[Rocket Man]

On a close parallel world, an Oxford professor delighted the world with the fruits of his imagination.

Twice.

The Lord of the Rings is still popular reading on Scribner-7, one of a series of parallels marked by different authorial careers. But here, J.R.R. Tolkien actually got around to fulfilling his half of a bargain made with C.S. Lewis -- to write a time-travel story to go with Lewis's space travel novels (Out of the Silent Planet and its successors). Finally published in the 1960s after many delays, the resulting mix of fantasy and history known as The Lost Road proved to be every bit as succesful as LotR, and indeed many Tolkien fans will argue among themselves about which is the greater of the two works.

To all things, there is a price, though. The increased attention to The Lost Road meant even less time available for exploring the First and Second Ages of Middle Earth. The Silmarillion exists here only as a loose collection of notes and half-worked ideas that even Christopher Tolkien gave up on trying to organize ... though it has occurred to the occasional visitor that there could be some serious profits in introducing our own world's volume as a "lost work" now recovered.