The Science of Middle Earth. Edited by Ronald LeHoucq et al, translated by Tina Kover, Pegasus, 2021.

The Science of Middle Earth is a collection of forty articles looking at various linguistic, sociological, and scientific aspects of the work of J.R.R. Tolkien and his descriptions of his Middle Earth. While there is a certain amount of repetition, each article is written by a professional in his or her field. The book was originally written in French, and all but one of the contributors are from France. The single exception is a professor from Bristol, England.

The articles are arranged by subject matter: first sociology and mythology, then world-building and linguistics, then environment, then geography, then anatomy and physiology of hominids in the tales, and finally the animals (focusing on the fictional creatures).

Each contributor takes his or her specialty and applies it to the Middle Earth tales. While there is more of a focus on The Lord of the Rings (LOTR), The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion, some articles take examples and illustrations from other works about Middle Earth. Some make interesting comparisons and contrasts between the films (especially the Jackson films) and the books. For example, while wargs (“war dogs,” or perhaps from the Old Norse vargr which means “wolf”) are described as being large wolf-dogs, Peter Jackson admitted he made the wargs in his films look more like hyenas. Nobody would confuse them with Lassie or Rin-Tin-Tin.

Most articles give Tolkien a lot of credit for the worlds and creatures he created. Only one noted a true impossibility—a marsh upriver from a waterfall. Of course, there are some speculations and stretched calculations about how certain large birds or dragons could actually fly or whether Tolkien’s Oliphaunts were too large. Again, one writer notes differences between Tolkien’s description of the elephants with the way Jackson shows them on film. We have to comopare them to extinct creatures like Mastodons, too.

The strong points are the linguistic and social observations. A lot of the pure science is educated guessing—after all, Middle Earth is fantasy. How could elves, for example, have such great eyesight? One article explains how the anatomy of their eyes would differ from humans’. What advantage would hobbits have with large, hairy feet? What kind of physiological changes took place for Smeagol the Hobbit to become Gollum the fallen one? What are orcs anyhow? Various articles examine all such questions.

There are many such interesting queries that writers in this collection try to answer. A few of the paleontologists and biologists try to explain some relations by macroevolution in spite of The Silmarillion’s creation origin story. Clearly, microevolution can happen among related species or clines, but that is different. Still, The Science of Middle Earth is an interesting attempt to apply science to fantasy. Because of Tolkien’s knowledge and experience well beyond literature and language, we see how his world works.