Obsessive (Complimentary)

Jared, Oriana and Ned discuss Jared’s choice of topic: The Atlas of Middle-earth, created by Karen Wynn Fonstad. First published in 1981 and then in a revised edition later as more posthumous material was released in The History of Middle-earth series, Fonstad’s detailed and extremely well thought out depiction of Middle-earth across eras became something of a definitive work over time. Combining Fonstad’s own academic and technical training as a cartographer with her own deep appreciation and love of Tolkien’s work, it sought to cover everything from the climates and geology of Middle-earth to closely-read details of buildings, cities and battles in the legendarium as a whole. At the same time, while Christopher Tolkien openly appreciated the work via comments and testimonials, it perhaps acquired the patina of being an official publication when it is more accurate to consider it as a deep example of fanwork instead, with Fonstad unable to work with the since-deceased Tolkien himself and ultimately creating her own elaborations on the texts at many points throughout. Are her textual essays and summaries the core of the book itself, or would it be the actual maps and charts that define it as an atlas to start with? What other examples of in-depth and notable fanwork from its time, whether regarding Tolkien or other creative endeavours, can be compared to what Fonstad created? Does the atlas in the end fully succeed at its stated brief or can it be seen instead as something that reaches for it but doesn’t quite fully succeed? And are the mountains in California in fact actually purple? (As Timothy Olyphant once said to Oriana, yes, yes they are.)