Hail Fellowship!
We are excited to announce the first details of our two Guest of Honor Presentations. This talk will be given by Dr. Kristine Larsen.

Lewis, Tolkien, and Popular Level Science: What the Well-Educated Inkling Actually Knew about the Universe (As Reflected in the Details of Narnia, Middle-earth, and Other Secondary Worlds)

Among the attention to detail that draws readers into Tolkien and Lewis’s Secondary Worlds of Middle-earth and Narnia (and others) is the many scientific elements and references. From the visibility of the slenderest crescent moon on Durin’s Day to the death of Charn’s star, the time travel of the Notion Club members to the watery paradise of Venus, the science of the early and mid 20th century echoes throughout these fantastical works. This talk will take a tour through the fantasy and science fiction writings of Tolkien and Lewis, highlighting the authors’ use of some of the more interesting (and bizarre) scientific claims of their day (both those that turned out to be factually accurate, and those, well, not so much so).

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If you have followed Dr. Larsen’s work and conference presentations as we have then you may know she is renown for her creative, embellished, well informed and colorful paper titles. One example would be her presentation at the Tolkien In Vermont 2015 Conference:

Guinevere, Grimhild, and the Corrigan: Witches and Bitches in Tolkien’s Medieval Narrative Verse; or, Good Girls Don’t Use Magic (Except if You’re Galadriel, but Elf Magic is Different, and Who Ever Said Galadriel Was a Good Girl?)

Or this one from the Tolkien in Vermont 2016 Conference

“Kind People!!!: The Adventures of Svetlana Snape Down the Hobbit Hole; Being a (Semi) Serious and Scholarly Dissertation on The Thread ™ That Ate the Tolkien Society Facebook Page (And Judged it to Strangely Taste Like Bacon); In Which the Author Endeavors to Answer Two Great Primordial Questions, Namely (1) What Do Palindromes, Trebuchets, Quantum Physics and Hello Kitty Have to Do With the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien (Clearly a Rhetorical Question Given That the Obvious Answer is – Very Little), and (2) What Exactly is a Pant of Thong Ale? (The Answer to Which Promises to Shed Great Light on the Gestalt of the Tolkien Fandom)” 

We are very happy hobbits to know that the New York Tolkien Conference 2016 will be a part of this continuing tradition and look forward to hearing Dr. Larsen deliver this talk.