Tolkien fandom has often pointed to “diversity” in Middle-earth, but this term has long been limited to dwarves and elves and hobbits coexisting. The vast majority of fan art produced of Tolkien’s works in the past 75 years has featured fictional races all with fair skin and white features. That seemed to change on Tumblr in 2013, when fans created fan art and edits that cast Black model Cykeem White as the “face claim” for Fingon the Valiant, the Elven prince who becomes High King of the Noldor in Beleriand. The selection became relatively popular on the platform, picking up thousands of notes in a fairly small fandom and continuing to circulate and inspire other fanworks through to the present day. Between Fingon’s single physical description in The Shibboleth of Fëanor, where it is said that he “wore his long dark hair in great plaits braided with gold,” and the relative visibility of some early fan-creators, Fingon has become one of the Silmarillion characters most often and extensively portrayed as Black. the impetuses perpetuating this “fanon” (an interpretation widely held by fans but with little or no basis in the canon) are worth situating in the context of other popular fantasy racebends such as Black Hermione, and within the wider Tolkien fandom as a new axis of “diverse” representations. In an update from the version of this paper Megan shared at Mythcon 51, our study has surveyed fan artists to explore the reasons why transformative fans have latched onto the representation of Fingon as Black at much higher rates than any other Silmarillion character: showcasing this data will be the bulk of this presentation. We also look at some of the limitations and issues that come with this practice. The Silmarillion elides even the barest visual descriptions of characters while also quickly covering thousands of years’ worth of histories that regularly feature imperialism, colonialism, and even genocide without ever going into much detail about their perpetrators, victims, and aftermaths in ways that further complicate any racebending. This chapter will work to situate Black Fingon in his fannish contexts as expressed on Tumblr, and also to explore some of the criticism this depiction has faced, both from those who claim that all elves are or should be white and also from those who note that a single headcanon of Blackness is not enough to address racism endemic in certain spaces and genres—and fandoms.

The upcoming Amazon-produced streaming series The Rings of Power represents the most expensive adaptation of Tolkien’s Middle-earth to date, and will explore the Second Age, of which Tolkien wrote relatively little. This adaptation has generated massive buzz, both positive and negative, prior to its airing, often centered around issues of race, gender, and diversity. Over the past 5 months, a group of Mythies have gathered periodically on the Mythopoeic Society’s Discord server to pore over Tolkien’s meager writings about the Second Age, and how this material could be adapted into a live action streaming series. We will revisit some of the recurring themes from our book club meetings; Which Second Age elements and characters likely will/will not be portrayed, depictions of race/culture/religion, origins of histories, descriptions of Sauron’s influence in Numenor, and more.

Participate in or spectate a hybrid in-person/online MythCon edition of ‘The Rings of Power Book Club,’ where we discuss excerpts from Tolkien’s writings on the Second Age of Middle-earth, and how they could relate to the upcoming Amazon streaming series. We will be discussing the following passage: The History of Middle-earth XII: The Peoples of Middle-earth: Tar-Elmar (422-427).

Mythcon 52 Opening Ceremonies presented by Megan Abrahamson and Leslie Donovan.

Due to the pandemic, many students around the world did not get to attend their own respective graduation ceremonies. MythSoc provided those present a chance to have a real graduation amongst fellows and peers.

Scholar Guest of Honor David Bratman gives his speech during the opening ceremonies of Mythcon 52 in Albuquerque, New Mexico on July 30th, 2022.

A section of frozen video and no audio was removed from the recording at 0:30:53 of about 30 seconds.

One of the central claims of my book The Latinx Files: Race, Migration, and Space Aliens, is that the cultural figure of the space alien is more fruitfully conceived of as a Multitude rather than an Other. The space alien framed as Other may be helpful in critiquing Anglo-American works of science fiction, but it is less useful when it comes to the space alien in Latinx science fiction. This essay will examine a number of works of Latinx science fiction to draw out the details of this claim. I will begin by pointing to the multiplicity of allegories and migrations in the comics of Lalo Alcaraz and the short story “Room for Rent” by Richie Narvaez. Next I will examine Tato Laviera’s poem “Puerto Rico’s Chupacabras,” which uses depictions of the Chupacabras, both fictional and real, to express various political, philosophical, and cultural perspectives about being Puerto Rican. Finally, I will examine Gloria Anzaldúa’s use of the space alien as a central metaphor, and in particular, her concept of the alien consciousness, a way of being that is tolerant of ambiguity, contradiction, and perplexity, and that does not think dualistically but rather embraces multiplicity. The essay ends by investigating the political ramifications of the embodiment of the alien consciousness in Latinx science fiction and the further effects of thinking of the space alien as a Multitude.

Critical attention to T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, particularly the book’s description of Arthur’s education, has necessarily focused on the political themes in the book. Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, some critics have found those themes outdated, a relic of the bloody wars of the 20th century. In the third decade of the 21st century, it has become apparent that while fascism and Stalinism went away, they did not go far. The tendencies and tensions within society that made them possible before confronting us once again. With this in mind, it may be helpful to revisit White’s work, not so much for the political commentary as for the education described there, to understand how transformation might be read as a metaphor for pedagogy. This paper will focus on the First book, The Sword in the Stone. While criticism has tended to focus on how different animals featured in the narrative serve as parables or even satire, I contend that there is an underlying humanism in the story. While Arthur learns from the animals he becomes, the ultimate gain in each adventure comes from inhabiting and then transcending the instincts of each animal. The transformations are challenges, and Arthur succeeds by acting humanly at critical moments. The anthropomorphized animals disguise this lesson, so that the reader is not always aware that they are being confronted at every turn with the question of what it means to be human. As with nearly all versions of Arthurian legend, The Once and Future King is ultimately more fatalistic than idealistic, and this represents White’s cynical view of the relationships that form between individuals and the institutions that govern them.

Come hear long-time Mythies Lee Speth, David Bratman, and Lynn Maudlin talk about 50+ years of Mythcons past, conference memories (and hijinks!) from a pre-pandemic world.

N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy made history: each novel won the Best Hugo for Novel (2016-2017-2018). Jemisin is not only the First person to win the novel award three years running, but also the First Black person and the First woman of color to win the novel award. Sony Entertainment purchased the series for adaptation in 2018 (Fleming), and Jemisin will be adapting her series for Film. The Fifth Season has an epic structure (beginning in media res, a quest, world-changing events and characters, and supernatural forces). Given the conventions of the epic genre, my interest in this presentation is how the phenomenological style of Jemisin’s multiple narrative voices, including the use of one second-person and direct address narrator, which intersects with the narrative arc of the female protagonist, a mother, whose epic quest is to save her daughter, subverts reader expectations. My approach, like my earlier publication on Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy (Reid), blends linguistics and phenomenology. I use M. A. K. Halliday’s functional grammar to analyze clauses in selected passages (the opening paragraphs of the Prologue and twenty-three chapters in the novel). Phenomenology is the branch of philosophy that focuses on “structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view” (Stanford). Phenomenological literary studies “regard[s] works of art as mediators between the consciousnesses of the author and the reader or as attempts to disclose aspects of the being of humans and their worlds” (Armstrong). My analysis is informed by Sara Ahmed’s concept of disorientation developed in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others:

When we are orientated, we might not even notice that we are orientated: we might not even think “to think” about this point. When we experience disorientation, we might notice orientation as something we do not have. After all, concepts often reveal themselves as things to think “with” when they fail to be translated into being or action. (Ahmed, 5-6)

Ahmed defines queer phenomenology is that which “disorients” the reader, specifically, she defines as “bodily experiences that throw the world up, or throw the body from its ground. Disorientation as a bodily feeling can be unsettling, and it can shatter one’s sense of confidence in the ground” (157). I would argue a trilogy that begins with the implication and claim that “the end of the world” is not the most interesting part of the story, in a Prologue subtitled, “you are here” will disorient the majority of readers, and that disorientation is only the start of Jemisin’s disorienting phenomenology.

A theme for this year’s Mythcon is ‘The Alien’; there is perhaps nothing more alien to contemporary science fiction and fantasy discourse than Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. He represents much of what today’s fantasy, especially under the influence of Ursula K. Le Guin, opposes: a human-privileged universe predicated on rational control. But I argue that a Kantian reading of a scene in Le Guin’s novel The Lathe of Heaven can in fact enrich our understanding of Le Guin’s noted Taoist themes of action and inaction, complicating the preexisting scholarly consensus that the novel provides a straightforward critique of Western culture. In the scene in question, the novel’s antagonist Dr. William Haber confronts protagonist George Orr with Kantian language. Scholars Betsy Huang and Lewis Call have argued that Orr’s rebuttal is Taoist in nature, reflecting Le Guin’s philosophical preference for Taoism in opposition to Western rationality. But none have noted that Orr rebuts Haber’s arguments on Kantian terms as well as on Taoist terms; his Kantian language bleeds into Taoist language. Le Guin’s project, instead of rejecting a Kantian worldview altogether, decenters Kantian ethics from its sole focus on human rationality. In doing so, Le Guin draws a connection between Kantian ethics and Taoism, years before such a connection was explored in mainstream philosophical discourse.

While Tolkien was inspired by Norse and Anglo-Saxon myths, he incorporated certain plot structures from Greco- Roman myths in Beren and Lúthien and Fall of Gondolin. Contemporary authors continue to be inspired by myths as well. This paper will explore mythic YA fantasy, and common elements mainly in the works of Rick Riordan, Michael Scott, Eoin Colfer, and Cassandra Clare, all of whom use portals to enable their main characters to enter parallel universes. Riordan often uses museums/artefacts as portals to fantastical dimensions. His Percy Jackson series, the Heroes of Olympus series, and the Kane Chronicles are well-researched, while the dry sense of humour, well-paced plots and fantastical action sequences keep his young readers spell-bound. Older readers can find his in-depth research and the fact that the Greek gods tend to stick to certain archetypal characteristics (even though they’ve been dragged to the modern world) to be interesting. The main pre-occupation of the female protagonist (Helen Hamilton) in Josephine Angelini’s Star-crossed series is romance, even though she literally has to go through hell to fulfill her destiny. For example, in The Hunt of the Unicorn (2011) by C. C. Humphreys, the Unicorn tapestries in Cloisters in New York act as a portal, providing passage to another world. In his Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer focuses on Celtic lore, certain elements of which can be discerned in Tolkien’s works as well. C.S. Lewis was inspired by Christian myths, and Cassandra Clare’s YA Shadowhunter series seems to be derived from Biblical myths (complete with angels and Archangels). Though focused around Flamel, The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott combines features/personages from various myths. Since the young main characters aren’t familiar with myths, their encounter with gods and monsters from these worlds are akin to interacting with aliens. They end up learning the rules of these new societies and the functioning of magical systems or implements quite painfully. Authors building half of their stories from myths already have well-established godly/mythic characters and worlds to play with. Hopping in and out of these shadowy worlds through various portals is another characteristic of these novels. Most of the authors try to anchor these parallel universes in certain spots in the real world, so as to give their readers a sense of excitement that these mythic worlds are not that far from their everyday existence. It’s also interesting to explore which landmarks or buildings, cities, or places in the USA or Europe have been conflated with portals or entry points to these hidden worlds. Issues that modern teens face, such as being raised by a single parent, how to deal with violence or bullying, or budding romances with an ethnically different person are dealt with obliquely in these novels. Though they’re meant for Young Adults, older readers interested in the different ways old myths are recycled or twisted can enjoy reading them too. Especially if they’re interested in exploring how well the archetypes of gods/monsters are handled in these modern takes.

David Bratman, Janet Brennan Croft, Robin Reid, and John Rosegrant discuss the alien and the Other in the works of the Inklings, with time for audience conversation.

Encounters with the alien other commonly conjure images from science fiction film and literature—advanced spacecraft, alien species in human form from remote places of the galaxy, or in alternate places either in the subterranean realms or on the planet Earth. Varied as they are, a ubiquitous quality of strangeness accompanies these encounters, from those in nineteenth-century writers like Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, through early 20th-century Lovecraft narratives, and in contemporary fiction and film. A writer who may not come immediately to mind is Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate of England from 1850 until his death in 1892. Tennyson was a visionary poet, a writer who seemed to intuit that the nineteenth century represented a liminal space between a remote, nostalgic past and a future of both undetermined marvels and menaces. Steeped in Celtic lore and intent on composing an epic on the Arthurian Legend, Tennyson also foresaw future space flight, and perhaps also a time in which the world might achieve perfection. This paper focuses on the idea of King Arthur as an alien other in Tennyson’s epic poem, Idylls of the King, twelve poems first published serially between 1859–1885 and finally as an epic work in its current form. In the first idyll, “The Coming of the King,” one version of Arthur’s origin is mythopoeic—he is “sent” and not born on “a night when the bounds of heaven and earth were lost,” (l. 371) delivered to shore on the ninth wave, from a sky ship “bright with a shining people on the decks” (l. 375). In the final idyll, “The Passing of Arthur,” the moribund king boards a ship inhabited by three weeping queens while one sole survivor of Camelot, Bedivere, mourns this loss and anticipates his own alienation: “And I, the last, go forth companionless, / And the days darken round me, and the years, / Among new men, strange faces, other minds” (ll. 404-406). As Arthur’s vessel receded into the horizon, “from the great deep to the great deep he goes” (l. 443), Bedivere heard “faint / As beyond the limit of the world, / . . . Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice / Around a king returning from his wars” (ll. 456-461). “Born before his time” Arthur is a visionary artist, a bringer of the light, different not only in degree but possibly also in kind to other men, as several passages in the Idylls show. What is unusual about the portrayal of the alien other in Tennyson’s text is its medieval setting, the origin and fate of its hero, Arthur, and the strange twilight alienation of Bedivere, his companion. Tennyson was a poet who saw both “fore and aft.” Early in his career, he anticipated aircraft travel in “Locksley Hall” (1842); moreover, the strange, almost nihilistic attitude of belatedness expressed by Bedivere in the final idyll is anticipated by that of Ulysses’ men in “The Lotos- Eaters” (1832-1833)—a feeling often expressed in texts of the alien other.

Author GOH Rivera Sun gives her speech during the banquet ceremonies of Mythcon 52 in Albuquerque, NM on July 31st, 2022.