Alan Sisto

Because there are some sort of inconsistencies, which you'd expect from a story that, first of all, has four drafts that we're looking at and still hasn't yet been reconciled completely.

And that's kind of the fun about looking at these stories.

I remember looking at one that's even more –

early in development when james and i covered the story of tal elmar the end of peoples of middle earth that's a wild story and you're like what like who are these fellow people where are the hills of agar what yeah those questions stick with you because he just never reconciled things in terms like when does this story even happen

There's a reason for that.

I said The Big Three because I included The Silmarillion, but you're right.

Right.

You even have to, you take that into account a little less with The Silmarillion, but it is still present.

But then with everything else.

Exactly.

I love that.

I mean, he did work so hard to put out The Silmarillion, and it took four years from his father's death before Christopher could get it published.

And it sold like hotcakes, of course.

This wasn't like –

This was not like he was begging for publishers to take it.

The publishers were begging him to put it together.

But even though he took his time, he still made what he would later call mistakes.

I don't want to ascribe that strong a word to it.

He made choices, and other choices could have been made.

And it's not necessarily one's better than the other.