Tolkienite Military Fiction

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

The dwarves definitely know how to work with light.

My first instinct is to say 'that was just Tolkien being poetic,' but in his works, poetry and other arts have a power all their own, so perhaps it should also be taken literally. Like, if you told dwarven craftsmen how lasers worked, they could probably make them, though the limitations on them (and their overall appearance) would likely be eccentric to a sci-fi engineer.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

My first instinct is to say 'that was just Tolkien being poetic,'

If one thinks there's a difference in Tolkien between poetically describing the making of art and the making of magical art, one hasn't fully grasped the nature of Middle-earth. Magic is not a separate "force."

[Anders]

There's a military historian, Bret Deveraux, who has analyzed the sieges of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith from a military-history perspective. His verdict is that everything in the books makes sense - the distances, the times, the tactics... the films (as much as I love them) don't make much sense. But they look awesome.

https://acoup.blog/category/collecti...of-helms-deep/
https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collec...ege-of-gondor/

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Anders

There's a military historian, Bret Deveraux, who has analyzed the sieges of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith from a military-history perspective. His verdict is that everything in the books makes sense - the distances, the times, the tactics...

He was trained as an infantry officer, and survived the Battle of the Somme.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

If one thinks there's a difference in Tolkien between poetically describing the making of art and the making of magical art, one hasn't fully grasped the nature of Middle-earth. Magic is not a separate "force."

OK, so either you agree with me and just wanted to say something, or you literally stopped reading at the point you cut my post off, and thus think you're 'correcting' me. I'm really not sure which.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

OK, so either you agree with me and just wanted to say something, or you literally stopped reading at the point you cut my post off, and thus think you're 'correcting' me. I'm really not sure which.

I'm agreeing with the non-instinctive part of you. If Tolkien writes about art-makers making poetry about their art, it is never just Tolkien being poetic.

I don't want to say "take it literally" because it's poetry, but what he says he really means.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by johndallman

He was trained as an infantry officer, and survived the Battle of the Somme.

He doesn't write like a writer who was age 18-22 in 1916. Unless you mean Tolkien not Bret.

If you mean Tolkien I don't think that is actually where he got all his technical information. I am pretty sure I know more about that than a lot of people who just went to OCS. Tolkien was a wet-behind-the-ears hustled through to buttress a massively expanded army not a professional officer and the main thing expected of him was to get killed like a good English gentleman. It was the experience of war that Tolkien learned from service, not technicalities.

I'm pretty sure he read up while doing the book. In fact I read somewhere that he used a field manual to get march rates.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

He doesn't write like a writer who was age 18-22 in 1916. Unless you mean Tolkien not Bret.

If you mean Tolkien I don't think that is actually where he got all his technical information. I am pretty sure I know more about that than a lot of people who just went to OCS. Tolkien was a wet-behind-the-ears hustled through to buttress a massively expanded army not a professional officer and the main thing expected of him was to get killed like a good English gentleman. It was the experience of war that Tolkien learned from service, not technicalities.

I'm pretty sure he read up while doing the book. In fact I read somewhere that he used a field manual to get march rates.

He clearly understood the principle of disrupting the enemy by delaying them. That's far more powerful than it looks to civilians, even small delays can cause massive logistical pileups. Denethor, for ex, forces the enemy to fight in Ithilien. Then at Osgiliath. Then at the remains of the Ramas Echor. Each delay buys more time for Minas Tirith and disrupts the smooth operation of the enemy forces.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Normally when we are not doing myths and legends we are doing Hobbits. But suppose we set a Weber type military fiction in the Tolkien world.

For instance: War of the Dwarves and Orcs: that is a fascinating setting with all the tools described in the "Practical Underground Weapons" except for grenades (good guys don't use gunpowder in Tolkien) which could be replaced by magic.

Raid on Umbar: this is Aragorn's incognito attack on Umbar

Bandobras' repulse of the orcs (this allows us to have Hobbits be scary dudes for a change)

The Hobbits maintain that they sent a force of archers to assist the last King of Arthedain at the battle where the North Kingdom finally fell. That's a story that could be interesting. Also, archery would be a very natural way for physically smaller and weaker people to make themselves felt on the battlefield, and Hobbit dexterity and skill with missile weapons would make them effective.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

The dwarves definitely know how to work with light.

Gimli recited a poem about Durin the Deathless while the Nine Walkers were in Moria. It include lines stating that “The light of Sun and star and Moon/ In shining lamps of crystal hewn/ Undimmed by cloud or shade of night/ There shone forever, fair and bright.”