NEW YORK - An unfinished tale by J.R.R. Tolkien has been edited by his son into a completed work and will be released next spring, the U.S. and British publishers announced Monday.

Christopher Tolkien has spent the past 30 years working on "The Children of Hurin," an epic tale his father began in 1918 and later abandoned. Excerpts of "The Children of Hurin," which includes the elves and dwarves of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and other works, have been published before.

"It has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the `Children of Hurin' as an independent work, between its own covers," Christopher Tolkien said in a statement.

The new book will be published by Houghton Mifflin in the United States and HarperCollins in England.

J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings Trilogy" has sold more than 50 million copies and was also adapted into a blockbuster, Academy Award-winning trio of films. A stage version is scheduled to open next year.

I wonder if this is going to be anything like the sequel to Gone With The Wind?
A good theory, but kinda blah in reality. That and I have a hard time picturing Gandalf on Broadway.

We can only wait and see.

I have to say I'm not really looking forward to somebody else finishing a Tolkien work, be it his son or not. Granted it is a good story but books like the Silmarillion give ample back story. Let it go. Some will disagree with me but if his son wants to continue his legacy he should create his own world and not profit from his fathers legacy.

Well, it sounds as if it is the Narn i Hîn Húrin, which has been mentioned in various places before. It's one of the earliest tales of the First Age of Middle-Earth, and has been summarized in the chapter Of Túrin Turambar of The Silmarillion. It's not something that Tolkien had in finished form, and probably wouldn't have wanted released without much more polish, but he decision is no longer his to make. Narn was written in the First World War era, if I remember correctly. I've never been fond of that particular story cycle, I would prefer to read the complete story of Tuor and the fall of Gondolin, but that only exists as a fragment already published.

Well if you want to get technical that's all he's done his entire life, who do you think owns the rights to the story now. In a way your saying that children shouldn't get money from thier parents, cause that money was got with thier legacy it was with thier parents. It's really no different then Sam Walton's children getting kick backs from Wal-Mart sales, or the children of Dick and Mac McDonald's children getting kick backs cause of Ronald's big red shoes.

I do agree with you to an extent that if he wants to start a legacy he should do it with a book is father wasn't working on and didn't finish. But in reality he's going to profit from his father's legacy no matter what cause J.R.R. Tolkien fans will buy the books just cause they say "Tolkien" on them weather it's Christopher or J.R.R. at the begining of the name.

Why do you think Celebrities that are the children of other Celebrities prefer that people don't know who thier parents are until after thier careers are established. Either way I think Christopher should have let it go, and worked on his own books to prove to use that he can come up with his own ideas instead of plagerizing his father's ideas.

It's going to suck. His son can't write

haha, aint that condolio rice ?

yep....