HeyJaredMythmakers - the Oxford Centre for Fantasy Newsletter
News from the Oxford Centre for Fantasy, of interest to fantasy fans and fantasy creatives
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- Sep 21, 2026
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- Jul 16, 2026
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Greta’s tearing up the rulebook (opens the original)
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What’s going on with The Magician’s Nephew film? Looking at the signs, we are in Wuthering Heights territory again. When Emerald Fennell directed her movie, she made clear that it was HER version, a remembered response as a teenager to reading Emily Brontë’s book. This appears to be what Greta Gerwig is going to do for the Narnia films in her own fashion (and for a family audience).The Empire magazine has an exclusive first look at the film in its next edition so this appears to be good informat
Slow-reading The Lord of the Rings (opens the original)
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Are you someone who reads or listens to The Lord of the Rings once a year? There are lots of us out there. Equally there are people who go back to the films and have enjoyable marathon sessions or go to the orchestral performances of the films (hand up - we’ve done this too), but this post is for readers.<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1767219077120-1aa6d2398717?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3wzMDAzMzh8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwyfHx0aGUlM
The History of Middle-earth in 10 Objects (opens the original)
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Inspired by a trend in biographies and history books to tell a story through significant objects, we started our last writing seminar online on Sunday with a quick warm-up to pick five objects that told the history of our novels’ fantasy worlds. It proved a lot of fun but was also very revealing.It struck us at the time that the same could be done for Middle-earth - though we will allow ourselves ten objects for such an enormous subject. Here’s our go at finding those objects that would be their
Rings of Power without the Halflings? (opens the original)
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How do you adapt The Silmarillion material about the Second Age without falling into incoherence? That has been the challenge facing the writers of the Rings of Power series.<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="970" src="https://substackcdn.c
A Gandalf too many? (opens the original)
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The wonderful Terry Pratchett was very funny and perceptive when it came to exploding the fantasy tropes and pointing out their over-use.‘Of course, the consensus fantasy universe is full of clichés, almost by definition. Elves are tall and fair and use bows, dwarfs are small and dark and vote Labour. And magic works.’ (A Slip of the Keyboard, p. 121)Subscribe now<a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://ima
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