"Staying Sane"

* I have accepted a kind invitation to contribute to the forthcoming 2006 Routledge volume The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment. I've been excited about this project ever since I first heard it announced, and I'm very pleased I was given the chance to participate in it. At the moment it looks like I will be writing the entries on Renewal, the Shaping of Middle-Earth, and - get this - The Lord of The Rings. That's everything you need to know about LOTR in 4,000 words. Go ahead and laugh. When that word count actually sinks in, I'll be laughing, too - in a kind of manic, hysterical way.

* The saga of the new Man from U.N.C.L.E. film is getting ever more interesting (thanks in large part to the fans of the original series). You can see here the first Variety article and, after fan response, the second Variety article.

* I am gratified to see that Television Without Pity has added the new Battlestar Galactica series to its list of victims. The only thing better than SF snark is more SF snark.



And now, a quote for the day, from a book that just grows more relevant with age:

"He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage."

- George Orwell, 1984