I just saw Black Panther, and it got me thinking about willful suspension of disbelief. I’ve got no problem with Vibranium, or a hidden African nation that is superior to western nations in all ways. I don’t have a problem with clothing that defies the laws of physics. This is Marvel’s Comic Universe, I’ll suspend my disbelief for these. But there was one thing in this film that tweaked me, pushed me out of the film for just a moment.

There’s a place that I’ve been to, a city that I may be the only person to have ever visited. This city recurs in my dreams. I visit it perhaps once every few months. I know when I’m there, and I know that I’m dreaming. I can take myself back to places that I’ve been before.

I’ve noticed this trend lately in science fiction movies, and it’s bothering me. The movie’s going along at a nice clip, but all of the sudden something happens that’s completely unnecessary to the story, and the film goes off the rails.

Right off the bat I want to do exactly what the title says and thank Christopher Tolkien for his decades of diligent management, guidance, and protection of the legacy of his father, J.R.R. Tolkien. As you may have heard, Christopher, now 93, resigned from managing his father’s estate this past August.

As we approach the debut of The Last Jedi, and may get an answer to Rey’s parentage, I thought I’d look back on the great reveal about Luke’s father, and how we reacted to that news.

Everyone knows Dune. I happened to chance onto a book called The Road to Dune in a local second-hand book store (I live in Malaysia. English is not the first language here, so it was a find). Within this book, along with deleted or early draft scenes from Dune and Dune Messiah, was a novella called Spice Planet.