This little-known animated film (made for TV by Rankin and Bass, who later produced "Flight of Dragons") features the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarves in their quest to recover the hoard of the dragon Smaug...
The second Tolkien TV animated film produced by Rankin and Bass, this is not a sequel to Ralph Bakshi's spectacular "Lord of the Rings", but an independant attempt to produce a stand-alone film from the greatest epic of modern fantasy. Rarely seen!
Emanuel Lottem, editor of the new Hebrew edition of "Lord of the Rings", translator or the appendices and Chairman of the Israeli SF&F Society, discusses the religious nature of Tolkien's work.
The Finnish language was a great influence on Tolkien's impressive linguistic creation, Elvish. However, neither Tolkien nor his imitators tapped the richness of Finnish mythology, collected in the national epic, "The Klavela". "The Klavela" describes the daring exploits of a group of sibling magicians who steal the magical Sampo from the lap witch Lohi. Ian Watson describes how he stole his own bit of the Sampo by borrowing some of the rich finnish myths to fashion his SF/Fantasy epic, "The Books of Mana".