Replies

Christopher Tolkien, in Volume 5 of "The History of Middle-earth" (The Lost Road and Other Writings) showed that while JRRT's time travel story "The Lost Road" was never finished, the ideas he came up with for the story became the basis of the legend of Numenoreans.

Cool! :) I just got that for Christmas but haven't read it yet--will keep an eye out for that part.

BTW, what the article mentions about JRR coming up with LotR while Lewis came up with the Perelandra series is what I was misremembering when I said that was how Lewis came up with the Narnia series--it was actually Perelandra I was thinking of. I had read that whereas Perelandra involved space travel, LotR involved a distant time; so actually in that sense JRR's time travel idea was incorporated into LotR.

We got Volume IV: The Shaping of Middle Earth for Christmas. Haven't read it yet either. I am still trying to remember what page I am on in the Silmarillion. Doh!

From the first chapter of "The Lost Road and Other Writings":

In February 1968 my father addressed a commentary to the authors of an article about him (The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien no. 294). In the course of this he recorded that 'one day' C. S. Lewis said to him that since 'there is too little of what we really like in stories' they would have to try to write some themselves.

He went on:

"We agreed that he should try 'space-travel', and I should try 'time-travel'. His result is well known. My effort, after a few promising chapters, ran dry: it was too long a way round to what I really wanted to make, a new version of the Atlantis legend. The final scene survives as The Downfall of Numenor."

A few years earlier, in a letter of July 1964 (Letters no. 257), he gave some account of his book, The Lost Road:

"When C. S. Lewis and I tossed up, and he was to write on space-travel and I on time-travel, I began an abortive book of time-travel of which the end was to be the presence of my hero in the drowning of Atlantis. This was to be called Numenor, the Land in the West. The thread was to be the occurrence time and again in human families (like Durin among the Dwarves) of a father and son called by names that could be interpreted as Bliss-friend and Elf-friend. These no longer understood are found in the end to refer to the Atlantid-Numenorean situation and mean 'one loyal to the Valar, content with the bliss and prosperity within the limits prescribed' and 'one loyal to friendship with the High-elves'. It started with a father-son affinity between Edwin and Elwin of the present, and was supposed to go back into legendary time by way of an Eadwine and AElfwine of circa A.D.918, and Audoin and Alboin of Lombardic legend, and so to the traditions of the North Sea concerning the coming of corn and culture heroes, ancestors of kingly lines, in boats (and their departure in funeral ships). One such Sheaf, or Shield Sheafing, can actually be made out as one of the remote ancestors of the present Queen. In my tale we were to come at last to Amandil and Elendil leaders of the loyal party in Numenor, when it fell under the domination of Sauron. Elendil 'elf-friend' was the founder of the Exiled kingdoms in Arnor and Gondor. But I found my real interest was only in the upper end, the Akallabeth or Atalantie ('Downfall' in Numenorean and Quenya), so I brought all the stuff I had written on the originally unrelated legends of Numenor into relation with the main mythology."

I do not know whether evidence exists that would date the conversation that led to the writing of Out of the Silent Planet and The Lost Road, but the former was finished by the autumn of 1937, and the latter was submitted, so far as it went, to Allen and Unwin in November of that year.

I've read elsewhere that CSL and JRRT were unhappy with the state of "fantasy" stories at the time: Golden Age science fiction, ERB's Tarzan stories, etc. Basically, they both felt that the stories being published at the time were failing to live up to the potential of "fantasy" stories, all that sub-creation stuff that JRRT was always on about. Anyway, they decided that they could do better, and the challenge for one to write a space travel story and one a time travel story was the result of their discussion.

CSL wrote "Out of the Silent Planet" to fulfill his end of the challenge.