The original condensed Silmarillion

[calimac]

I see where camwyn has posted a retelling of Tolkien's Silmarillion in one thousand words.

Pretty amusing, and it reminds me that I wrote my own "Condensed Silmarillion" in less than 300 words back in 1977, in a fit of overload, having read the book three times in the first month after publication - once just to read it, once as research so that I could write what turned out to be the first ever published chronology of the First Age (in the Minas Tirith Evening-Star of the American Tolkien Society), and once as part of a two-person team reading it aloud for the benefit of some blind friends who didn't want to wait for the talking book version to come out. (In those days audiobooks for the non-blind were almost unknown, and talking books often didn't appear for years.)

Reading the whole book aloud on a tight schedule was hungry work, and every time we saw a reference to "The Green Hill of Túna" it made us hungrier. So I baked one. Fish loaf with parsley on top.

So: "The Condensed Silmarillion." It went something like this. [To be read aloud in a folksy American drawl with speech tags in the form of intrusions from generic Warner Brothers cartoon characters, except for the Third Age, which is to be read in the voice of John Cleese]

Well, after the Valar had finished building the world, Iluvatar said "Now I'm gonna create the Elves to come live with you in peace and harmony," and the Valar said "Great!" and Iluvatar said "But I'm not gonna tell you where to find them," and the Valar sat around and they waited for the Elves to show up, and they waited and they waited, and the Elves didn't come and they didn't come, and the Valar got kind of bored, so they sent Orome out to go look for the Elves and make sure they hadn't gotten lost, and he rode around and around, and eventually he found them.

Well, he had quite a time getting them back to Valinor, because the Elves kept wandering off and getting lost, but eventually he got some of them back, and the Valar said "Great! Now we can live in peace and harmony, like Iluvatar said," but you know that didn't work, 'cause Morgoth showed up and started messing around, and some of the Elves killed each other and then ran away, and maybe then the Valar were able to live in peace and harmony for a while. But if they did, it didn't last long, because soon enough there came a knocking at the door and a voice crying "Help! Help!" and the Valar said "Go away! We're trying to live in peace and harmony in here," but the voice kept pounding at the door and saying "Help! Help!" so finally the Valar opened the door and there was Earendil.

So the Valar said "What do you want?" and Earendil said "Help! Help!" so the Valar came out and there was Morgoth, annoying everybody. So the Valar said "Oh, you again. Go away, and stay there." So Morgoth went away, and that's the end of the First Age. You wanna hear about the Second Age?

Well, there were these guys, and they were living on an island, but someone pulled the plug, and it sank. How about the Third Age?

Once upon a time there was a chap who went on a shopping expedition, and he took a ring that did not belong to him. Eventually the house detectives came after him, and he sent his nephew to give it back.

This was the text of the playlet "The Return of the Shadow ... Puppets" as performed by The Not-Ready-for-Mythcon Players in 1996, and on that page you may also find a link to the alliterative surfer epic Beowatch we did the next year. Yes, Mythcons can be fun.

Comments

[camwyn]

*snicker* Nice. Would've liked to see that performed.

Brill!

[(Anonymous)]

Brilliant. Ik linked to both versions in The Black Forest, http://arduenn.ma.cx (in Dutch though). My absolute favourite is the Akallabeth-section by Camwyn.

[evilfuzzymonste.livejournal.com]

Nice, nice, very Biblical ... in the not-quite-run-on-sentence, but -and-and-and- kind of way. Me like.

~ Tanith, evilfuzzymonste ... random lj-addict superteen