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Happy birthday to knesinka_e, and happy early birthday to ithildyn, melissagay, and faramirgirl. May all of you have fantastic days and wonderful years to come!

All the Hobbit news from Comic-Con sounds wonderful! It looks like I'll be teaching my Tolkien seminar again for the Spring 2012 semester, and I expect the energy will be terrific.

It's amazing; it seems like just yesterday I was in Toronto for the Gathering of the Fellowship, The Lord of the Rings: The Musical, and the Imperishable Flame Award Ceremony and such, but it's been six years! (For my new friends, my old post on those festivities is here and the picture post is here.) And the Toronto premiere of The Return of the King and all of the related festivities, which I also attended, was three years before that! Good grief!

TORn now has a great spoilery report of the new footage of the film that was just shown at Comic-Con.

And here's a lovely group interview:

Science Fiction or Bust!

Hi everyone! Registration is now open for the first of my two-part online history of science fiction course, Science Fiction, Part 1: From Modern Beginnings to the Golden Age, for The Mythgard Institute. It's a graduate-level course, but you don't have to be seeking a degree from Signum University in order to "sit in" (or audit) just for the love of the subject. Anyone may sign up!



The class will consist of 24 90-minute online lectures with live Q&A. These lectures will also available to registered students for immediate download as audio and video files. I'll also accept emailed questions in between lectures. There will be a class discussion forum available 24/7.

You can see a full list of the lecture topics, assigned readings, and more here. If you know of anyone who might be interested, I'd be grateful if you'd share the news. Thanks so much!

The second half of the two-part course will be offered in the future and will build upon this one, beginning with the New Wave.

Special thanks to the amazing Elia Fernández for the gorgeous course artwork. You can see the full, uncropped piece here. It's fantastic!