Understanding Middle-earth

Understanding Middle-earth, by Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez
Xenite.Org: Worlds of Imagination on the Web, founded by Michael Martinez in March, 1997.
SF-FANDOM: Where imagination leads the way, founded by Michael Martinez in February, 2001.


Understanding Middle-earth
by Michael Martinez


The success of Visualizing Middle-earth soon led to calls by Michael's readers for a sequel. Although sales of the first book were encouraging, Michael felt he had made some serious mistakes with the book. "I should not have rushed through it," he admits. "When Xlibris sent me the proofs, they told me I would be able to make a limited number of corrections. I found dozens of typos and errors throughout the book. I corrected as many as I was allowed to and had to do some triage. Proofing one's work is extremely important, and I knew that before I put the book together. I was just not as careful as I should have been."

The introduction to UME uses an archaic word, 'compleat', which prompted one reader to tell Michael to get a spell checker. Michael and Matt included a foot-note urging people to 'look it up'. A sequel to Visualizing Middle-earth needed to be better than the first book, Michael decided. Readers wanted more essays about Tolkien's Middle-earth. The commentaries on the movies seemed dated even a few months after Visualizing Middle-earth was published. But with nearly all the essays available for free on the Suite101 Web site, a sequel did not seem like a worthwhile endeavor. "Too many people were writing to me, saying they had downloaded and printed out the essays," Michael says. "It was a bit discouraging. On the one hand, Suite101 was paying me for those essays, so I didn't mind. But what did that do to the long-term value of the work? That question remains unanswered."

Matt Tinaglia prompted Michael to action by asking what projects Michael was working on which prevented him from publishing a sequel. Michael mentioned an eBook idea he had been mulling over. After a few email exchanges, Matt offered to edit the eBook, and Parma Endorion was born. The eBook project required several months' effort from both Michael and Matt. "We learned a great deal," Michael says. "I began to sense there might be an actual market out there for a Tolkien eBook. So, at one point, we began discussing the sequel to VME, and Matt said, 'Why not do it as an eBook?'"

With many contacts in the online publishing industry, Michael could offer many arguments against publishing an eBook for sale. Such projects work best with established markets. The VME sequel was going to be better than the first book. Michael did not want to release it into a vacuum.

"After we published Parma Endorion, and everyone saw what a success it was, Matt brought up the idea of publishing an eBook sequel again," Michael relates. "I began to think the idea might be workable, especially after we hit the 50,000 mark. I thought, 'That might translate into 2500 eBook sales. Hmmm....'"

An early cover design for Understanding Middle-earth suggested an environment like Fangorn Forest. But as Michael and Matt negotiated a contract to publish Understanding Middle-earth themselves, Chris Thurtle, a long-time Tolkien reader and someone who had been familiar with Michael's research for years, contacted Michael about publishing his next book. Chris worked for Vivisphere, an imprint of Netpub. Michael had decided against using Xlibris again even though sales of Visualizing Middle-earth were consistent.

After further negotiation, Michael and Matt reached an agreement with Vivisphere. Matt would select, arrange, and edit the essays. He would also format the book. Michael would write new material for the book. Vivisphere would publish it.

Putting the actual book together required several months' work. Matt downloaded and reread all of Michael's Suite101 essays. He also looked at some other essays Michael had written. He began culling the list of more than 100 articles to produce a suitable collection of essays. The theme of the book, "Understanding Middle-earth", had been agreed upon early in the project. The concept was to continue Michael's exploration of Middle-earth's depth but with a tighter focus on certain areas of interest.

"Matt suggested that my writing was maturing and moving in a certain direction," Michael explains. "He wanted the VME sequel to be more than better than the first book. He wanted it to be like a butterfly coming out of the coccoon." Matt began arranging the essays in groups, feeling the chronological order for the chapters in Visualizing Middle-earth was too haphazard for the average reader. "I had originally thought I might just publish the essays in archives," Michael says. "But I had already skipped some for Visualizing Middle-earth. So, Matt felt there was no point in returning to that plan."

One of the new passages Michael needed to write was an introduction, but before he could set fingers to keyboard, Matt contacted Michael about the essay titled "Browsing the Compleat Tolkien library". "This was a very definitive statement about which works I trust," Michael says. "Matt wanted to use it as the basis for the introduction. The reader would be told right off the bat where I was looking for most of my information. I liked that idea."

Michael and Matt then agreed that two more essays would be required for the book. These were to be previously unpublished works. One was "How the Elves have changed". The other was an essay about Tom Bombadil which Matt had specifically suggested, but it failed to meet Matt's expectations. "Matt wanted something very different from what I was able to write," Michael says. "So, I told him to make the decision. I didn't think I could say anything else about Bombadil (and the Eagles, another topic Matt had suggested)."

The Bombadil essay was dropped from the project, but Matt was busy trimming other essays which were still to be included. Some of the edits required Michael to go back and rewrite segments. And Matt found some areas where new information had become available since the essays were originally written.

An early cover design for Understanding Middle-earth evoked strong similarity to Rivendell. "Nothing came through the process unscathed," Michael says. "I naively thought I would have very little to do with the book. But Matt kept coming back and saying, 'Well, this is a good paragraph here, but....' And he saw patterns in my writing which I had never noticed before. His arrangement of the texts -- in some cases combining essays -- was amazing. I looked at the first draft of the book and thought, 'Wow. Yeah, this makes sense.'"

Michael had shared his concerns about the shortcomings of Visualizing Middle-earth with Matt, and Matt shared many of the same reservations. But their work on Parma Endorion had helped resolve many of those concerns. "The only thing Matt and I really didn't agree on was my insistence that some of the humorous essays be used," Michael adds. "Matt felt the work should focus on the serious side of my research. But, for me, the writing can become so dry I just have to stop and crack a joke. And after Matt gave the matter some thought, he decided it would be cool to end the book on a funny note. So, we put 'Snoopy versus the Lord of the Nazgul' last. I've read that essay in public and people love it. It's a tribute to Charles Shultz as well as to Tolkien."

One of Matt's priorities -- and a frequent request from other readers -- was to ensure that the sequel to Visualizing Middle-earth be longer than the first book. "Everyone says the same thing," Michael reports. "'Great book, but it's way too short.' Matt was determined to make this book worth every penny people would pay for it."

The new book came out to 512 pages. Vivisphere mulled over the size for a while but decided the content justified the length. Vivisphere sent three sample covers to Michael. The distinctive image with the sun shining down into a forest, recalling the beauty of the golden Mallorn trees of Lothlorien while expressing the idea of illuminating Middle-earth, was selected.

Understanding Middle-earth was published in November 2003 and it quickly became one of Vivisphere's best-selling titles. Michael launched a nationwide publicity campaign by appearing as a guest at Dragoncon in Atlanta over the Labor Day Weekend. He appeared on television and radio to promote the book.

Will there be a third book in the series? "That has yet to be decided," Michael answers evasively. "I have other projects in the works, and I'd like to write about Harry Potter."
Michael Martinez is the founder of Xenite.Org and the author of Visualizing Middle-earth, Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, and Understanding Middle-earth Michael Martinez


Visualizing Middle-earth
Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, 3rd Edition
Understanding Middle-earth


Contact Michael

Purchase Understanding Middle-earth online from Barnes and Noble


Sauron's War

Like Visualizing Middle-earth, Understanding Middle-earth includes one formally written essay, "A History of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men". This piece was originally written at the request of the publisher of a now-discontinued Tolkien journal. It would have been included in the last volume of Arda, but the project was never finished.

For a few years, Michael kept the essay in his files, hoping to include it in a general history book about Middle-earth. But the history book was set aside in favor of other projects. While writing for Suite101, Michael saw a period where he would be too busy to meet several deadlines. So, he took the "Last Alliance" essay and divided it into three parts, publishing each part as a weekly essay.

Readers around the world responded enthusiastically to the essay, which is still regarded as the most thorough treatment of the numerous brief references to events in the last war of Tolkien's Second Age.

The scale of the war was visually depicted at the beginning of Peter Jackson's "Fellowship of the Ring". Huge armies of Elves and Men mass against an army of Orcs, Trolls, and other creatures in Sauron's service. "It is close to some of my own ideas about how Tolkien may have envisioned the war," Michael says of Peter's battle scene.

While doing some research for an employee of Weta, Michael mentioned the War of the Last Alliance in his notes. The discussion concerned Aragorn's sword, Anduril, but Michael characteristically ventured into the history of the peoples whose fates had been touched by Anduril and its predecessor, Narsil, the Sword of Elendil.

After describing the events of the last war of the Second Age in one email, Michael received an excited reply. "Peter has read your notes and he has rewritten the prologue to the movie!"

"I had to wait for almost three years before I could see that prologue," Michael sighs. "And when the night finally came, I had to remain in doubt about how much of what I was seeing that owed anything to my email." Still, the battle scene is impressive. The opening prologue covers in a few minutes' time a vast, intricate history.

Was it worth the wait?

"Absolutely," Michael says. "I have criticized the movies about some points. But there have been many magic moments in all three films for me. The prologue was one of them, because I knew that -- whatever came after it -- Peter would be faithful to the idea that all of Middle-earth was caught up in a horrendous struggle. People were afraid the war would be minimalized. How, after all, do you depict something that massive when most of the action in the story concerns a few individuals? I think the prologue set the pace. People saw immediately that the stakes were high. If I had a part in bringing that to the screen, then I'm glad I did."




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