The Ekron Initiative: Memo 5
Part of an ongoing web serial perhaps inspired by The Screwtape Letters. Unless otherwise noted, “the Ex-CEO” refers to God, “the opposition” to the side of the angels, and so on. Read the previous installment here.…
Tag: J.R.R. Tolkien
Book Review: Night Operation by Owen Barfield
Night Operation: Classic Science Fiction from the ‘First and Last’ Inkling. Owen Barfield. Introduction by Jane Hipolito. Barfield Press, Second Edition, 2009. Not much has been written about Owen Barfield, despite being one of C.S.…
Fantasy Author Interview: Matthew T. Dickerson
Matthew T. Dickerson wasn’t expected to become a published novelist—at least not by his educators. In middle school and high school, teachers pegged him as someone who should focus on math and sciences. Although this…
The Dune Dilemma: Adapting A Tale about Power Going Wrong
An ongoing debate in sci-fi and fantasy literature is how it handles “Might as Right,” the way heroes use force to get what they want. The Inklings’ contemporary T.H. White made this debate central to…
Drinking the Water of Cellar Door: A review of the Tolkien biopic
Tolkien. Directed by Dome Karukoski. Written by David Gleeson and Stephen Beresford. Chernin Entertainment and Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2019. Starring Nicholas Hoult and Lily Collins. The Tolkien biopic will have the fortune of a cult:…
The Underlying Christianity of Tolkien
Tolkien’s theory on fairy stories and their purpose to promote elements of moral truth was known in academic circles since the 1940s. Tolkien himself acknowledged the fact that his Middle-earth novels were written as a…
Tolkien’s Easter Joke: Good Tricking Evil in Lord of the Rings
Good Friday is a sad time. Easter Sunday is a joyous time. In some church traditions, it even becomes such a joyous time that steps are taken to tone it down. For example, in fifteenth-century…
A Fork in the Road: A Lord of the Rings Story
“I have come. But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. the Ring is mine!” The terrible words came, but Sam could not believe…
Gandalf the Procrastinator: A Character Study
Revisiting a post written many years ago, which has also since appeared in the Inner Circle Writers’ Magazine—it’s about one of Tolkien’s most famous characters, but explores him in a unique way... As with many…
Tolkien & Teilhard, Creation & Evolution: Alternative Sages of the Modern Age
Finally, after a long day in the lab, one kid had the guts to ask the question we were all wondering about. We had run a gel electrophoresis on a sample of DNA, and we…