I got a glimpse of the man's sharp wit as well as his profound intelligence.... he seemed to suffer this fool prattling on enthusiastically

c/o George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
40 Museum Street
London WC1A 1LU
England.

15 August 1975

Dear Master Hicklin,

Thankyou for your letter. I must reply to your
questions very briefly, but I hope you will find the answers
adequate. I cannot tell you precisely when The Silmarillion
will be published, but I think certainly not before 1977, and
I very much hope by 1978. You ask when it was begun, and
that is a very difficult question; in a sense, it occupied
my father all his life, and much of the myth and legend that
it contains were in being before even the Hobbit was written.
A full life of my father is being written which will tell you
a good deal about it, and that will be published, I hope,
before long.
You also ask about the geography of the Elder Days.
The Silmarillion has very little to say about the lands of
Middle-earth west [sic] of Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains. Its
narrative is concerned with the Elves in Aman (the land of
the Valar in the West, over the Great Sea) and in Beleriand.
the region of Middle-earth between the shores of the Sea and
the Blue Mountains. Almost all this region was drowned,
and all that was left in later times was the country of Lindon,
which is marked on the Lord of the Rings map west of the Blue
Mountains. Thus Gondolin, Nargothrond and Thangorodrim
were in regions that had long since passed under the sea at
the time of the War of the Rings.
The Silmarillion will contain a map of the whole of
Beleriand, extending from the shores of the Sea in the west,
to Thangorodrim in the North, and to the Ered Luin in the east.
The book will also contain some texts other than the Silmarillion
proper, such as The Akallabêth, the Drowning of Númenor.

Yours sincerely,

[calligraphic signature done with a square nib]

...He was referring to his art, and also to the result; but he was using the word quite literally.
He went on looking at the Tree. All the leaves he had ever labored at were there, as he had imagined them rather than as he had made them; and there were others that had only budded in is mind, and many that might have budded, if only he had time. Nothing was written on them, they were just exquisite leaves, yet they were dated as clear as a calendar. Some of the most beautiful – and the most characteristic, the most perfect examples of the Niggle style – were seen to have been produced in collaboration with Mr Parish: there was no other way of putting it.

I'm not normally a fan boy, but just to have a personal letter from one of the two Tolkien great writers would leave me starry-eyed for days. You are so lucky to get a reply, indeed.

When we look at Dune and how Frank Herbert's son Brian has handled the legacy, we can see how differently it could have gone.

In partnership with Kevin J. Anderson, Brian Herbert has written thirteen prequels, sequels, and interquels so far (there are only six original Dune novels by Frank! With a likely seventh planned). All this is allegedly "based on his father's notes", which no one has seen and might never be released - whatever is in them, we can be sure he's added quite a lot of his own ideas.

The contrast with Christopher's very restrained and conservative approach is stark. The 1977 Silmarillion is the most "creative" he ever got.