Hawke has uploaded a fully edited version of the July 18 interview with Rehtaeh (Heather Downing), whose Elvish music Website has been a hit with Tolkien fans.

You can see the details of the interview and download an MP3 file (or stream it online) on the Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 28 page.

Heather will be a guest at this year's Tolkien Moot, which will be held the weekend of August 13-15 in Spokane, WA. She'll be performing live and appearing as my guest on "Raw Hobbit", which is inspired by William Shatner's "Raw Nerve". Gaming and panel sessions are broadcast over the Internet from Tolkien Moot so you can follow along in the comfort of your own home (or WiFi lounge).

For more information on Tolkien Moot, check out the official Website.

Due to being ill I missed Hawke's announcement about Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 27 going up on the Website. However, we just recorded Episode 28 with our special guest Rehtaeh yesterday so at least I'm making a timely announcement about that one. :)

Here are the episode details:

Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 27 was recorded on July 12, 2010.

Format: MP3 (192 Kbps constant rate, 44,100 Hz)
Duration: 56 minutes 20 seconds
Filesize: 77.3 MB

Opening Music

The Contemplation

from the demo album The Contemplation

by Rehtaeh

Please note, this piece is from her early demo album.

For much newer, and higher production quality, listen to the previous several Middle-earth Talk radio shows, or listen on Rehtaeh's website, and purcase her albums:

http://www.rehtaehmusic.com

Topics

• Special Guest Rehtaeh (Heather Downing) will be on upcoming show July 18th.
• Ian McKellen marking time until The Hobbit begins
• One Man Lord of the Rings at Woolly Mammoth Theater (of One Man Star Wars Trilogy)
• 2010 Mythopoeic Awards
• More than one Shield Maiden amongst the Riders of Rohan?
• British historian claims to have found King Arthur's round table.
• Tolkien Moot, allowing "garb" this year.
• Rehtaeh will be in Elvish garb at this year's Tolkien Moot
• Any cultures in Tolkien's Middle-earth (and beyond) happen to wear kilts, or any "Scottish"-like cultures?
• Tolkien's "Fall of Arthur" poem, "read and approved" by Professors, but never published?
• Some excerpts read.
• Tolkien also wrote some stories in contemporary settings
• British historian claims to have found King Arthur's round Table. To air on The History Channel July 19th.
• The Dunlendings
• More on Kilts
• "The Uzi Rule"
• Tolkien's reading of Isaac Asimov and other Science Fiction of the time.
• July Inland Empire Tolkien Society Smial Meeting Summary
• Kullervo from Kalavala compared to Turin
• Strong parallels between Turin and Michael Moorcock's Elric (Stormbringer) series.
• The Imp Chamber of Pun-ishment

Middle-earth Talk Radio Episode 28 was recorded on July 18 with special guest Rehtaeh, who will be appearing at Tolkien Moot this year.

Format: MP3 (64 kbps)
Duration: 1 hour 23 minutes 50 seconds.
Filesize: 38.4 MB (40,240,692 bytes)

Please note, in order to get this online as quickly as possible, this version does NOT yet have any music added. Hawke is working quickly on a fully edited version that will have music at the beginning and end, and snippets of music referred to throughout the show. (MICHAEL'S NOTE: I think Hawke included some stuff that wasn't actually meant for the show. The edited version should be considerably shorter than the "raw" file.)

Topics

• Tolkien Moot Live Broadcast Coming August 13-15.
• Tolkien journal "Silver Leaves" releases articles with cover art by Ted Nasmith, other artwork and poetry, inspired J.R.R. Tolkien.
• Review article of the "Charles Ross" "One Man" "Lord of the Rings"
• Who are the two most mocked Lord of the Rings characters from the Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson movies?
• The fan film "Born of Hope" reviewed by The Macomb Daily
• The Hunt for Gollum (we mistakenly called it the search for Gollum)
• Michael's S.F. Fandom Blog
• Upcoming Oxonmoot
• Peter Jackson meeting with "The Hobbit" movie actors
• Heather discusses her views on Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies "vision" and compares to Walt Disney's "Snow White".
• Interview with Rehtaeh (Heather Downing) begins.

There is an extremely disreputable Website called Backlinksforum.com where Web spammers learn how to drop links onto unsuspecting blogs and forums. Backlinksforum.com is currently running a "link building" contest where they require members to link back to their Backlinksforum.com profile pages. Tom Goodwin, a moderator at Backlinksforum.com, used link spamming software to create an account at SF-Fandom that linked back to his profile page on Backlinksforum.com.

This kind of linking tactic is deemed unethical by professional search engine marketers. Furthermore, Google announced that it may penalize blogs and forums that allow these types of links to remain for any length of time. If you don't look to Google for visitor referrals to your blog or forum then don't worry about these fake user account profiles. However, if you do depend on Google for visibility, you should be reviewing your user registrations carefully.

Here are some tips I am sharing with people who run blogs and/or forums:

• Delete ALL user accounts whose member profiles link back to backlinksforum.com
• Modify your robots.txt file to block search engine crawlers from indexing your member profile pages (you can just put "Disallow: *profile* if you don't know exactly how to do this)
• Turn on all confirming functions that help your forums and blogs verify user accounts, including email confirmation and use of CAPTCHA images
• Ban all domain names that are associated with these member profile accounts so they cannot be used to create new accounts
• Look for any user profiles that include the word "man" in any profile field like "interests" -- this is an indication that the user account was created with software
• Delete ALL user accounts that are awaiting confirmation after 1 day
• Delete ALL user accounts that have 0 post counts and which were registered with odd looking domain names

As many of you know, I have been writing about search engine optimization theory for several years at the SEO Theory blog. You can find more articles that discuss Web spam and how to deal with it in SEO Theory's Web spam category.

If you are approached by anyone who recommends using the advice shared at Backlinksforum.com or by Tom Goodwin, run -- run very far, very fast. These kind of "link builders" don't do anyone any favors. Their advice will hurt your search engine traffic.

The backlinksforum.com community is one of the worst examples of how Web marketers work. Do not ever put any trust or faith in what they do or advise, no matter how persuasive they may seem to you.

You can help fight Web spam by sharing this warning about the unethical behavior being promoted at Backlinksforum.com on your blogs and forums.

Elenmir, a long-time member of the SF-Fandom forums, recently started a discussion about Tolkien's use of the term "shieldmaiden" in this Tolkien forum discussion.

Despite a slow start the discussion has picked up (admittedly because I was feeling well enough to comment after a few days). One of the central ideas mentioned is who would have been likely to be a shieldmaiden in Rohan. Could any woman take on that role or would it be limited to women of noble birth?

There isn't really much insight to be had from either real history or Norse/Germanic stories. Women have risen up to take arms on numerous occasions for any variety of reasons. Some whole societies (such as the ancient Illyrians and Sauromatae/Sarmatians) encouraged young women to go to war. Some societies only gave rise to occasional warrior queens and princesses (including the Egyptians and Macedonians).

There is undoubtedly a strong correlation between noble families and historical leaders or heroes because the leading families had the resources to nurture leaders, to provide them with the means to go adventuring, or to make the right connections to help adventurers put together bands of warriors or small armies.

The occasional farmer rises to legendary status through a combination of circumstance, great need, and worthy deeds.

In Tolkien's fiction (for Middle-earth) all the examples I was able to cite were women from noble or aristocratic families. Middle-earth's history really is about the leading families and not about the common people. Whereas in Norse/Icelandic sagas many local farmers and heroes are celebrated, Tolkien's stories focus on the princely families of Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits (if one accepts the upper-class of Shire Hobbitry as "princely" in a figurative sense).

This is more reflective of Greek drama, which also focused on the princely houses (mostly the descendants of Zeus and a few other gods in the mythological stories). The common man is not really celebrated in the Greek tradition. Scandinavians seemed to be more egalitarian in their literary views: they acknowledged that there were kings and princes but men could be (and should be) recognized for their great deeds.

Medieval literature sometimes looked at the common man (such as Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" or the Robin Hood ballads) and sometimes focused on the nobility.

Story telling must have been practiced historically at all levels of society, just as it is today. When you get together with your friends at a party, or visit with family on special occasions, numerous stories are bound to be shared about people you know, knew, or have heard about time and again. Hunting stories, amusing stories, stories about travels around the world, etc. To us these are the fabric of our social lives but to a writer they are grist for the mill.

The great writers of ancient history focused on famous people (kings and princess) and people who achieved significant renown because their readers would not have been interested in who hid behind the bushes at Uncle Antipater's wedding.

In fiction, Tolkien limited the amount of parochial story-telling as a means of biasing the reader's perspective. We see occasional gossip among hobbits but virtually no gossip among the Dunedain, Dwarves, and Elves. Faramir shares a little bit of personal experience with Frodo and Sam and Pippin learns something about Beregond's family from his son Bergil. The only other exposure we have to Gondor's social life is through the rambling anecdotes of Ioreth, the healing woman.

Hobbits are very social people among themselves but they don't trust outsiders. We only learn about the social lives of other cultures through the connections hobbits make on their journeys. What do we know about the Rohirrim, except that they stare out their doors and windows at passing Riders? Even the scenes with Gamling the Old reveal hardly anything about the daily life of the Rohirrim because there were no hobbits present to become friends with Gamling or otherwise note his occasional personal anecdotes.

The small stories of social experience are a powerful window through which we become intimately familiar with Shire folk but we remain distant and cut off from Elrond's household, Legolas' people, the Elves of Lothlorien, and the valiant men of Rohan and Gondor. We know they had to sit down to eat but don't know what jokes they told, what they did for amusement, or how they figured out which field to plant in the spring.

It is because Tolkien cut the reader off from the common folk in most of Middle-earth that we only hear about the queens and princesses among their far-flung cultures. He structured his remoteness in a deliberate fashion to ensure that the reader identified most closely with the hobbits -- whose tale it was to tell. The history of the War of the Ring should read very differently were it told by a man from Gondor.

That is, I think, a stumbling point for many modern fantasy writers. They are too willing to give the reader insight into the common folk of any society a protagonist encounters. We are not hobbits on adventure with the protagonists of dragon-filled worlds who learn the names of every gnome, the histories of all the Dwarf clans, or see the playful banter between two lovers who have little to do with the main storyline.

Tolkien was more interested in stimulating the reader's curiosity than in satisfying it, and that is probably why we keep asking so many questions about so many things in Middle-earth.

I didn't realize I had not posted anything here since May 24. Many things have happened since then, including the release of three more episodes of Middle-earth Talk Radio. Hawke also gave the show its own Website (middle-earthtalkradio.com).

You can download Episode 24 of Middle-earth Talk Radio, which was recorded on May 23.

Topics Discussed

• Tyra Banks - ModelLand
• Previously unexibited print by Tolkien called "Lamb's Farm, Gedling" to be shown
• Filming for The Hobbit Movie beginning in Novement 2010?
• Smaug Stein
• Mads Hobbit Hole Blog - Doll House model on Bag End
• Brief reading from The Hobbit about Hobbit Hole
• The Eowyn Challenge
• Expanding the show range of discussion, please comment!
• How much do Dwarves weigh?
• Can Dwarves swim?
• Dragonlance Dwarves vs. Tolkien Dwarves
• Battle of alternate passages
• Reading and discussion of Letter #31, 24 July 1938, letter to Mr Furth, explaining delay in sequel to The Hobbit, and his work on Farmer Giles
• Word "mythologies" - Michael feels vindicated. ;-)
• Michael reads from Book of Lost Tales - Chapter VIII - The Tale of the Sun and Moon - Christopher Tolkien's introduction.
• Michael reads the "Shibboleth of Feanor" - The Peoples of Middle-earth - The History of Middle-earth XII - and the word shibboleth defined (ad nauseum)
• "Feanor was a momma's boy" - Michael Martinez
• Tolkien's representation of insight into psychological theory as expressed through his characters such as Feanor, Aragorn, and others, in the face of critics claiming the characters were too 2 dimensional
• Thanks to Christopher Tolkien for making all this extra material available over the decades
• Reminder Rehtaeh performing at this years upcoming TolkienMoot
• Our Middle-earth Talk Show now has dedicated domain(s): http://www.middle-earthtalk.com or http://www.middle-earthtalkradio.com
• PLEASE PROVIDE FEEDBACK ON THIS SHOW!

Episode 25 of Middle-earth Talk Radio was recorded on May 31.

Topics Discussed

• Thank you to all the military veterans who make it possible for us to have the freedom we have.
• Big news - Del Toro resigns as director for The Hobbit movies, now what?
• theonering.net "slashdotted" and the "slashdot effect"
• Peter Jackson's old Zombie gory spoof movie "Dead Alive"
• Are there zombies in Middle-earth in his books?
• What makes a zombie a zombie?
• The Hobbit play in Norwich Theater - Roy Marsden
• Another Hobbit play in Liverpool at the Empire
• Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" Series, "Legend of the Seeker", David Eddings Belgariad Books vs. eBooks vs. PDFs
• Civilization III vs. Civ IV (Michael thinks Civ IV "sucks")
• Harvard courses on Tolkien available online, Mark Zender Ph.D., how Tolkien uses language in storytelling
• British Petroleum Gulf Oil Spill
• Adventuring in the Second Age of Middle-earth
• Yahoo Fan Modules Group
• The Numenor Project
• The Numenor Project First Contact Series
• Classical civilization vs. medieval civilization for Middle-earth settings
• No Inns?
• Area later known as Andrast, peninsula in what would be far western Gondor many centuries later.
• Primitive early Men prior to the Numenoreans helping raise them from the darkness.
• Orcs and their daylight and night vision
• Story of Tal-Elmar .... Part IV of Peoples of Middle-earth
• A real palace that could be considered "Elvish" in design according to Michael (make this image for news announcements)
• How role playing games encourages research
• Second Age 1200 to 1600
• When would precursor/proto-hobbits first appear and where
• Adunaic glossary

Episode 26 of Middle-earth Talk Radio was recorded on June 8.

Topics Discussed

• Additional message from Guillermo Del Torro regarding leaving "The Hobbit" movie project
• Congratulations to Sir Richard Taylor of Weta Workshop
• Discussion of other directors (poll) for The Hobbit
• Further discussion on the impact of MGM's financial struggles, near $4 billion USD debt
• Miyazaki Tales from Earthsea (and others)
• Scifi channel blocking it's distribution in North America
• Comingsoon.net movies
• Centurion movie
• Wall Street and MGM sad tale not over yet
• As of 2010, the Turner Entertainment Co. unit of Time Warner owns the rights to the pre-1986 MGM film library, with Warner Bros. handling distribution. Turner acquired the MGM library during its brief ownership of the company in 1986.
• University of Wales Online Tolkien October 2010 course actually available to everyone!
• LotRo MMORPG (Lord of the Rings Online Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) going Free-to-play
• World of Warcraft on Southpark episode (old news to Southpark viewers) (not appropriate for all audiences)
• Mazes and Monsters movie
• More on LotRo
• Looking for additional Game Masters for upcoming Tolkien Moot 2010 August 13-15 in Spokane, Washington, USA
• One responder mentioned game system DragonRaid, turns out to be a fundamentalist Christian RPG (Role Playing Game) system
• Michael on butchering nouns used as verbs, especially discipled
• Swashbuckling press website claiming C.S. Lewis converted Tolkien to christianity (obviously their data is a little confused)
• Who would like to wear garb or props at Tolkien Moot 2010?
• What kind of garb would be "true to Tolkien" to be discussed in next show.
• Rehtaeh now in New Zealand travelling "Middle-earth" and meeting the LotR / Hobbit folks hoping to have her voice in the upcoming movies
• More on language butchering, and misuse of pronouns in English language
• Ghost Hunters tangent
• Voice on Information Society's What's on your Mind (Pure Energy) sample of Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek episode "Errand of Mercy"

And we did record Episode 27 this week but it is not yet available.