Soon after the turn of the millenium I began to want to know more about J.R.R. Tolkien. The first resource I found online was The Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza, a sizeable site that encompassed everything from role-play to lore.
The plaza suited me perfectly, and I made good friends there, some of whom are now friends in RL, or at least on other parts of the interwebs!
Some, alas, are gone.
Moreover, the Plaza itself has gone, victim of the kind of person who enjoys destruction.
One of my online mentors in lore was ‘halfir’ who produced and guided a good deal of excellent work in Tolkien scholarship. Several of us kept urging him to publish, but he never did.
Now a group of us have decided to try and gather together whatever can be traced of his work, as a memorial to him. This is not to be a work of hagiography, and enshrining of work, but an attempt to get his work back into the flow of scholarship, where it can feed in and be a source of ideas and knowledge as it was on the Plaza.
That said,there are huge difficulties in our way. Leaving aside questions of how to edit, format and present halfir’s work, the two most basic problems are:
1) How many of the relevant threads can be retrieved?
2) How do we seek permissions from his family?
This post is an appeal to anyone who may have digital copies of halfir’s work which they may be willing to submit to us AND anyone who has contact details for his family. PLEASE DON’T post anything in blog-threads, but contact me by message in the first instance. Thanks.
Seasons of Skorn, shadows of the seas: in search of time 