People occasionally contact me or the Xenite.Org administrators and ask us if we can help them find Tolkien collectibles. Most often people are looking for audio books or recordings of the old radio adaptions.

There were three radio adaptations that I know of: two by the BBC and one by Mind's Eye Theater. Most people tell me they prefer the second BBC adaptation (the first was not recorded, to the best of my knowledge).

Although I cannot recommend which audio or video resources you want to acquire, I can share some suggestions that may help you in your quest.

First, if you're looking for printed materials, especially older volumes, you should check Forodrim's Chronological Tolkien Bibliography. It may not be the most thorough and complete bibliography out there but it is extremely well-researched and organized. I doubt it omits many major books (it was last updated a few years ago, however, so it doesn't yet include The Children of Hurin or The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun).

For other media there is an old document I worked on in the 1990s, the Middle-earth WorldFAQ (don't ask why I don't have that on one of my sites -- I have no idea of why I don't). It's a starting point, no more.

Peter Collier maintains the Tolkien Library site, where you'll find a lot of information about Tolkien books.

And if you're in to collectibles, you have to check out (Joe) Mike Williams' Tolkien Collector site.

But before you buy anything from anyone, run a few searches on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and eBay. You may find they have what you're looking for in stock.

Finally, if you're not ready to buy anything, but you want to track down a band, musician, album, or song that is connected to Middle-earth then Middle-earth Radio lets you browse a huge catalog of Tolkien music (look in the right-hand column for "Playlist/Requests").

In the future when people contact us for help I will probably just refer them to this blog post. I should have written it a long time ago, I guess.

Enjoy your quest, and may you find what you seek!

Net Neutrality is one of the greatest lies to be perpetrated on the American public. You've been told it would mean fair access for everyone. The truth is that Net Neutrality reduces the costs of making money for large corporations by shifting those costs to American consumers who won't benefit from the technologies that need more infrastructure.

In other words, you and I don't use the Internet enough to justify paying for additional Internet capacity that is only required by a small minority of Internet users -- users who in some cases are engaged in illegal activity.

Today the FCC cheated consumers by supporting the Net Neutrality lie -- forbidding Internet carriers from policing their own networks to ensure that small numbers of users don't steal bandwidth from the rest of us.

There is only so much bandwidth to go around, and while we all enjoy media-rich content on the broadband access that we have, some people enjoy it one or two orders of magnitude beyond what the normal broadband user needs. These people have used the courts to cheat their fellow customers of fair access to the Internet. Now these bandwidth hogs are using the Federal Communications Commission to cheat us again.

The FCC ruling will drive Internet carriers to develop new bandwidth, but since they cannot charge the heavy bandwidth users to pay for the infrastructure upgrades, we'll all have to bear the burden. This FCC ruling is so anti-consumer that it means companies like Google and Amazon, who have long supported the Net Neutrality lie, will be able to roll out highly profitable applications without having to pay the costs of developing the infrastructure to support them.

You and I get stuck with that bill.

A group of Senate Republicans hope to challenge the FCC's ruling through legislation. Although I've not been happy with the Republican Party lately, this is one time they are acting in consumers' best interests. Americans should be contacting their Democratic Senators and Congressional Reps and urging those people to work toward reversing the FCC ruling.

American consumers deserve better than to be forced by their own government to pay for the development of resources they won't use.

You're welcome to comment here or discuss Net Neutrality with me at SF-Fandom.

I never in a million years would have seen this revelation coming, much less coming out of the general media. If Tolkien's work for the British government has been documented by his biographers, I have either forgotten about that or never read the book.

JRR Tolkien trained as British spy
The novelist JRR Tolkien secretly trained as a Government spy in the run up to the Second World War, new documents have disclosed.

Tolkien, one of his generation's most respected linguists, was ''earmarked'' to crack Nazi codes in the event that Germany declared war.

Intelligence chiefs singled him and a 'cadre' of other intellectuals to work at Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre in Buckinghamshire.

Its staff - which included Alan Turing, the gay codebreaker - would later decipher the 'impenetrable' Enigma machines.

This saved Britain from German conquest by allowing the Navy to intercept and destroy Hitler's U-Boats.

According to previously unseen records, Tolkien trained with the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS).

Read the full article at The Telegraph.

That should give the Tolkien community something to mull over for the next few days at least.

You're welcome to comment here but I've also started a thread over in the Tolkien Forum on SF-Fandom.

I have been remiss in posting news lately because I've been so busy with work and private life. Here are a couple of announcements Hawke posted to the Endor discussion group.

Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 14
For those who missed out on the live broadcast from MerpCon V Tolkien Moot 2009, the podcast is now available. You can also still download the "Raw Hobbit" session as well. I'm also working on putting together the Tolkien Youth Panel podcast soon.

This is podcast #14 of Middle-earth Talk Radio. This is also our first live broadcast with a live studio audience, and live remote audience interacting with questions through the chatroom and from the local audience. This took place at the tail end of MerpCon V Tolkien Moot 2009.

128 bit MP3 format filesize: 54.3 MB (56,896,172 bytes).

Duration: 59 minutes 15 seconds.

Topics:

• Hobbit movie script weeks away from completion
• Hobbit movies still unfunded
• Hobbit movies threatened by Tolkien Estate lawsuit
• Tolkien & C.S. Lewis
• Why doesn't Frodo just ride an eagle?
• The rebuilding of Hobbiton
• Various topics and discussions from the studio and online audience.

View news release and download link here:
Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 14

Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 15
Greetings fellow Tolkien enthusiasts on this Tolkien Memorial Day,

A busy week for our audio releases too.
In addition to Episode 14, Raw Hobbit, and the Youth Panel, now episode
15 is available, just recorded late last night.

In this episode Michael and I cover:

• Post MerpCon V Tolkien Moot 2009 discussion
• Raw Hobbit now available for download
• Spokane Tolkien Society Youth Panel now available for download
• "Live recorded" Middle-earth Talk Radio episode 14 available for download
• Other Minds Magazine Issue 7 available. Discuss overview of contents
• Middle-earth Radio streams outages status update, explanation, and plans
• Government Program, Middle-earth Stimulus program "Cash for Orcs"...
• J.R.R. Tolkien's anniversary of his death.
• DragonCon showing "Hunt for Gollum"
• DragonCon showing "unauthorized peak at the upcoming Hobbit films"
• Tom Cruise playing Bilbo Baggins :-P
• L.A. Tolkien Fans celebrating Bilbo's B-day again on the wrong day.
• Any Serkis to be in C.S. Lewis production of "Screwtape"
• Daniel Radcliffe
• Beautifully hand "Illuminated" copy of the Silmarillion
• Ian McKellin says he knows who's cast in the Hobbit, but he's not telling (yet)
• Comments about "The Examiner"
• Hobbit not going to be done in 3D.
• Tentative settlement between Tolkien Estate and New Line Cinema

Download Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 15 now.

Swing by www.middle-earthradio.com to download all these episodes, and the special pieces from MerpCon V.
Cheers!