The Hobbit (book)

In a way, John Ronald Reul (J.R.R.) Tolkien began writing The Hobbit, or There and Back Again in 1914, when he began writing stories which eventually became The Silmarillon (published by his son in 1977, following Tolkien's death in 1973).  Tolkien, who had a keen interest in mythology, originally wanted to develop a mythology to help explain the origins of English history and culture.  In these stories, Tolkien created an entire mythological world, which included Middle Earth (the world humans inhabited).

Specifically, Tolkien began writing The Hobbit in the early 1930s when he suddenly felt inspired to write on a blank piece of paper, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."  However, the fictional hobbit had an entire mythological universe to live within because of the stories Tolkien had already been writing for years.  Tolkien completed writing it in 1932, but only distributed it to friends, so it took until 1937 for a friend to get a copy to a publisher, who published it to great critical and public acclaim.

In addition, as I wrote about in a previous post, Tolkien met C. S. Lewis in 1926, and they embarked on a mission to revive fairy tales as a serious literary device.  The Hobbit represented the first effort along these lines essentially as a children's fairy tale.

Tolkien, an excellent scholar of English philology (the study of language), especially of Germanic and Nordic origins, borrowed from much Germanic and Nordic mythology in constructing his mythology reflected in The Silmarillon and The Hobbit.   So, for example, the hero, Bilbo Baggins, eventually confronts a dragon, Beowulf scholarly, much as the hero Beowulf does in the old epic English poem.  (Tolkien was a well-known Beowulf scholar.)  However, while the Beowulf hero portrays a large, muscular, and powerful superhero, subject to moral flaws, who seeks glory in conquest, Bilbo Baggins portrays a small weak figure, though courageous, who prefers his comfortable home to adventure, prefers harmony to riches, and who takes up adventure to help others, rather than for self promotion, though he grows as a character by undertaking adventure.  Thus while Tolkien borrows from Germanic and Nordic myths, he infuses them with a different morality and ethical basis informed by his Catholic upbringing, which reanimates them.  (In fact, Tolkien gave a groundbreaking lecture on Beowulf around 1936 which changed the whole view on this.)

I highly recommend reading The Hobbit, which you will enjoy.

You may want to read my post about the film trilogy by Peter Jackson, based upon this book, "The Hobbit (the films)."

The Lewis-Tolkien Friendship

The Twilight Zone

I enjoy on Netflix you can watch old TV shows, sometimes every episode.  I really enjoy watching The Twilight Show (just called Twilight Show in seasons 4 & 5).  It ran on TV for five seasons, between 1959 to 1964.  Most people saw it later in reruns (syndication).

For some reason, I didn't enjoy it that much growing up - I tended to simply see it as a creepy show, so I didn't watch it much.  However, I enjoy it much more now, especially since I now understand how good the writing behind it stood up.  I also found out it's usually classified as a science-fiction show.

In 2013, the Writer's Guild of America ranked it as the 3rd best written TV show of all time.  TV Guide ranked it as the 5th greatest show of all time.

Rod Serling

Rod Serling created the series, served as executive producer, and carried most of the writing. He wrote, or co-wrote, 92 of the show's 156 episodes (more than half). This WWII veteran used the GI bill and disability payments to fund college where he focused on theater, then broadcasting, and finally majoring in Literature. He later wrote for radio and television shows, but felt frustrated the sponsors could censor his work.  He started The Twilight Zone since the sponsors had less say over a science fiction show.

The show earned rave reviews among critics, some who rated it as the best television show running.  However, the show mostly struggled to find a viewing audience, just barely staying alive during it's first 3 seasons.  The network finally cancelled it after the 3rd season.  They replaced it with Fair Exchange, an hour long program.  However, they cancelled that show after half a season, and asked Twilight Zone to return, but as an hour long program in Season 4.  Serling hated this format since he considered Twilight Zone the perfect half hour show.

In Season 5, Twilight Zone finally returned to a half hour format.  However, it had a new producer who made some bad decisions.  It lost some writers, so Serling had to write more, which wore him out.  The network decided to cancel and Serling sold out his interest (he thus lost out on syndication sales).

Unfortunately, Serling died in 1975, at age 50, of a heart attack while undergoing open heart surgery to address an recent earlier heart attack he suffered.

Though he had a large legacy, he will likely best be known for the intense work he put into creating and writing The Twilight Zone.