Idril
05-10-2003, 05:04 PM
This article has been published in the Tolkien Society periodical `Mallorn'.
<angle brackets> This matter should be in italics
{FTN: .......} This matter should be a footnote
TOLKIEN AND SPACE TRAVEL
by A. Appleyard
Before 1938 Tolkien and C.S. Lewis once agreed to write stories.
Tolkien chose `time travel' but merely started and abandoned a story about how
two modern-age men time-travelled to Numenor. C.S. Lewis chose `space travel'
and so wrote <Out of the Silent Planet> and <Voyage to Venus>. Those two books
are well known; but what if anything of space travel as commonly understood
occurs in Tolkien?
Well-known events indeed occur in the Void outside Arda involving
Iluvatar, Maiar, Valar and Melkor (as recorded in `Ainulindale', `Valaquenta',
`The Tale of the Sun and Moon', etc.). References include an explicit mention
in <The Silmarillion> of `strife in Ilmen [Quenya for Space] beneath the paths
of the stars' when Melkor in vain attacked the Moon (Tolkien 1977, p101); but
such massive spiritual events, described in a magical and mystic way, are not
of the same classification as space-travel stories but rather are of the
creation legend type.
Although Tolkien's world is largely of ancient warriors and magic,
modern technology intrudes in a few places. In <The Lord of the Rings> the
Deeping Wall and the Rammas are breached by what is far likelier to be an
explosive than magic (Tolkien, 1966, p. 142). <The Lost Road> says that exiled
Numenoreans after the Downfall, trying in vain to fly the Straight Road to
Valinor, made aircraft (1987, p. 17). In `The Fall of Gondolin' (Tolkien,
1984) the descriptions of iron `creatures' powered by `internal fires' sound
to me much more like internal combustion powered vehicles than any sort of
animal, and Tolkien well describes the Elves' desperation when faced with
certain death or deportation to slavery enforced by technology beyond their
knowledge or ability to resist. Living war-steeds, even dragons, are limited
in size and number by the need to feed them even when they are not being used;
not so powered machines, and so Gondolin, a fortress of huge strength, was
consumed in one assault by them, even without aid of anything airborne.
In all cases the good side sticks to personal valour with old-style
weapons and numbers, and calling on the Valar if necessary. The
exiled-Numenorean aircraft project was likely totally suppressed early and all
records and parts destroyed so enemies could not make harmful use of them, as
no trace of them occurs in other historical records. This suppression was
fortunately successful, as Legolas's arrow at Sarn Gebir and Eowyn's sword on
the Pelennor would have been useless against a helicopter, and Sauron could
have kept many more than nine of them, because, as stated above they would not
have to be routinely fed when not being used. The Enemy invented the other
known devices; but the Gondolin machines' technology perished in the fall of
Morgoth's power at the end of the First Age and Saruman's machines perished
when the Ents destroyed Isengard. A variant of the story of Numenor in <The
Lost Road> describes undoubted engine-powered iron ships used by Ar-Pharazon
after Sauron became his chief advisor; that technology perished in the
Downfall. The speakers at the fictional meetings described in `The Notion Club
Papers' in <Sauron Defeated> mention spaceships and space travel a few times;
but those meetings are not set in his Middle Earth scenario but in a modern
world for which the Middle Earth events are the ancient past.
I now consider Earendil, who Tolkien found in two lines of Anglo-Saxon
poetry and thought of as the planet Venus as a morning or evening star, and
personified as a sailor sailing into the West on a quest, to become one of the
main origins of Tolkien's mythology. Tolkien's oldest versions say that his
battered wooden sailing ship Vingilot was repaired and set to sail in the sky;
a wooden hull floating on unsupporting emptiness, sails spread in emptiness.
Many images and paintings of him follow this description. I have seen it
called a `star-ship', but meaning `a ship which is a star'. This treatment of
the sky as an ocean with an upper surface that can be sailed on sea-fashion in
an open ship is paralleled in a description of how Laurelin's last fruit was
made into the Sun: the fruit's hard casing was split into hemispheres which
were nested one inside the other like a two-layered open coracle, with no
mention of roofing its hull over. Voyages, mostly Elvish, to Valinor after the
Downfall, are in wooden sea-ships carried across Ilmen by unspecified means.
It is intended that the reader assumes that the means are magical. Bilbo's
voyage to Eressea at the end of <The Lord of the Rings> is described as being
all by sea.
But Bilbo's song `Earendil was a mariner' in <The Lord of the Rings>
(pp. 246-249), presumably getting its material from reliable Elvish sources in
Imladris, says that for his sky voyages "A ship then new they built for him /
of mithril and of elven-glass / with shining prow: no shaven oar / nor sail
she bore on silver mast", and mentions no wood in its construction. This
indeed sounds suspiciously like most people's image of a spaceship.
The Elves and Valar of Valinor were wise, far more so than Men,
immortal and so not having each one's knowledge limited to what he can learn
and pass on in a Man's lifetime. They likely knew far more of what we call
`modern technology' than they were prepared to use as a matter of routine, or
even to reveal to Men, Sindar, Avari, or others, for they could each foresee a
personal future of thousands of years of having to live with the effects of
such inventions being used. Even the operating principle of Elven-lights is
not revealed.
Only Melkor and his servants and followers broke this rule, and at
intervals, afflicted Arda with their war-devices for a while, until defeated.
Only in theory are the Eldar and Istari likely to have studied such things, to
keep memory of them, to recognize them if agents of Melkor try to make them or
if Men find about them independently.
Whether or not in the vastness of Ea there are other Ardar englobed in
the void, each with its own Valar and inhabitants and history, Tolkien does
not say. C.S. Lewis in <Voyage to Venus> (1960, p. 73) wrote that the vast
interplanetary and interstellar distances are "God's quarantine regulations"
to make sure that each planet's life and culture develops in its own time in
its own way, and given the extent to which he and Tolkien shared their ideas,
it is quite likely that Tolkien thought similarly.
Here I consider further how space travel is treated in C.S. Lewis's
books. In <Out of the Silent Planet> (a journey to Mars) and <Voyage to
Venus>, Lewis describes Professor Wilson as seeking to aid human expansionism
regardless of other worlds' natives. The Oyarsa of Mars once long ago had
suppressed hard and thoroughly a native Martian technological development that
was approaching space travel capability, and Wilson's spaceship was set by the
Oyarsa to self-destruct soon after return to Earth, showing Wilson, and any on
Earth who might seek to imitate him, that the Powers had effective defences
against any future Earth fleet of Wilson-type spaceships; the only modern-type
Mars native technology that Ransom found was an oxygen breathing set for high
altitude. In <Voyage to Venus> Ransom was ferried to Venus and back by the
Oyarsa rather than going in a spaceship. Wilson's new spaceship is lost in
Venus's world ocean, and he dies on Venus without passing his invention on. No
Earth spacefleet comes from it, and space travel is described as being for
gods only. The well-known, unrelated Star Trek and Star Wars scenarios show
the disastrously powerful space empires that can develop where routine
faster-than-light space travel is possible.
Con't next page............
<angle brackets> This matter should be in italics
{FTN: .......} This matter should be a footnote
TOLKIEN AND SPACE TRAVEL
by A. Appleyard
Before 1938 Tolkien and C.S. Lewis once agreed to write stories.
Tolkien chose `time travel' but merely started and abandoned a story about how
two modern-age men time-travelled to Numenor. C.S. Lewis chose `space travel'
and so wrote <Out of the Silent Planet> and <Voyage to Venus>. Those two books
are well known; but what if anything of space travel as commonly understood
occurs in Tolkien?
Well-known events indeed occur in the Void outside Arda involving
Iluvatar, Maiar, Valar and Melkor (as recorded in `Ainulindale', `Valaquenta',
`The Tale of the Sun and Moon', etc.). References include an explicit mention
in <The Silmarillion> of `strife in Ilmen [Quenya for Space] beneath the paths
of the stars' when Melkor in vain attacked the Moon (Tolkien 1977, p101); but
such massive spiritual events, described in a magical and mystic way, are not
of the same classification as space-travel stories but rather are of the
creation legend type.
Although Tolkien's world is largely of ancient warriors and magic,
modern technology intrudes in a few places. In <The Lord of the Rings> the
Deeping Wall and the Rammas are breached by what is far likelier to be an
explosive than magic (Tolkien, 1966, p. 142). <The Lost Road> says that exiled
Numenoreans after the Downfall, trying in vain to fly the Straight Road to
Valinor, made aircraft (1987, p. 17). In `The Fall of Gondolin' (Tolkien,
1984) the descriptions of iron `creatures' powered by `internal fires' sound
to me much more like internal combustion powered vehicles than any sort of
animal, and Tolkien well describes the Elves' desperation when faced with
certain death or deportation to slavery enforced by technology beyond their
knowledge or ability to resist. Living war-steeds, even dragons, are limited
in size and number by the need to feed them even when they are not being used;
not so powered machines, and so Gondolin, a fortress of huge strength, was
consumed in one assault by them, even without aid of anything airborne.
In all cases the good side sticks to personal valour with old-style
weapons and numbers, and calling on the Valar if necessary. The
exiled-Numenorean aircraft project was likely totally suppressed early and all
records and parts destroyed so enemies could not make harmful use of them, as
no trace of them occurs in other historical records. This suppression was
fortunately successful, as Legolas's arrow at Sarn Gebir and Eowyn's sword on
the Pelennor would have been useless against a helicopter, and Sauron could
have kept many more than nine of them, because, as stated above they would not
have to be routinely fed when not being used. The Enemy invented the other
known devices; but the Gondolin machines' technology perished in the fall of
Morgoth's power at the end of the First Age and Saruman's machines perished
when the Ents destroyed Isengard. A variant of the story of Numenor in <The
Lost Road> describes undoubted engine-powered iron ships used by Ar-Pharazon
after Sauron became his chief advisor; that technology perished in the
Downfall. The speakers at the fictional meetings described in `The Notion Club
Papers' in <Sauron Defeated> mention spaceships and space travel a few times;
but those meetings are not set in his Middle Earth scenario but in a modern
world for which the Middle Earth events are the ancient past.
I now consider Earendil, who Tolkien found in two lines of Anglo-Saxon
poetry and thought of as the planet Venus as a morning or evening star, and
personified as a sailor sailing into the West on a quest, to become one of the
main origins of Tolkien's mythology. Tolkien's oldest versions say that his
battered wooden sailing ship Vingilot was repaired and set to sail in the sky;
a wooden hull floating on unsupporting emptiness, sails spread in emptiness.
Many images and paintings of him follow this description. I have seen it
called a `star-ship', but meaning `a ship which is a star'. This treatment of
the sky as an ocean with an upper surface that can be sailed on sea-fashion in
an open ship is paralleled in a description of how Laurelin's last fruit was
made into the Sun: the fruit's hard casing was split into hemispheres which
were nested one inside the other like a two-layered open coracle, with no
mention of roofing its hull over. Voyages, mostly Elvish, to Valinor after the
Downfall, are in wooden sea-ships carried across Ilmen by unspecified means.
It is intended that the reader assumes that the means are magical. Bilbo's
voyage to Eressea at the end of <The Lord of the Rings> is described as being
all by sea.
But Bilbo's song `Earendil was a mariner' in <The Lord of the Rings>
(pp. 246-249), presumably getting its material from reliable Elvish sources in
Imladris, says that for his sky voyages "A ship then new they built for him /
of mithril and of elven-glass / with shining prow: no shaven oar / nor sail
she bore on silver mast", and mentions no wood in its construction. This
indeed sounds suspiciously like most people's image of a spaceship.
The Elves and Valar of Valinor were wise, far more so than Men,
immortal and so not having each one's knowledge limited to what he can learn
and pass on in a Man's lifetime. They likely knew far more of what we call
`modern technology' than they were prepared to use as a matter of routine, or
even to reveal to Men, Sindar, Avari, or others, for they could each foresee a
personal future of thousands of years of having to live with the effects of
such inventions being used. Even the operating principle of Elven-lights is
not revealed.
Only Melkor and his servants and followers broke this rule, and at
intervals, afflicted Arda with their war-devices for a while, until defeated.
Only in theory are the Eldar and Istari likely to have studied such things, to
keep memory of them, to recognize them if agents of Melkor try to make them or
if Men find about them independently.
Whether or not in the vastness of Ea there are other Ardar englobed in
the void, each with its own Valar and inhabitants and history, Tolkien does
not say. C.S. Lewis in <Voyage to Venus> (1960, p. 73) wrote that the vast
interplanetary and interstellar distances are "God's quarantine regulations"
to make sure that each planet's life and culture develops in its own time in
its own way, and given the extent to which he and Tolkien shared their ideas,
it is quite likely that Tolkien thought similarly.
Here I consider further how space travel is treated in C.S. Lewis's
books. In <Out of the Silent Planet> (a journey to Mars) and <Voyage to
Venus>, Lewis describes Professor Wilson as seeking to aid human expansionism
regardless of other worlds' natives. The Oyarsa of Mars once long ago had
suppressed hard and thoroughly a native Martian technological development that
was approaching space travel capability, and Wilson's spaceship was set by the
Oyarsa to self-destruct soon after return to Earth, showing Wilson, and any on
Earth who might seek to imitate him, that the Powers had effective defences
against any future Earth fleet of Wilson-type spaceships; the only modern-type
Mars native technology that Ransom found was an oxygen breathing set for high
altitude. In <Voyage to Venus> Ransom was ferried to Venus and back by the
Oyarsa rather than going in a spaceship. Wilson's new spaceship is lost in
Venus's world ocean, and he dies on Venus without passing his invention on. No
Earth spacefleet comes from it, and space travel is described as being for
gods only. The well-known, unrelated Star Trek and Star Wars scenarios show
the disastrously powerful space empires that can develop where routine
faster-than-light space travel is possible.
Con't next page............