Adam B. Shaeffer's Blog, page 5

Sméagol

No matter what name you call him, whether it be Slinker, Stinker, Sméagol, or Gollum, he is one of the most fascinating and tragic characters in The Lord of the Rings. Wait. Tragic? Yes. His is a tragic case, which Tolkien well knew.

Many of the characters who meet or interact with Gollum hold little hope for his restoration or redemption. But Gandalf believes it possible, even though it remains unlikely. Unlikely though it may be, Gollum is within a hairs breadth of losing his battle with Sm...

The House of My Soul

The house of my soul is too small for you to enter: make it more spacious by your coming. It lies in ruins: rebuild it. Confessions I.vi

I’ve been preparing to teach tomorrow on Augustine’s Confessions and there is a lot we could cover in our class session: there’s the conflict with the Manichees, there’s Augustine’s gradual realization that evil is nothing but the privation of the good and the related ideas of vice as a counterfeit good and the nature of sin as disordered desire, in short th...

Frodo’s Hopeless Quest

It occurred to me as I began re-reading LotR again, that Frodo’s quest is hopeless from the beginning. Utterly hopeless.

When Gandalf returns with news of just what the Ring is, both he and Frodo see that even after such a relatively short span of time (if you consider 14 years a short span) he is unwilling to see it harmed. It already has a hold on his soul. If already (at page 45 or so) he can’t bear to see the Ring harmed, how can anyone expect him to cast it into the fire 900 pages and ar...

The Three-Body Problem

There was much about Liu Cixin’s award winning The Three Body Problem, a hard science fiction (or perhaps we can call it SCIENCE fiction) novel, that was interesting. And I do mean much, but in the interest of brevity, I’m only going to focus on a few pieces, particularly since they integrate well with my specific interests.

I think this novel’s awareness of spiritual things is fascinating, though it paints those spiritual things in scientific colors. The driving force throughout the novel is...

A Choir of One

The story below was originally slated to appear in the January 2011 edition of This Mutant Life before, sadly, the magazine shut down after the December 2010 issue. I still count this as my second published short story, though in reality it never did see publication. I still like it, though there are some things I may go back to expand upon or rewrite. But I think, in this case, it is best to publish it here as it would have appeared had This Mutant Life continued. Maybe someday down the road...

Skin and An Ember in the Ashes

Okay, so this won’t be a proper book review, but is more of a meditation on two books with similar audiences, similar blurbs, but very different impacts on this particular reader. Both Skin by Ilka Tampke and An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir were compared to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire though, I suppose, in all fairness the comparison is actually to the HBO adaptation of his books. The comparison is fitting for both books, but for very different reasons.

For Skin it comes...

From Fantasist to Son

I have seen the ice dragon rise
glistening and glittering
from the depths of the western sea.

I have seen the rusting hulks
our forefathers left us
power still thrumming through metal limbs.

I have seen the wolfman shift
and slide from man to beast
and from beast to nightmare crowned as king.

I have seen man’s mangled body
made whole
sewn and bound with threads of light.

I have seen you, my son,
nuzzling your head into my chest,
content to let me hold you as you sleep.

And that is the magic t...

Morgoth’s Ring

So, I’ve been reading Morgoth’s Ring (History of Middle-Earth, Vol. 10), and Tolkien’s reflections on Morgoth, Sauron, and the Ring are simply fascinating. In an unfinished essay entitled “Notes on Motives in the Silmarillion” Tolkien compares Morgoth and Sauron, the ultimate evils of their respective eras. While Morgoth is the superior being, he was foremost among the Valar along with Manwë, and Sauron is a lesser spirit, one of the Maiar, Sauron is actually “greater” in his era than Morgoth...