Book Review: The Science of Middle-earth by Roland Lehoucq, Loic Mangin, et al.

 

I love Tolkien and I love sometimes doing a more our reality-based interpretation of fantasy. So let's have a look at this one.

In this non-fiction, various authors take a look at the world and lore of Tolkien and provide some scientific context and even apply science to some of his world-building. For example, how the various species could've evolved. 

Overall I liked reading this book more than I'd consider it actually good. Like other reviews have picked apart much better than I ever could, despite this being a scientific take on Tolkien's realm, there's some glaring mistakes the authors over here made. Which is definitely a no-no for when trying to write a serious non-fiction book about this author's legendary world and characters. They even didn't get Tolkien's birthday right.

That said, I did very much enjoy the book, however. It was a fun read and while I can see why a lot of people don't like it (the mistakes aside, the subject matter of this book might also take away some of the "magic" of Tolkien's world for some readers) I personally liked this more scientific-based interpretation of his world. We all know that what's inside this book isn't canon, only Tolkien's writings are (and those of his compiled and later published posthumously by his son, Christopher Tolkien). 

But it's still a fun thought exercise to see how Tolkien's world came about if Earth-science applied to it more. My favorite part by far was (with my love of animals and fantasy creatures) the later part of the book where we have a chapter dedicated to each of Tolkien's fantastical species, and how they compare to some of their Earth counterparts or Earth-based science. And of course I also loved the evolutionary tree they tried to piece together for Tolkien's species. Obviously that's not how they actually came to be (as explained in The Silmarillion) but fun to imagine how they might've evolved nonetheless. 

So yeah, by no means a perfect book and I can see why ticked off some very dedicated Tolkien fans. For me I don't take this book too seriously and see it more as a fun thought supersize than exercise it trying to actually change how we see Tolkien's world. Still, they definitely should've gotten more of their facts straight.

Rating: 3.5/5