# Tolkien references in literature



## FoolOfATook (May 23, 2003)

I'm reading Stephen King's novel _Firestarter_ (not one of his best, by the by), and I came across this description of the novel's antagonist:



> Rainbird was a troll, an orc, a balrog of a man.



Now, there's nothing unusual about King referencing Tolkien- he does it in many of his novels and short stories, but I thought it would be cool, and perhaps a bit useful or enlightening if we all posted any references we find to Tolkien in works by other authors in this thread.


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## Talierin (May 23, 2003)

I was reading some sci-fi book, I think it was called Jaran, and it mentioned Battle of the Pelennor Fields in a line about famous battles, heh... I've seen other references in some other books too, but they aren't coming to mind right now.


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## Eriol (May 23, 2003)

Arthur C. Clarke says in _2010 - A Space Odissey 2_ that the landscape of Io (a moon of Jupiter) is like Tolkien's description of Mordor.

I'm a great fan of Clarke... I really enjoyed reading that.


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## Ithrynluin (May 23, 2003)

I know I've come across many Tolkien refrences in different books, but these two distinctly come to mind.

From _Dean Koontz'_: [color=sky blue]False Memory[/color]:



> Dr. Mark Ahriman’s suite of offices was on the fourteenth floor of one of the tall buildings that surrounded the sprawling, low-rise shopping plaza. Getting Susan from the parking lot to the
> lobby and then across what seemed like acres of polished granite into an elevator was not as arduous a trek as Frodo’s journey from the peaceful Shire to the land called Mordor, there to
> destroy the Great Ring of Power—but Martie was nonetheless relieved when the doors slid shut and the cab purred upward.





> Curiously, Martie thought of Frodo again, from The Lord of the Rings. Frodo in the tunnel that was a secret entrance to the evil land of Mordor. Frodo confronting the guardian of the tunnel, the spiderlike monster Shelob. Frodo stung by the beast, apparently dead, but actually paralyzed and set aside to be devoured later.





> Once more she sensed a disquieting strangeness in the mundane scene around her, as if this were not the ordinary elevator alcove that it appeared to be, but was in fact the tunnel where Frodo and his companion Sam Gamgee had confronted the great pulsing, many-eyed spider.



From _Stephen King's_: [color=sky blue]It[/color] - which is my fave book ever, with the exception of Tolkien:



> It's been days since I sat down to write the story of the fire at the Black Spot as my father told it to me, and I haven't gotten to it yet. It's in The Lord of the Rings, I think, where one of the characters says that 'way leads on to way'; that you could start at a path leading nowhere more fantastic than from your own front steps to the sidewalk, and from there you could go . . .
> well, anywhere at all. It's the same way with stories. One leads to the next, to the next, and to the next; maybe they go in the direction you wanted to go, but maybe they don't. Maybe in
> the end it's the voice that tells the stories more than the stories themselves that matters.


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## Rhiannon (May 25, 2003)

I can't quote it because I gave it back to my friend, but _Witches Abroad_ by Terry Pratchett has a Tolkien reference: the three witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat are (through a series of extremely complicated circumstances) boated down an underground river when a green slimy thing pokes its head over the side of their boat. "Hello," it says, "it'sss my biiirthday." 

The witches stare at it for a moment, and then Nanny Ogg hits it over the head with an oar. 

And I can't remember which one it is, but one of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell books contains a Tolkien reference.

Wonderful thread, FoaT.


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## FoolOfATook (May 26, 2003)

Found another Stephen King reference to Tolkien, this one in his novella "The Mist", in the collection _Skeleton Crew_:



> Old trees have always reminded me of the Ents in Tolkien's wonderful Rings saga, only Ents that have gone bad.



In Pratchett's novel with Neil Gaiman, _Good Omens_ there's a character named Pippin Galadriel Moonchild.


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## Rhiannon (Jun 17, 2003)

In _To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth_, Jeff Cooper refers to Nazi Germany as 'Mordor', and repeatedly calls criminals things like 'orcs' and 'goblins'.


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## Theoden_king (Jul 12, 2003)

In another of Stephen King's books, _The Stand_



> Instead she would find an underground passage leading somehow from Wonderland to Hobbiton, a low but somehow cosy tunnel with rounded earthen sides and an earthen ceiling interlaced with sturdy roots that would give your head a good bump if you knocked it against any of them. A tunnel that smelled not of wet soil and damp and nasty bugs and worms, but one which smelled of cinnamon and baking apple pies, one which ended somewhere up ahead in the pantry of Bag End, where Mr Bilbo Baggins was celebrating his eleventy-first birthday party...


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## Confusticated (Jul 12, 2003)

From Chapter 1 of Stephen King's _The Eyes of the Dragon_...




> Sasha was reading in bed when he came to her, his ruddy, bearded face alight, but she laid her book on her bosom and listened raptly to his story as he told it, his hands moving. Near the end, he drew back to show her how he had drawn back the bow and he had let Foe-Hammer, his father's great arrow, fly across the little glen. When he did this, she laughed and clapped and won his heart.



He was telling of a dragon he killed, and it goes on to say...



> That worm fell dead with a final fiery gust, which set the bushes around it alight.



Until now I had only known Tolkien to use the term worm for a dragon, but correct me if this is more common. I don't read fantasy in general.

I've read tons of Stephen King books but this is the first one I am rereading since discovering Tolkien, so I'll no doubt catch the references now that I had no idea about before. I'll edit more into this post as I find them.


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## Rhiannon (Jul 12, 2003)

> Until now I had only known Tolkien to use the term worm for a dragon, but correct me if this is more common. I don't read fantasy in general.



It's pretty common- it's used in the Bible, I know.


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## Theoden_king (Jul 16, 2003)

Also in _Salems lot_ when Ben blesses the axe with the holy water to knock the padlock off, I think it says the blade glows with a blue elvish light. Its been a long time since I last read Salems lot and I don't have a quote but I'm pretty sure thats right.


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## Inderjit S (Aug 3, 2003)

In _Needful Things_ by Stephen King (He sure loves Tolkien!) Polly comments on a wizard in a advertisement being either 'Merlin or Gandalf'.


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## Wolfshead (Aug 10, 2003)

There's the one in _Witches Abroad_ that Rhiannon mentioned, I have the book in my room (I haven't got round to returning it to the school library yet...), but I'm not about to go trawling through it for the quote, I think Rhiannon had it fairly accurate.

There are quite a few subtle references in _Bored Of The Rings_  I also have a suspicious feeling there were one or two in _Barry Trotter And The Shameless Parody_ as well, but I don't have that anymore to check.

So, other than that, I can't (immediately) think of anymore. Unfortunately.


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## Rangerdave (Aug 11, 2003)

Of course Sauron shows up in The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand. Both by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.

Of course, the Sauron they refer to is a Planet. So I guess it's not really the same.



RD


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## Theoden_king (Aug 13, 2003)

> _Originally posted by FoolOfATook _
> *I'm reading Stephen King's novel Firestarter[/I
> *


_ 

Also the horse that Charlie likes to visit is named Necromancer in this book._


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Sep 11, 2021)

I'm sure more examples could be added. Here's mine: the Otherland tetralogy by Tad Williams. At one point, several characters are having a VR conference, debating what to do about the villains. One says "Don't you guys get it? This is the Council of Elrond!"

Any more?


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## Olorgando (Sep 11, 2021)

From my just-completed re-read of Arthur C. Clarke's 1997 "3001 - The Final Odyssey", Chapter 12 "Frustration":

"He (_Frank Poole, the colleague of Dave Bowman from "2001 - A Space Odyssey" who was taken out by the renegade supercomputer HAL, but is resurrected over 1000 years later ..._) was not surprised that the ever-changing landscapes below them were straight out of legend. Ali Baba had waved angrily at them, as they overtook his flying carpet, shouting 'Can't you see where you're going!' Yet he must be a long way from Baghdad, because the dreaming spires over which they now circled could only be Oxford.
Aurora confirmed his guess as she pointed down: 'That's the pub - the inn - where Lewis and Tolkien used to meet their friends, the Inklings. And look at the river - that boat just coming out from the bridge - do you see the two little girls and the clergyman in it?"
'Yes,' he shouted back against the gentle sussuration of Draco's slipstream. 'And I suppose one of them is Alice.'


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## HALETH✒🗡 (Jun 4, 2022)

The main character of Katherine Paterson's book "The Great Gilly Hopkins" was named after... Galadriel. Still more. According to the plot, Gilly has been given the LOTR trilogy by Miss Harris as a souvenir and as a measure of kindness.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Jun 4, 2022)

Interesting. Did you know that "Strider" was originally "Trotter"?


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## HALETH✒🗡 (Jun 5, 2022)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Interesting. Did you know that "Strider" was originally "Trotter"?


Wow. No, I didn't. Katherine Paterson seems to have good literary taste. Thus, "Bridge to Terabithia" was inspired by "The Chronicles of Narnia".


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## HALETH✒🗡 (Jun 5, 2022)

In addition, Tolkien's phrase "All that is gold doesn't glitter" characterizes Katherine Paterson's Trotter very well.


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