> but my favourite has to be the Rob Inglis recordings

Impressive, very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's recording.

Martin Shaw's recording of the Silmarillion is similarly wonderful.

Some people just prefer to listen. I read well and I read quite quickly -- I don't know how many books I've physically read, but it's gotta be in the high hundreds at least -- but over the past ~10 years I've switched primarily to audiobooks. Rather than being something that I enjoy while I'm doing something else, I typically do something mindless with my hands (weave chainmail, cross stitch, sew) in order to give my full attention to the book.

hi loloquwowndueo, i was thinking the same thing, but then I thought why you would prefer reading a book while sitting instead of listening - is it about efficiency and that if you CAN read one should (you use the imperative) read? I also have this view, but when I was young and an avid reader I also enjoyed radio stories immensely as my imagination was also activated. As in the past we were an species with a predominantly oral cultural transmission, arguably more 'embodied', there could be something to say for attending a theatre version in preference of a book. On the other hand, reading often is faster, but it's indirect, you translate the symbols into your imagination yourself, on the upside you perhaps train your mind more. So both have their advantages, one is not necessarily better. I notice I am often looking through a lense of efficiency and then make choices where I loose a certain experience - sitting in the dark listening to someone telling a story instead of reading can be equally wonderful.

The M4 fan edit was quite good.

Sorry, I meant LOTR

That's both a very good description of Tolkien's struggles with orcs, and a writing style that feels out of place in an encyclopedia. The Halls of Mandos are described as a halfway house.

> J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, created what he came to feel was a moral dilemma for himself with his supposedly evil Middle-earth peoples like Orcs [...] so killing them would be wrong without very good reason. Orcs serve as the principal forces of the enemy in The Lord of the Rings, where they are slaughtered in large numbers in the battles of [...]

Admitting that there's a very wide diversity of beliefs under the "Roman Catholic" banner - historic Roman Catholic armies have been eager participants in well-documented battles for the past 1,500 or so years. I'd assume that Tolkien would have had a wide variety of perfectly historic Roman Catholic arguments to chose from, to justify his fictional slaughter.

(If I recall, the orcs slaughtered in LoTR are pretty much all soldier or near-soldiers. Do orc women, children, or other non-combatants ever appear in the story?)

In many ways, that Wikipedia article feels like a Hays Code-era whitewashing of Roman Catholicism.

Fascinating thank you. I was only aware of the surface level concern around the orcs.

I find Tolkein's depictions on his original jacket covers of the Rings of Power and the one ring and the "all seeing eye" that accompanies them quite evocative:

https://imgur.com/CZSNpiS

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/The_Fellowshi...

> It's a fantasy novel written primarily for entertainment

On one hand, you're right.

On the other, it's unfair to Tolkien and to the scholars who study his work. He spent a lot of his life and effort towards developing this world, he deeply pondered the moral implications and theology of his world, and for all his denial of there being any analogies to the real world, you can see he considered them (he did describe modern men in the modern world as "Orc-ish", etc).

All of this to say we cannot just dismiss it as "it's a fantasy novel".

I've not seen Rings of Power and I don't plan to, but I'd just point out that the Silmarillion describes the origin of orcs as being an exploited race of intelligent beings, elves who were captured and tortured until their forms became what we know as orcs.

"... all those of the Quendi [elves] who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes."

It sounds like Tolkien didn't quite agree with the simplified take that Orcs are "just" a force of evil

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma

> we have a global survailence company that is used to spy on citizens and destroy democracies worldwide that is literally called Palantir. Like, no one working there is seeing it?

The Palantir are not evil creations in the book iirc. They were used by the great kings to see whatever they wished.

Heck, even in the book Aragorn uses the Palantir to make a critical decision turning the tide of battle.

are we the baddies?

There must be some pretty industrial strength compartmentalising going on.

> For an actually interesting take on "hey what if the orcs are actually intelligent people" there is The Last Ringbearer by a Russian author, presenting LOTR from the perspective of Mordor(it's not a good book, but was an amusing read)

I found The Last Ringbearer a book good! Of course it's not in the same league as LotR, it's not engaging in vast myth- and world-building, but it's a well-written, fun book that manages to be engaging. Even knowing it was an alternative take to LotR, I wanted to know what happened!

For everyone who has not read it, it's not simply a "let's retell LotR, only from the perspective of the Orcs". It's a brand new "adventure" so to speak, which shifts the point of view but also describes new events. It starts at the end of the War of the Ring, with Mordor defeated.

Palantir, Anduril, Istari, and there's even a home security one called Sauron, you can't make this shit up.

Back in my day, LotR names were used for cool metal bands like Gorgoroth, Amon Amarth, Cirith Ungol, Carach Angren, Burzum, etc.

> Like, no one working there is seeing it?

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair (1878 - 1968)

"Because Pharaoh is paying daddy, and we need the money." - Unknown laborer at the Pyramid of Djoser, c. 2660 BC, explaining to his son why he's making a giant pile of rocks in the desert.