Narcos: Season 2

Colombia, 1992. Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar is possibly the richest man in the world, the head of a vast narcotics operation spanning much of South and Central America. But the Colombian and American governments are keen to bring him down. The DEA is on Escobar's trail but find his network of informants and sympathisers makes it hard to pin him down. If they are to bring Escobar to justice, they may have to make a deal with the devil.

The first season of Netflix's Narcos was an interesting, unconventional series. It mixed the tropes of traditional drama with the docudrama, a necessity of it trying to cover about fifteen years of complex political and criminal manoeuvring in just 10 episodes. This made for an interesting drama, but one which had a very intermittent, start-stop feel to it as sometimes years passed between each episode and major events were relayed in voiceover.

Season 2 fortunately improves on this by devoting itself to the final eighteen months or so of the Medellin Cartel's existence, and focusing much more on the hunt for Escobar by the DEA, the Colombian government and by rival criminal organisations. There's a real feeling of tension, intense drama and things gradually collapsing as Escobar's enemies rack up the pressure, but he is more than capable of hitting back.

The series hinges on the viewer being able to understand Escobar and even - if only fleetingly - sympathise with him whilst not sugar-coating the fact that he was a monster, a criminal whose impact on the world (particularly the flooding of the USA with cocaine in the late 1980s and early 1990s) has few rivals. This works purely through Wagner Moura's excellent performance, capturing the family man but also the ruthless drug kingpin and the person who believes himself to be a man-of-the-people folk hero sticking it to the man, who gradually realises that perhaps he isn't who he wants to be. As the mayhem rises and Escobar becomes more and more ruthless, resorting to mass murder, political assassination and ill-thought-out revenge killings, so whatever semblance of normality and likeability he had vanishes and he becomes a target for everyone. How true this is to reality and how much is dramatic invention is debatable, but certainly it makes for a gripping and tense drama.

The rest of the cast also bring their A-game (although Boyd Holbrook is a bit anonymous) to make for an increasingly intense chase story that does a good job of both wrapping up the Escobar story but also putting things in play for later one, for as the Medellin Cartel goes down in flames, a rival cartel is starting to take shape in Cali, and the players have to accept that defeating Escobar doesn't mean the end of the monster he has created.

Season 2 of Narcos (****½) is superior to the first, more grounded in character drama and forming a far more intense game of cat-and-mouse that can only have one ending. It's also a story of hubris, murder and of a country near-ruined by criminals and their associates, but trying to fight on. It is available now on Netflix.

Starport by George R.R. Martin & Raya Golden

Ten years ago the alien Chasheen arrived on Earth. They are members of an interstellar commonwealth known as the Harmony of Worlds, 314 species living and trading together in the interests of galactic peace. They offered humanity the chance to become the 315th member and humanity accepted. Three great starports have been built to link Earth to these other worlds, the latest of which is located in Chicago. Charlie Baker, newly promoted to detective on the squad overseeing the Starport district, is keen to use his knowledge of alien worlds and civilisations to help on the job, but discovers that not all of his fellow officers - or civilians - are that keen on the alien presence.

From roughly 1985 to early 1993, George R.R. Martin worked in Hollywood in the film and TV industry. He worked on The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast, rising to become a producer on the latter. This earned him enough credits to try creating his own show, so he wrote a slew of pilots. Doorways was the only one that was filmed, and that never made it to series or the air. Another, written in 1992/93 shortly before he gave up on Hollywood to return home to resume work on an epic fantasy side-project called A Game of Thrones, was called Starport. It did the rounds of the four American TV networks before being turned down for being (as per usual with GRRM) too long and too expensive.

A quarter of a century later, Starport has been given a new lease of life as a graphic novel, adapted from Martin's original 90-minute script by Raya Golden. Golden previously adapted Martin's story Meathouse Man as a graphic novel to some acclaim, and Starport is an altogether larger and more impressive project.

As a graphic novel, it's an attractive package. The art is vivid, colourful and pops at the reader. The script is punchy and pacy, with the pages flipping by quite quickly despite the book's impressive length (almost 300 pages). Golden's artwork is excellent, mixing a classic comic book feel with modern colouring techniques and some crazy panels of technicolor alien vistas and species that feels out of a mid-1970s Marvel cosmic epic.

The script has been updated, with VHS jokes going out and smartphones coming in. The dialogue is mostly decent and well-done, although Martin's script hews towards TV standards of the 1990s a bit too closely at times (with more short, soundbitey quips and less of the longer, more erudite speeches that may be associated with his fantasy work, although this does keep the pace flowing). There's also the feeling of some references being updated but others not: so the internet is mentioned but the cultural touchpoints are Gilligan's Island and Kojak, which do feel a bit dated.

The protagonists are a likeable bunch, a mixture of beat cops looking to improve themselves, cynical lifers just trying to reach their pension, geeks fascinated by aliens, bigots who hate them and so on. The characters tend towards archetypes, like the undercover cop who gets in a bit too deep and justifies some dubious behaviour (like sleeping with much younger women) by saying it is to maintain his cover, but do have some depth thanks to the graphic novel's length. The adaptation is generous at almost 300 pages (to cover what was originally a 90-minute TV script) which allows it to delve deep into the characters and premise. There's a few characters who don't have a lot to do, which is where the "TV pilot" feel comes in a bit more (characters set up for bigger things further down the line), but it also helps the story feel more realistically populated.

It's easy to see why Starport never got made in the early 1990s. It has an epic scale and scope which I think would have been hard to translate to the screen. It also came along not long after the Alien Nation movie (1988) and TV spin-off (1989-90) which was abruptly cancelled. Although Starport's premise is rather different - a police force of humans working alongside alien security forces from the titular starport, rather than alien refugees joining the police force - the surface similarity may have put some producers off. The premise also feels a little bit like the later Babylon 5, with the starport serving as a meeting and mixing ground for hundreds of alien races and humans.

Starport (****) is brash, enjoyable and fantastically-illustrated. Those looking for a deep, immersive, serious story like A Song of Ice and Fire may feel disappointed, but those looking for a fun, pulpy SF yarn will be well-catered for. The book is available now in the UK and USA.

Paradox confirm they are working on VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE - BLOODLINES 2

Paradox Entertainment have announced that they are working on a sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, one of the most critically-acclaimed CRPGs of all time.

Originally released in 2004 as the second game (after Half-Life 2) to use Valve's Source Engine, Bloodlines was a somewhat open-ended RPG which cast you as a vampire in the setting of White Wolf's phenomenally popular pen-and-paper roleplaying game. You could choose from one of several vampire clans, including the insane Malkavians who would get an entirely different dialogue tree for the entire game from the other clans. The game was hugely acclaimed on release for the quality of its writing, dialogue, story and characterisation, but criticised for a large number of bugs. Subsequent patches and fan mods have fixed most of these issues and in some cases restored cut content.

Bloodlines' developer, Troika Games, later collapsed and most of the staff who worked on the game moved over to Obsidian Entertainment. Leonard Boyarsky, who worked on Bloodlines, is now working on The Outer Worlds alongside former Troika colleague (and Fallout co-creator) Tim Cain. However, Bloodlines' other creative lead, Brian Mitsoda, is working on the new game alongside Cara Ellison and Chris Avellone.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is currently planned for release in March 2020.

Amazon greenlights DARK TOWER TV pilot, casts Roland & Marten

In an interesting move, Amazon have greenlit a new pilot based on Stephen King's dark fantasy series The Dark Tower. The move comes just two years after a movie version, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, bombed at the box office.

The new TV version of the story will adapt the series in a more chronological order, starting with the events of Wizards and Glass, the fourth novel in the series. Wizards and Glass mostly flashes back to the young days of central character Roland Deschain and his early encounters with the enigmatic Man in Black, here going by the alias Marten.

Sam Strike (Nightflyers) has been cast as the young Roland, whilst Jasper Pääkkönen (BlacKkKlansman, Vikings) is playing Marten.

The TV series started life as an addendum to the Dark Tower movie, with the plan being for Idris Elba to narrate a framing device and the series telling the story of Roland's younger days with a new, younger actor in the role. However, Amazon have now severed the storytelling connections between the 2017 movie and this new version of the story, allowing it to stand alone. Presumably, if successful, the series would then undergo a time jump and start adapting the events of The Gunslinger.

The Dark Tower is the central work of Stephen King's career, with most or all of his novels taking place in the Dark Tower multiverse, where different dimensions, timelines and worlds collide. The formal Dark Tower series, which has sold over 30 million copies, consists of eight novels (The Gunslinger, The Waste Lands, The Drawing of the Three, Wizard and Glass, Wolves of the Calla, Song of Susannah, The Dark Tower and The Wind Through the Keyhole), but many of King's most famous novels, including The Stand, also tie into the same story and setting.

With only a pilot greenlit, we're likely 18 months or so from seeing The Dark Tower on screen, but it's certainly a promising step in the right direction, and a surprising display of faith from Amazon in the franchise given its recent box office failure.

Epic vs. Valve: The Battle for PC Gaming

For the past fifteen years, the PC gaming market has been dominated by one retailer above all others: Steam. An online sales, downloading and gaming service, Steam is run by Valve Corporation and has utterly dominated the market since launch, fending off several competitors along the way. But that has now changed, with Fortnite developers Epic Games launching a rival service that means to do nothing less than smash Valve's monopoly forever.

The Epic Store launcher.

Steam was launched in late 2003 as a system for updating Valve's online games, titles like Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and Team Fortress Classic, keeping players all in sync with one another and allowing new maps and patches to be rolled out quickly and efficiently. In 2004 the service transitioned to a store, selling new games. It was mostly ignored until the November 2004 release of Half-Life 2, arguably the most eagerly-anticipated video game in history up until that time. It was the sequel to Half-Life, the 1998 game that rewrote the first person shooter rulebook and established Valve as a force to be reckoned with in the PC gaming scene.

Half-Life 2 launched with the required use of Steam. You could buy Half-Life 2 in stores, but to install it you had to also install Steam and sign up to the online service. In 2004, when not every gamer was online and certainly most gamers did not expect to have to sign up to an online service to play a single-player-only game (Half-Life 2's multiplayer mode wasn't patched in until months later), this idea was hugely controversial. Gaming communities rebelled, some gamers tried to report Valve for breaches of the law (no such claim was ever upheld) and so on. But Half-Life 2 was anticipated in a manner almost no other game in history was, and the sheer juggernaut force of the game's hype and its overwhelmingly positive critical reception saw gamers swallow their pride and buy the game in their millions. In many cases, they used the service to buy and download the game at midnight on release day, and were playing hours before their friends could get to the shops to pick up their copies.

After Half-Life 2 showed that online PC sales were viable, other publishers signed up to the service and more and more games appeared there. Valve had been either lucky or prescient, as 2004 arguably marked the last highwater for PC gaming in the 2000s. The 2005 release of the X-Box 360, followed a few months later by the release of the PlayStation 3, saw a huge crash in PC gaming sales. Within just a couple of years, the number of big titles being developed for PC dropped significantly. 2007-08 was arguably the nadir of PC gaming history, with few big titles coming out, almost no PC exclusives doing well (The Witcher, from CDProjket, being an honourable exception) and the platform being almost dead on its feet.

Remarkably, though, Steam had continued to grow in popularity and success. Valve jumped on the rise of indie gaming, adding lots of popular, low-budget titles to the platform. Valve also pushed their big sales hard. They won back support from big publishers through various tactics designed to promote sales. Rockstar Games had released the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV after a long delay, but noted that although initial sales had not been as high as the console versions, the "long tail" of the game was significant, with sales picking up years later every time the game was put in a sale, making it far more profitable in the long run on the PC platform. By the start of the 2010s the platform had recovered most of its losses, bolstered by the arrival of Kickstarter as a platform for funding niche, mid-tier games. By the end of 2018, Steam had 150 million accounts (30 million more than Netflix) and dominated the PC gaming market with a share of between 18 and 20% (but 75% of the online market). According to some reports, Microsoft has offered over $20 billion to buy the service and the company behind it outright, but Valve's owner, Gabe Newell (who worked for Microsoft in the 1990s, quitting to co-found Valve), had rejected such overtures out of hand.

Understandably, other services have tried to compete with Steam. CDProjekt launched GoG (Good Old Games) as a rival service which focuses on getting older games updated to work on modern hardware. Their main selling point is not using an form of DRM (Digital Rights Management), which they feel hinders the customer experience. Meanwhile, Electronic Arts, UbiSoft and Blizzard-Activision launched rival services to exclusively launch their games, respectively Origin, UPlay and BattleNet (although many UPlay games are also available on Steam). With relatively small game catalogues and niche target audiences, these services have existed alongside Steam, rather than trying to compete directly with it.

This has now changed thanks to a company whose pedigree in PC gaming is even older than Valve's: Epic Games.

Founded in 1991, Epic Games spent the 1990s releasing a large number of low- and mid-budged action games before releasing their first 3D shooter in 1999, Unreal. Unreal was followed by both sequels and the immensely successful multiplayer spinoff series, Unreal Tournament. In 2006 launched a new single-player focused series on console, Gears of War, which was immensely successful. They also made immense amounts of money by licensing their Unreal Engine to other companies and publishers. In 2017 they redeployed the Unreal Engine to make a new, fun and lighthearted co-op shooter called Fortnite: Save the World, and its multiplayer spin-off, Fortnite: Battle Royale. Better known just as Fortnite, the game has become the biggest global success story since Minecraft, with Epic Games making significant profits from the game's downloadable extras and content.

Late last year, Epic Games launched the Epic Store, which they proudly proclaimed was going to take the fight directly to Valve. At first gamers chuckled and moved on: many companies had vowed to do the same thing and all had failed. But then Epic Games started doing something that no other would-be Steam-killer had done before: actively seeking out PC gaming developers and offering them staggering sums of money for a 12-month exclusivity period on PC. In addition, Epic Games offered to take only a 12% cut of the sales of games, as opposed to Valve's huge 30%. Developers, watching profit margins drop steadily over the years due to an inability to keep development costs down and also an inability to raise prices accordingly due to market saturation, started signing up enthusiastically.

The first casualty was Metro: Exodus. The third game in a popular first-person shooter series, following on from Metro 2033 (2010) and Metro: Last Light (2013), Metro: Exodus's Ukrainian developers were offered a huge sum of money for a 12-month exclusivity period. They agreed. Fans of the series and more casual gamers railed angrily against the development, citing it was bad form for a company to wall off a game behind a new service, especially a new service that did not have the ease of use or many of the most basic features of Steam. They were also suspicious of Tencent, a Chinese company accused of spying on customers, which had acquired a 40% stake in Epic in 2012. Despite these complaints, Metro: Exodus sold exceptionally well on release, outselling Metro: Last Light more than two-and-a-half times on launch day.

Last week Epic flexed its muscles by locking in Phoenix Point to an exclusivity period. Phoenix Point is the eagerly-awaited new turn-based tactics game from X-COM creator Julian Gollop and his company Snapshot Games. Using an approach similar to Firaxis's recent XCOM games, the game goes for a more simulated-based approach and has been praised for its gameplay decisions. For a tiny company like Snapshot the deal was apparently "impossible to resist," as the money offered could keep the company going for "years." For fans, the anger was much more palpable this time around and also more readily supported: Phoenix Point had been crowdfunded with the explicit promise that the game would be available on Steam and GoG on release day, and that was now not going to happen. Possibly the most eagerly-awaited PC game of 2019 became reviled overnight, with an absolute flood of refund requests pouring in.

But this has not stopped Epic's onslaught. In the last few days they have announced a blizzard of new acquisitions and deals. Obsidian Entertainment's The Outer Worlds, another of the most eagerly-awaited games of 2019, has joined the exclusivity deal (or, more accurately, publisher Take Two signed up for them). Quantic Dream, known for their moody console games with jaw-dropping graphics, were offered a deal so lucrative that they have gone back and dusted down all of their previous games going back to 2010 for release through Epic (comprising Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls and Detroit: Become Human). Remedy Entertainment's promising Control has also signed up, along with RTS Industries of Titan and The Sinking City. The full list is extensive and surprising, encompassing many mid-range upcoming PC games, which are the bread and butter of the platform.

This is nothing less than a full-scale assault on Valve's control of the PC gaming business. Whether it can be sustained is unclear, but it represents the biggest challenge to Steam's supremacy in over a decade. Valve will have to respond and in some respects it already has, promising to fix long-standing problems like people gaming the review system and offensive zero-budget, zero-effort games being shovelled onto the platform. The real test, I think, will come when a real AAA big-hitter that should be on Steam goes Epic Store exclusive. Take Two putting some games exclusively on Epic has to be a major concern. It's an open industry secret that Take Two and Rockstar Games are prepping a PC version of Red Dead Redemption 2, 2018's biggest game on console, for release likely in 2020. If they decided to make that game an Epic exclusive, it would be a huge and fundamental blow to Steam's position in the marketplace.

This battle could determine how PC games are bought, sold and played in the 2020s, so is hugely significant. But it may also be futile, as waiting in the wings is Google's Stadia system, which may offer a completely different, more Netflix-esque approach altogether. How this pans out will be very interesting, and no doubt contentious.

FARSCAPE turns 20, hits Amazon Prime Video

Cult SF series Farscape is celebrating its 20th anniversary through a major re-release on streaming platform Amazon Prime Video.

Launching on 19 March 1999 as a US-Australian co-production, Farscape ran for 88 regular episodes and two two-hour specials, concluding in October 2004. The show focuses on John Crichton, an American astronaut who is accidentally transported across the galaxy by a wormhole. He is found by the crew of a living ship called Moya, a collection of misfits and renegades where he feels at home. Vague attempts to return home are complicated by his growing camaraderie with his newfound friends and his own mental health (Crichton develops PTSD-like symptoms as a result of his misadventures).

As the story progresses, it becomes more serialised and epic, culminating with the team becoming central in a massive interstellar war between two major powers.

The show was notable at the time for its use of serialised storytelling, a device it had inherited from Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but was also a lot more humorous. Although certainly not a comedy (unlike its absurdist Canadian contemporary, Lexx), it was a show that knew when to kick back and have fun as well as when to ramp up the dramatic tension. After a lukewarm first season, the show won immense critical acclaim in later years for its storytelling, effects, acting and the exceptional prosthetic makeup and puppetry.

All four seasons of Farscape and the concluding Peacekeeper Wars mini-series (listed at the end of Season 4) can be found now on Amazon Prime Video in most territories.

Narnia fanfic inexplicably gets media excited

News broke today that a man has written some Chronicles of Narnia fanfic and, for some reason, this was deemed worthy of inclusion in numerous newspaper and online articles.

From a Guardian article last year.

Fanfic, short for "fanfiction," is the form where fans of a fictional work take it upon themselves to write stories in the same setting and featuring the same characters. These works are, by definition, unauthorised and the writers cannot sell or make money from these stories without engaging in copyright violation.

The attitude of authors to fanfic based on their works varies immensely: George R.R. Martin disapproves, but generally doesn't make too much of a fuss as long as fanfic is not sent to him. J.K. Rowling is somewhat more supportive of the concept. Some authors are a lot more enthusiastic and even host fanfic on their website, although this becomes legally dubious if the author later makes story decisions in the "official" material that echoes the fanfic.

In the case of The Chronicles of Narnia, the situation is both less and more clear: C.S. Lewis died in 1963, so is not around to make any judgements of his own on the matter. The Lewis Estate has resisted anyone writing "official" new Narnia material, but has been happy to authorise various adaptations for television and film, with Netflix being the latest studio to pick up the rights and begin development work of a new version of the story. Curiously, around the time the first Narnia feature film was released in 2005, the Estate did suggest that new books would be released as well, but nothing ever materialised.

The fanfic in question is called The Stone Table and takes place between the events of The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, explaining what happened to the rulers of Narnia and the castle of Cair Paravel prior to the events of the latter novel. This is a fertile area for exploration - and the title and premise feel potentially like Lewis inventions - and indeed this period has been discussed many times by Narnia fans over the years.

Francis Spufford - who has previously published exactly one novel (Golden Hill, in 2016, which won the Costa Book Award) - wrote the fanfic for his daughter, who had complained that her father had not written any books she felt like she could read (Spufford has mostly written non-fiction on adult subjects). Spufford spent three years working on the fanfic, which is apparently novel-length, which is not an inconsiderable time period for one fic.

Oddly, Spufford has declined to post the work through any of the established fanfic communities, instead only releasing the first couple of chapters at the urging of friends who have read the full book. Distinguished SF author Adam Roberts has acclaimed the book as being excellent and a worthy addition to the Narnia canon, which is a nice compliment. However, given that the only person who can make that determination is near sixty years dead, it's not particularly germane.

Spufford has apparently now reached out to the Lewis Estate to see if the book can see print in some fashion with their approval. If not, he'll apparently wait the fifteen years until the books leave copyright and publish then, which feels like an odd choice to make when there are plenty of fanfic communities who would be happy to release the book and critique it immediately, for free.

Or, of course, he could follow in the footsteps of the great fanfic trailblazer and innovator E.L. James, change a few names to create a new setting and cash in straight away.

Filming starts on the new DUNE movie

Shooting began yesterday on the new film adaptation of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, the biggest-selling work in science fiction history.

Denis Villeneuve (Arrival, Blade Runner 2049) is directing the first of what he hopes will be two movies to adapt the first of the six canonical novels in the Dune series. Dune has been previously adapted twice, for film by David Lynch in 1984 and for television by the Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy) in 2000.

The announced cast of Dune is as follows:

• Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides
• Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica Atreides
• Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides
• Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck
• Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho
• Chen Chang as Dr. Wellington Yueh
• Charlotte Rampling as Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam
• Javier Bardem as Stilgar
• Zendaya as Chani
• Stellan Skarsgård as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen
• Dave Bautista as Rabban
• Dave Dastmalchian as Piter de Vries
• Stephen McKinley Henderson (role not confirmed yet)

Several key roles remain to be filled, including Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen, the mentat Thufir Hawat, the Shadout Mapes, Liet Kynes, Count Hasimir Fenring, and the Emperor Shaddam IV, along (possibly) with Princess Irulan.

In addition to Villeneuve directing, it has been confirmed that Hans Zimmer will be scoring the movie. Greig Fraser (Rogue One, Zero Dark Thirty) is director of photography and Patrice Vermette (Arrival, Sicario) is the production designer.

The movie is currently scheduled to hit cinemas on 20 November 2020.

SF&F Questions: What works are part of the Middle-earth canon?

There are few words that strike fear deeper into the hearts of long-established fantasy fans and critics when someone starts asking about “the Middle-earth canon” and “what books are canon?” It’s a simple question, but the answer is long, complex and confusing.

What is a Canon?

In this sense, a canon is the definitive “official” version of what happened in a particular story, world or narrative created by an author. In very simplistic terms, the Harry Potter canon, for example, consists of the seven novels written by J.K. Rowling and other elements that she either wrote or approved of, such as the Pottermore website, spin-off books like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and the Cursed Child stage play. Fanfiction is clearly non-canon and the films represent a separate canon, as they are an adaptation of the book canon rather than a formal addition to it.

The definition of canon can also change. For example, when George Lucas created the film Star Wars in 1977 and then its sequels, he held that only the films were canon and nothing else was: the spin-off novels and comic books written by third parties were not canon and he would not be bound by their events and in most cases did not read them. However, by the late 1980s he had come to believe a single Star Wars canon was more desirable and he hired people to ensure consistency and continuity between all officially-authorised Star Wars products, including novels, video games and comic books. This scheme became known as the “Star Wars Expanded Universe,” with the idea being that if someone just wanted to watch the films that was fine, but if they wanted to delve deeper into the setting, they could find a huge amount of official, canonical material, information and new stories. When Lucas wrote the Star Wars prequel movie trilogy in 1999-2005, he used planets, races, terms, concepts and characters created in prior Expanded Universe work in the films. However, when Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney in 2012, Disney decided that maintaining the Expanded Universe and keeping it coherent with the new films they were planning was impossible, and they declared that none of the material outside of the films and the animated series were canon (to the fury of many fans).

The definition can also be argued. Frank Herbert published his hugely popular Dune series of science fiction novels between 1965 and 1986 before dying unexpectedly. He left behind a very small number of notes and outlines for a possible continuation of the series, leading to his son co-writing and publishing an enormous number of additional books in the setting. The canonical status of these latter books has been hotly debated, especially since it became clear that the depth and detail of Frank Herbert’s notes had been grossly exaggerated.

Tolkien’s Works

In most cases determining which works are canon and which are not is relatively easy, especially if the author is still alive to simply answer questions on this topic. In the case of J.R.R. Tolkien, this is of course sadly impossible, as he passed away in 1973. The complexities of the determining the Tolkien canon are considerably complicated by the fact that Tolkien only published two major (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) and two minor (The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and The Road Goes Ever On) Middle-earth works whilst he was alive. After his death, his third son and literary executor Christopher sifted through his files to arrange the publication of The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), The Children of Húrin (2007), Beren and Lúthien (2017), The Fall of Gondolin (2018), and the twelve-volume History of Middle-earth series (1983-96). However, the publication of the latter series, which effectively presented some 5,000 Tolkien manuscript pages written over fifty-six years, meant that readers could make their own decisions over Christopher’s choices in assembling The Silmarillion and in some cases found them wanting, particularly regarding those papers and notes which came to light only after The Silmarillion’s publication, which in some cases Christopher acknowledged would have resulted in changes to the book if he’d known about them beforehand.

For this reason, a simple determination of the Middle-earth canon is extremely difficult and debatable. This is further complicated by J.R.R. Tolkien’s own willingness to adjust even published books to reflect later decisions. Most famously, he rewrote the chapter in The Hobbit where Bilbo Baggins confronts Gollum and finds the One Ring from its original, light-hearted style and tone to better reflect the darker and more sinister atmosphere of Lord of the Rings, and this appeared in a second edition of the book published in 1951. Certainly, some of the changes to The Silmarillion J.R.R. Tolkien was considering in the closing years of his life would have resulted in inconsistencies and incompatibilities with the published Lord of the Rings and Hobbit, suggesting that he may have produced third editions of both novels with revisions to take account of these developments. Thus, the reliance on a “fixed text” that canon usually relies on is absent in the matter of Middle-earth.

This has led to a controversial status for The Silmarillion as published. We know J.R.R. Tolkien was planning extensive, sweeping changes to the book at the time of his death, but these changes were not fully conceptualised or outlined. In the editing of The Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien therefore defaulted to the incomplete version of the story his father had developed from c. 1930 to the publication of Lord of the Rings, incorporating some elements from later on but also having to go right back to the original Book of Lost Tales idea (developed by Tolkien from 1917 to c. 1924) since that is the only place where he sketched out the end of the story in any kind of detail, despite the major differences in tone and style to his later writings. The result, it has been complained is a hodgepodge of drafts, ideas and stories and certainly does not reflect J.R.R. Tolkien’s plans for the book at the time of his death. Christopher Tolkien’s point, well-taken, is that it was impossible to create a book compatible with his father’s intentions in 1973, so he defaulted to the most completed and “best-case” narrative he could develop. The debate will no doubt rage on eternally.

So, what is the Middle-earth canon?

Returning to the original question, the Middle-earth canon can be broken down into the following groups:


Primary Canon
These are books published and revised by J.R.R. Tolkien in his lifetime. Despite Tolkien’s willingness to revise and issue new versions of the texts, we can nonetheless declare these as primary canon.

• The Hobbit, or There and Back Again (1937, revised 1951)
• The Lord of the Rings (1954-55, revised 1965)
• The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962)
• The Road Goes Ever On (1967, with Donald Swann)

It should be noted that although The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (a poetry collection) and The Road Goes Ever On (a musical score inspired by Middle-earth) both contain canonical new information, they are relatively minor works.


Secondary Canon
These are books consisting of material written by J.R.R. Tolkien but not published until after his death, usually edited by his son Christopher. This is material which is coherent and readable as stand-alone works, but some readers may raise concerns based on information from other sources:

• The Silmarillion (1977)
• Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth (1980)

Tertiary Canon 
This is material which was written and created by Tolkien, but was not completed by him or brought to a satisfactory state where it can be reconciled with either primary or secondary canon. However, in isolated moments this material may be argued to be canonical where it does not conflict with established material.

• The History of Middle Earth Volume I: The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1 (1983)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume II: The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2 (1984)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume III: The Lays of Beleriand (1985)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume IV: The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume V: The Lost Road and Other Writings (1987)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume VI: The Shadow of the Past (1988)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume VII: The Treason of Isengard (1989)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume VIII: The War of the Ring (1990)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume IX: Sauron Defeated (1992)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume X: Morgoth’s Ring (1993)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume X: The War of the Jewels (1994)
• The History of Middle Earth Volume XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996)
• The Children of Húrin (2007)
• Beren and Lúthien (2017)
• The Fall of Gondolin (2018)

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The classic DUNE boardgame is being reissued

Gale Force Nine Games have confirmed they are reprinting the original Dune board game released in 1979 by Avalon Hill. Out of print since the early 1980s, the game has been lauded for its tight mechanics and rich theme, a forerunner of the modern board game scene from the same designers as the long-lived Cosmic Encounter.

Gale Force Nine have picked up the gaming rights to Dune and are working with other publishers on content: Modiphius Entertainment are also producing a Dune pen-and-paper roleplaying game and Gale Force are also working on a tabletop miniatures game.

Regarded as a classic of the board game medium, Fantasy Flight Games mounted a campaign to reprint the game a decade ago but were unable to win the rights, instead issuing a clone called Rex: The Last Days of an Empire, set in their own Twilight Imperium universe.

No release date has been set, but Gale Force may be eyeing a mid-2020 release date ahead of the release of Denis Villeneuve's new Dune film, which starts shooting imminently.