The time has come folks! The long awaited interview with Gary Gygax is now posted! TheOneRing.Net Staff member Gamgee did a wonderful job getting this interview, and selecting the questions! We wanted to thank you all for sending in such very interesting questions and, again, thank to Mr. Gygax for giving this fine opportunity to speak with him about Tolkien, D&D, and the whole fantasy world in general! [interview]

If you want to check out Mr. Gygax's official site, check out "The Creative World of Gary Gygax."

Liv and the folks that the Spy saw were very possibly shooting scenes for the Mordor Gate, and not Moria after all, so there still may be no Liv in Moria.

For more CGI and SFX craziness, be sure to check out our SFX section!

Today, May 27th is Christopher Lee's (Saruman) birthday. Lee was born Christopher Frank Carandini Lee on the 27th of May 1922 in London, England. That makes him 78 today! Have a good one!

From the Halls of Fire comes another Tolkien topic to chat about! Imagine you had the power to influence one moment in the history of Arda... what would you do? After learning the lessons of pity and mercy from witnessing Frodo and Bilbo, perhaps you would want to intervene and make someones life less tragic. It could be a minor tweak, like preventing Sam from calling Gollum a sneak, or something huge like executing Sauron instead of chaining him up at Numenor.

Think on it! Your actions could have serious consequences. Then bring your thoughts to our chat today at 5:30 EDT [-5 hours GMT].

SPOILER!!!

Bees invade the internet
By BBC News Online internet reporter Mark Ward

Researchers at the University of California are claiming that we need radically new ways to run the net as more and more people and devices go online.

Michael Wang and Tatsuya Suda say that existing methods of keeping the net going will not be able to cope when billions of people, mobile phones, hand-held computers and household appliances are routinely using it to communicate. [More]

Thanks to All the folks who sent this to me!

In the letter Terry dishes out the latest plans to turn one of his books 'Magic Kingdom For Sale' into a film by 20th Century FOX. Terry makes note of our little LOTR film and his thoughts on it! Click on the above link to read the letter, or..

Click here to read our exclusive interview with Terry himself!

TVONE late news last night featured a bit about a machine that creates snow, which is going to be used for the filming. The machine is state of the art and it costs $1,500 NZD to generate 1 tonne of snow. They mentioned it would be used up in Wellington next month.

Trentham Rifle Range

Last evening I noticed 2 bright lights, similar to those used on the LOTR sets at Dry Creek Quarry and Harcourt Park, on NZ Army land in Upper Hutt.

The lights were behind the Trentham rifle range and Davis Field, on the Silverstream side of Sutherland Avenue / Alexandra Road (about where it changes from one to the other).

I saw the lights at 6:30 pm Wednesday 24 May and they were still on at 8 pm.

Look for the interview to be posted on Tuesday, May 30th right here on TheOneRing.net..:)

"Here is HarperCollins UK response to my query Re: what are the true total sales figures of LotR ....following my irritation at the outdated figures of ' 50million copies in 25 languages ' ALWAYS being used in newspaper/magazine articles over last 10 YEARS or so!"

"Thank you for your enquiry. It is difficult to ascertain exact sales, not least because the book is sold in single- and three-volume editions across the world. A figure of 50 million copies and 25 languages was researched and declared for the Tolkien Centenary in 1992, and the press always hark back to this. Patrick Curry conservatively updated the figures for his book ("Defending Middle-earth",) but we think that we're well on the way to 100 MILLION COPIES WORLDWIDE ACROSS 40-50 LANGUAGES.

We hope to have more accurate figures soon, as we are working on this question for New Line Cinema, although much of it has to remain educated guesswork. I suspect that Bookworm's claim (BBC programme aired in 1997) of 5 million per year rather exaggerates the truth about "The Lord of the Rings," although if you included The Hobbit and the other Tolkien books it probably wouldn't be far out."

Thanks to David Brawn at Harper Collins, and HuanCry!

Today, May 25th, is Ian McKellen's (Gandalf) Birthday! Ian was born Ian Murray McKellen on 25 May 1939 in Burnley, Lancashire, England. That makes him 61 today! Have a good one Ian!

You can see Brad Dourif (Wormtongue) in 'The Bride of Chucky' on TMN. [More]

You can see Kevin Conway in 'The Confession' on Cinemax. [More]