Yep, nice interview - looking forward to seeing the fruits of your labours in a couple of months (plus, I suspect, a long postage delay).

A friend alerted me to this further preview of my forthcoming book, including the complete table of contents, my foreword, and my introduction to part one of the book, as well as the first five chapters, as printed.

https://books.google.fr/books?id=MDQKE ... cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Aelfwine wrote:

A friend alerted me to this further preview of my forthcoming book, including the complete table of contents, my foreword, and my introduction to part one of the book, as well as the first five chapters, as printed.

https://books.google.fr/books?id=MDQKE ... cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

I will wait until i have the book in my hands and a good fire going one Autumn evening... soon.

The Table of Contents indicates that the book's contents will be splendid (e.g., "Note on the Consumption of Mushrooms"). Well done, Aelfwine! Can't wait.

I’m with you northman. I don’t want to be “spoiled” so I will wait until I have the book, the ambience, and the mood to enjoy it. ☺️

I am glad to have the foreword out there, so folks will have a better idea of what the book is, and isn't.

I assume "Rider to The White Rider" is the verso published in VT 27?

So many interesting new details, a great eye-opener and demonstration of how deep world-building can be!
Also, I note a few possible math mistakes unmentioned in editor notes:

P.8 If 12,000 [Tree] hours= 10 Middle-earth years, each Tree-hour = about 7.3 Sun-hours = 7 hours 18 secs.
Each tree-hour should be 365.25 day * 10 / 12000= 7h 18 m 18 s, not 7 h 18s.

P.11 The calculation of 31556926/35831808 is unfortunately wrong since the 30th decimal place, as we've discussed.

P.12, 1 Quint = 10 seconds 38 minims approx, 1 Sext = 53²⁄₁₂ minims approx, 1 minim = 4³¹⁄₇₂ minims approx
Because of the cumulative errors of repeatedly dividing by 12, the last few results are not very accurate. More accurate values should be:
1 Quint = 10 seconds 34²⁄₁₂ minims approx, 1 Sext = 52¹⁰⁄₁₂ minims approx (which Tolkien already calculated with much higher accuracy on P.11), 1 Minim = 4²⁹⁄₇₂ minims approx
This is in fact not an error in arithmetic, but an error caused by his calculation method, which didn't provide enough significant figures.

P.45-47, two errors here. Firstly, the last 6 of 1st gen. were born in AY 130. So they start to have children in AY2731, and had their last in AY2851. So the time for "2nd gen. complete" should be AY2851 instead of AY2731. In other words, Tolkien's "nth gen. start to complete" time is actually the time from "firstborn of the firstborn" to "lastborn of the firstborn", whereas it should be the time from "firstborn of the firstborn" to "lastborn of the lastborn". Similarly, the time for 3rd-7th gen. complete should be AY5572, 8293, 11014, 13735, 16436...
Secondly, the 3rd gen. has 648, but Tolkien only counted 150 pairs when calculating the 4th gen. It should be 300 pairs. As
a result, the increases of the following gen.s are all mistakenly cut by half.
Tolkien didn't make such mistakes in his later calculation in P.106.

P.74, note 8. I cannot explain this discrepancy.
Apparently Tolkien silently changed the rate to 100. Thus Bel. 350 =20, Bel.472= just over 21, Bel. 490 = nearly 21.5
Rate 100 can also be found in the text for note 10: "Gestation of Elves 9 months life-time = in Bel. 900 months"

Thanks! I intend to put up a corrigenda for the book at some point. The array of mathematical details was at time bewildering and beyond my capacity (in terms of both calculation and time) to check each and every one. (The first error you note is however almost certainly my own, not Tolkien's.)

So wait, how did you get to pp. 45-7 and 74? They're in neither preview. Do you have a copy of the actual book?