemporary reaction of the fanbase, but my impression has been that the current community is, at a minimum, satisfied with Sanderson's work. There are several things that people complain frequently about (and that I agree with) like Mat's character development and the Androl arc. Not to mention the lost possibility of follow-on series after A Memory of Light! That doesn't mean people think it's a mess, though.

It's just what I remember from release. We'd waited so long. I haven't even read it since. Checked reviews and it's sitting at 4.5. I will have to reread the series anyways, maybe it was just some of us never being satisfied, I know I've been that guy before.

I personally was glad for the ending. My main critique was with the series as a whole meandering wildly. But was still something I loved.

I believe they had lots of notes and a roadmap from Jordan as well, but I could be mis-remembering.

One weird series that had an ending that wasn't supposed to was the Gunslinger series. I think King went like 20 years between books before ending it. I really remember it because he had a note when you got to the ending saying he didn't feel the story should have an ending, and he recommended stopping there, but for those who needed an ending he provided one to give some closure.

I thought that was so cool, and read it, but prefer to think Roland is still out there somewhere chasing some new Walter, so rather than preferring an ending that time I preferred open-ended, which almost never happens.

In spite of something I wrote elsewhere--basically that sometimes it's just time to move on--I tend to agree. While it may be blasphemous to say, much as I love it, LoTR is not without its flaws--especially the whole structure of The Return of the King. Tolkien was a world building (and linguistic) genius but LoTR hasx its flaws.

There's few good examples of reusing beloved franchise actually going well, numbers are against the practice. For every good work like the last LOTR trilogy, you have a lot of "I've never watched previous Star Trek to keep my vision untainted" soulless, trend-pandering iterations.

Have you read the Kevin Anderson/Brian Herbert Dune books? Anderson's writing style is much more digestible than the source material, but I don't think it really added anything to the Dune universe.

The problem is that I have never seen Kevin Anderson write a single decent book even outside of Dune. He even managed the feat of writing the worst Star Wars books which, given how mediocre the average Star Wars novel is, is no mean feat.

> I don't think it really added anything to the Dune universe

I actually feel that some of the cannon changes detracted from the dune universe, which is even worse than not adding anything to it.

I got half-way through the first and then abandoned it in disgust.

Unfortunately, it seems like Tolkien's family is more interesting in the own financials than in keeping the Tolkien universe alive.

For example, The Last Ringbearer [1] is a fan fiction book that plays in a Tolkien universe after the fall of Mordor. IMHO, it's more intriguing than some Tolkien works published by his son, but the family decided to prevent it from being published and distributed in most legislations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

Where do you draw the line between the Tolkiens blessing second-party works as being the "official lore" vs leaving them on the level of self-published internet fan fiction? Of which there is absolutely no shortage?

Is it just a quality bar? Some sense of how much it "fits" with the existing world while still expanding on it in meaningful and plausible ways?

I get that Star Wars novels are a template here, but that's not exactly a flattering comparison. Other cases like Robert Jordan and Robert Ludlum seem also to be a bit mixed.

Be careful of what you wish for. Sheltered in the money tree that is Tolkien's legacy, writers could take more liberties that they wouldn't risk with their own work. They would run it to the ground as long as there's easy money to be made, then reboot it 10 years later.

> This might be blasphemous among LOTR fans, but I wish the Tolkien family would work with other authors to complete these stories.

They already have! The Silmarillion was a collaboration between Christopher Tolkien and Guy Gavriel Kay.

The narrative returns have been rapidly diminishing since The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. THoME is a real slog after books 1-3.

However, they will likely never be improved upon: anyone possessing the wit and knowledge to retell these stories for a discerning modern audience likely has their own legendarium to develop.

> THoME is a real slog after books 1-3.

The History of Middle-Earth was never really meant to be read cover to cover. It's a collection of the elder Tolkien's unpublished works and rough drafts, some of which was later adapted into The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, and other more recent books.

I agree, and I think the format consequently sits in an uncomfortable liminal space between academic and popular, one that compromises too much and satisfies neither. Perhaps it is telling that my favourite piece of the whole collection is not even by Tolkien: The Lays of Beleriand includes a wry commentary by C.S.Lewis, a surprise for myself since I do not generally enjoy his work.

I agree. Considering how WoT fans feel about Brando Sando, this can clearly work.

Remembering a piece about the Wheel of Time and how Jordan prepared the books beforehand. He wrote that he had the whole storyline already before him. He only needed to fill the gaps so to speak. He didn’t bring much of his own style in as he claims. What I think is great about the last books not completely written by Jordan is that you don‘t feel it when reading all of them back to back. I wonder if the source material from Tolkien is in a Format which allows to do the same. And also finding an Arthur that is willing to write in a specific style. But I would be happy enough if more parts of the world would be published in a normal novel like form. But then that was also the point of Tolkien to produce Folklore. So in essence he should be fine if another author retells his stories with a slight different way or take.

> you don‘t feel it when reading all of them back to back

Having just finished reading the Wheel of Time books for the first time about a week ago, I disagree with this statement. To me, the difference was stark - after going through so many of Jordan's books, you can clearly see a subtle but distinct writing style for each of the main POV characters. After the transition, the characters stay (mostly) the same but the writing style distinctions between them disappear; the worst offender being Aviendha's POV chapters (so! many! exclamation! marks!).

Sanderson also made a few mistakes in writing scenes involving the Aiel that contradicted lore laid down earlier in the series that really stuck out to me.

That's not to say Sanderson did a bad job, not at all. I really enjoyed the series, and I think Sanderson does a much better job at portraying emotional characters than Jordan did, which was crucial for the ending having the quality and impact that it did. they're both quality builders and writers, and both excel in different areas.

To me, though, it was if I had started watching something animated in the style of Arcane[0], and suddenly it switched to Moana[1]. Both fantastically animated and detailed, but the detail budget is spent in different places.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXmAurh012s

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPAbx5kgCJo

Hmm I didn’t feel it like this. Mainly because the writing style of the series had changed slightly already before. I remember vividly that the fist book had great fascination for fabrics and color:). I had a pretty good understanding about the fashion style in the world. Same as Tolkien with food and Martin‘s excessive name dropping of character names. Also because I actually had no idea that the series was finished by someone else. I didn’t pay much attention when buying the digital versions. I will read a little bit closer the next time I read the series again. Problem at the moment for me is the ugly taste that the Amazon series left with their take on wheel of time. I lowered my expectations to a bare minimum for the rings of power series.

We already have the author's works as well as Christopher's best efforts to pull together many of the other stories. At this point I'm of the opinion that having new authors work on these stories wouldn't be "completing" so much as "milking".

What if computers, trained on Tolkien corpus, were put to the task…

I really believe that someday (not in my lifetime) we will have a perfect AI that gives us new stories that finish the works of Tolkien, Dune, The Wheel of Time and Game of Thrones, in a style of the original author and with an equal level of inspiration.

Sure they won't be cannon, but it will be a fun world to live in when a Master A.I. can rewrite and unfuck Star Wars.