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Pulp Fantasy Library: Hypnos

First published in the May 1923 issue of The National Amateur, H.P. Lovecraft’s short story “Hypnos” is one of his more obscure works, seldom chosen for inclusion in anthologies and rarely discussed in detail. At just a few pages in length, it lacks the narrative sweep of his later, more famous tales. Nevertheless, it occupies an important place in Lovecraft’s development as a writer. “Hypnos” is not a story of cosmic horror but rather one about aspiration, beauty, and the perils of reaching beyond human limits.

“Hypnos” is a first-person narrative recounted by an unnamed sculptor. He confesses his terror of sleep and explains that he is writing down his experiences before they drive him irretrievably mad, regardless of how others might judge his account. Years earlier, he encountered a mysterious man in a railway station, a figure whose “immense, sunken, and widely luminous eyes” instantly marked him as a being of singular importance. In that moment, the narrator knew he had found his destined companion – indeed his first and only true friend. He also believed he glimpsed in those eyes the long-sought secrets of hidden cosmic truths.

An intense partnership quickly forms. By day, the narrator sculpts his companion again and again, striving to capture his uncanny features; by night, the two embark on shared dream-journeys that carry them far beyond ordinary human perception. Through the combined use of sleep, drugs, and rigorous experimentation, they pass through alien realms and successive barriers of sensation and awareness. Over time, the companion grows increasingly exalted and ambitious, speaking of using their power of dream-transcendence to rule the universe itself. The narrator recoils from this vision, denouncing it as reckless and blasphemous hubris. Then, during one perilous expedition, they traverse a vast, ineffable void until the narrator reaches a final threshold he cannot cross, while his companion passes beyond it alone.

When the narrator awakens in the physical world, he waits in dread for his friend’s return. The companion eventually wakes as well, but is profoundly shaken and will say only that they must avoid sleep at all costs. With the help of drugs, the two struggle to remain awake, for whenever they succumb to sleep they seem to age rapidly and are tormented by horrific nightmares the narrator refuses to describe. Inevitably, the effort fails. One night, the companion falls into a deep, unresponsive sleep and cannot be awakened. The narrator shrieks, faints, and later regains consciousness to find police and neighbors gathered around him, insisting that no such man ever existed. All that remains is a single sculpted bust in his room, bearing a chilling Greek inscription: ΥΠΝΟΣ (Hypnos).

Whether “Hypnos” is another tale of Lovecraft's Dreamlands cycle depends, as always, on how one views these works within the larger context of HPL's oeuvre. Regardless, there is a sense in which it clearly differs from other dream-adjacent stories. Unlike, say, the stories of Randolph Carter, which treat dreams as a strange but navigable places, “Hypnos” instead presents dreams as perilous thresholds. They are not realms for adventure but gateways to truths that the human mind can barely endure. The story thus lacks the whimsical or romantic qualities found in Lovecraft’s more overtly fantastical dream tales, replacing them with a tone of somber fatalism.

“Hypnos” obviously reflects Lovecraft’s deep admiration for classical art and his belief in absolute esthetic standards. The sculptor’s obsession with ideal forms mirrors Lovecraft’s own reverence for the art of antiquity, but the story complicates this admiration by linking artistic perfection to isolation and inhumanity. To approach the ideal too closely is to abandon the world of ordinary people. The sculptor’s triumph is ultimately inseparable from the loss of his friend (and his sanity).

In terms of Lovecraft’s broader body of work, “Hypnos” is another story that falls within the period of his transition as a writer. Like "The Other Gods," it anticipates the cosmic horror of his later fiction, in which reality is layered and humanity occupies a lowly, precarious rung. Here, horror lies not in malevolent entities but in the discovery that higher states of existence are real and fundamentally incompatible with human life. At the same time, "Hypnos" story retains a personal, almost confessional quality that would largely vanish from the more explicitly cosmic horror tales for which Lovecraft is now best known.

What I think makes “Hypnos” particularly striking is its asymmetry. The narrator and his friend embark on their quest together, but only one of them remains at its conclusion – assuming he was ever there in the first place. This uneven distribution of insight and endurance is a recurring motif in Lovecraft’s fiction, where knowledge isolates and enlightenment (if such is the word) comes at the cost of connection. The narrator’s fate is not madness in the theatrical sense but resignation. He gains a life spent fearing sleep, haunted by what he has glimpsed and by what he has lost because of it.

Though minor in scale, “Hypnos” is a revealing story. It distills Lovecraft’s ambivalence toward transcendence, capturing both his yearning for something beyond the material world and his conviction that such yearning is ultimately destructive. In doing so, it offers a quiet but potent expression of the philosophical pessimism that underlies even his most extravagant cosmic horrors. It's probably for that reason that I have considerable fondness for the story and consider it a minor masterpiece of HPL's fiction.

Commentary

Commentary by James Maliszewski

Thinking about Presentation of a Different Sort

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What If the Satanic Panic Had Never Happened?

I was recently reminded by a reader of the assertion that, rather than harming the sales or long-term fortunes of Dungeons & Dragons, the furor surrounding the game during the so-called “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s ultimately proved beneficial. According to this view, the controversies gave the game a level of publicity it might otherwise never have achieved, helping to propel it toward broader cultural visibility. This was certainly the position taken by TSR Hobbies and many of its employees in the years that followed and there is some evidence that lends this interpretation a degree of plausibility.

At the same time, others have suggested that this narrative is too neat and reassuring, as well as too dependent on outcomes that were visible only in retrospect. The difficulty, of course, is that the question itself resists a definitive resolution. There is no way to measure what would have happened had the moral panic not occurred. Indeed, any attempt to do so quickly runs into the limits of counterfactual history, where causes and effects cannot be isolated or tested.

The problem, as my reader put it, closely resembles survivorship bias. I think we've all seen the illustration of the battle-damaged aircraft from the Second World War. If not, I've included it at the top of this post. During the war, military analysts initially studied the bullet holes on planes that returned from combat, assuming the holes marked the most vulnerable areas. What they eventually came to realize is that the opposite was true: the planes that did not return had likely been hit in the places where the surviving aircraft were unmarked. The most important evidence was not what could be seen, but what was missing.

A similar bias may shape how we remember the Satanic Panic’s impact on the history of Dungeons & Dragons. The people who became lifelong gamers in the 1980s and 1990s were, by definition, those who passed through that period of censorship, stigma, and negative publicity. They are the aircraft that returned. Their presence is visible and their stories are often told, sometimes with pride, as proof that the panic failed or even that it backfired.

What is far harder to see are the players who never made it that far. The children whose parents forbade the game. The schools and libraries that quietly removed it from their shelves. The local groups that never formed because the social cost of participation seemed too high. These absent players leave no testimonies, no fond memories, and, of course, no sales figures. They are the aircraft that never returned and their absence subtly shapes the conclusions we draw about the era.

This does not mean that the claim that the Satanic Panic helped Dungeons & Dragons is false. It may be true or partly true or true in some contexts and not in others. Nor does it mean that the opposite claim, that the panic caused lasting harm, can be demonstrated with any greater certainty. The counterfactual remains unprovable. What it does suggest is that confidence in either position should be tempered by an awareness of what cannot be measured.

For readers who lived through that period, I'm curious about your own experiences. At the time you first encountered the game, was easy it to access or was contested or even forbidden? Did you know people who were interested in D&D but discouraged from playing or who drifted away under social pressure? I ask all this not merely out of curiosity, but because, as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I barely knew that the Satanic Panic was a thing with which anyone had to contend. I was aware of its existence, of course, but I never intersected with it in the slightest, nor did any of my friends. Without exception, our parents and extended families were supportive of our newfound obsession and, in fact, encouraged it, especially in my case. My own perspective is thus not very helpful in assessing this question.

In any case, I don't expect to come to any unassailable conclusions by raising this question. The Satanic Panic, after all, was an amorphous thing, neither a simple obstacle to the hobby's growth nor an obvious catalyst to it. It was a cultural pressure that some people resisted, some endured, and others, like myself, never encountered. That said, I think there is strength to the suggestion that any account of it that focuses only on those who remained risks mistaking survival for inevitability and resilience for proof that nothing was lost. That's why I'm curious to hear from others and their experiences of it.

The Dwellers in the Mirage

I'm presently finishing work on a long essay about ten works of "forgotten fantasy" – stories I consider to have been influential or otherwise important to the subsequent development of fantasy but that have largely been forgotten or otherwise overlooked by later generations. Included among those ten works is Abraham Merritt's 1932 novel, The Dwellers in the Mirage. Though barely known today, the novel was quite popular in its day and may have played a role in inspiring Robert E. Howard to create his character of Conan the Cimmerian.

The fine men over at DMR Books recently released a new edition of the novel that restores Merritt's preferred ending. It's a great edition, well worth picking up, if, like me, you're a fan of Merritt. I highly recommend it.

Initial Thoughts on Combat in Metamorphosis Alpha

Three sessions into my new Metamorphosis Alpha campaign – which I've dubbed "Habitat" – my players and I have now had the chance to use the game's combat system several times, most recently when their characters encountered some hostile wolfoids inside the Environmental Control Center of Habitat Level 2 of the starship Warden. My initial instincts about the game have thus far been proven correct. Though published two years after OD&D, MA is still a very early game design, filled with a lot of rough edges, infelicities, and general wonkiness. This is especially the case with the combat.

On the surface, combat in Metamorphosis Alpha isn't that much different from combat in OD&D. Players roll 1d20, with the aim of rolling equal to or higher than a target number. This roll is modified by certain factors, like a high Strength score or mutations. Weapons in MA each have a weapon class, ranging from 1 for bows and blowguns to 8 for protein disruptor pistols. In general, the higher the weapon class, the lower the target number needed versus an opponent's armor class (also rated from 1 to 8). 

There are some wrinkles in this, though, since weapon class is something of a stand-in for the weapon versus AC tables of Chainmail, Greyhawk, and AD&D. Some weapons are better against lower armor classes than they are against higher ones, for example, along with other peculiarities, like the metal disruptor pistol having no effect against armor classes above 3. Longtime players of Gamma World will, of course, recognize this system, since that descendant of Metamorphosis Alpha uses a similar system.

Damage varies by weapon type, as in Supplement I to OD&D. Each weapon's damage also varies by target type, with "humanoid beings," "mutated creatures," and "true humans" each being a separate category. It's unclear from the text whether mutated animals that have humanoid shapes count as a  the first or second category. When confronted with this on the fly, I elected to treat mutant animals as the middle category, but now I am second guessing myself, since it often means that mutant animals take less damage from common weapons like swords than do their mutant human counterparts. 

For reasons unknown to me, the game includes a second system for resolving bow combat – just bow combat – that seems to be derived from Chainmail. Instead of the difficulty to hit being based on armor class, it's based on distance. Furthermore, 2d6 are rolled against a target number rather than 1d20. When we first noticed that there were two systems for bow combat, I offered using the alternative one as an option, but none of the players were in favor of that, so we use the standard d20 system for all combat.

The possibility of surprise is handled much as in OD&D, with a d6 roll. Initiative, however, is determined by Dexterity score, with higher scores acting before lower ones. Ties are resolved with a die roll. There's a suggestion, never fully articulated, that, if a character or creature has a Dexterity score of twice that of his opponent, he can attack twice against that target. This hasn't come up in play as of yet, so I'm not certain whether I'll adopt the rule or not.

Character hit points are determined by a roll of 1d6 per point of Constitution. Since there are no experience rules in Metamorphosis Alpha, it is thus unlikely a character will ever gain any more hit points than what is rolled at the start of play. "Normal" weapons, which is to say, the sorts starting characters typically possess – swords, spears, bows, etc. – do damage comparable to their OD&D counterparts, meaning that most starting MA characters are more robust than those in OD&D, capable of sustaining more hits before expiring. 

The matter of damage is complicated by both mutations and high-tech weapons. Many mutations, like heightened precision and heightened strength, increase the number of dice a normal weapon does. Characters with these mutations can dish out quite a lot of damage, using even a sword or mace. High-tech weapons are even more dangerous. A laser pistol, for example, deals 5, 10, or 15d6 damage, depending on the type of armor worn by the target. Then there are other mutations, both physical and mental, that deal poison or radiation damage or target the mind of an enemy rather than his body. These, too, can deal devastating damage. One of the characters in the campaign has poison claws with strength 11 poison that's capable of killing any creature with a Constitution score of 11 or less on a single strike.

As I noted at the start of this post, we've only just started playing Metamorphosis Alpha. We're still finding our footing and I am sure there will be many missteps along the way. The combat system is, so far, the most confusing part of the game to get right, mostly because it's just enough like OD&D that we sometimes forget the ways that it differs. Likewise, I suspect that we may all be too complacent about damage. Other than a single, limited use slug thrower, the characters do not yet have access to any high-tech weaponry, nor have they faced opponents who do. When that changes, I expect we'll all be in for a surprise!

I'll no doubt have more to say about all of this, once we've had the chance to play the game more. 

H.P. Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories

Despite his profound influence over the subsequent development of fantasy, science fiction, and, of course, horror, adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft's works into film or television don't have a great track record. Most of them deviate considerably from their source material, often because it's clear that the creators don't really understand – or want to understand – HPL and his esthetic and philosophical worldview. Consequently, the number of Lovecraft adaptations I consider genuinely worthy are few and far between. Even so, I'm always on the lookout for new ones, in the hope that I might come across a rare gem.

The other day, while doing some research for Dream-Quest, I stumbled upon references to a 46-minute claymation film released in 2007 by the Japanese multimedia company, Toei. Written and directed by Ryo Shinagawa, it adapts three of Lovecraft's stories – "The Picture in the House," "The Dunwich Horror," and "The Festival" – and does so reasonably faithfully within the limited context of its chosen medium. I particularly like the adaptation of "The Festival," but then I am inordinately fond of that tale already. In any case, I thought this film might be of interest to fellow Lovecraft fans and so bring it to your attention.

Retrospective: Bermuda Triangle

Recently, I came across a couple of “news” stories about the Bermuda Triangle, a topic I hadn’t thought about in years. Growing up in the 1970s, however, the Bermuda Triangle seemed to be everywhere. I vividly remember Charles Berlitz’s 1974 book on the subject – yes, that Charles Berlitz – as well as the steady stream of television documentaries solemnly recounting the mysterious disappearances of ships and airplanes. The 1970s really were a wild time, a period when the Unexplained was treated less as fringe nonsense than as a challenge to modern rationality. UFOs, ESP, ancient astronauts, haunted houses, and Atlantis all enjoyed a curious semi-respectability. The world, it seemed, was stranger than we had been led to believe and I, of course, ate it up.

Thinking about this cultural moment reminded me of a boardgame from the same period that I adored as a child, Bermuda Triangle. Published by Milton Bradley in 1975, it is not a particularly well-known game today, but I suspect that those of us who remember it at all do so largely because of a single plastic component central to its play, the Mystery Cloud. Ships caught beneath it might be removed from the board entirely, creating a physical absence that felt far more consequential to my friends and me than simply flipping a cardboard counter or sliding a token backward. Watching one’s ship laden with cargo and hard-won progress vanish into the Cloud’s plastic depths was a small but unforgettable drama.

Mechanically, Bermuda Triangle is a straightforward enough game. Two to four players each control a fleet of four merchant ships, attempting to move them from port to port to collect goods and return them safely to their home port. The first player to amass $350,000 in goods wins. Achieving this requires a mix of luck, timing, and a modest amount of tactical awareness. Ship movement is governed by dice rolls, with vessels advancing along established sea lanes. Crowding matters, because landing on an occupied space displaces the other ship, pushing it backward, and ports themselves can hold only four ships at a time. This creates opportunities for deliberate obstruction, allowing players to slow one another’s progress through careful positioning.

Beyond the roll of the dice, though, looms the game’s defining feature, the aforementioned Mystery Cloud. At the end of each turn, after each player has moved, a spinner determines the Cloud’s direction of movement across the board. Over time, it will inevitably drift into the sea lanes, crossing paths with the merchant vessels. Each ship token contains a small magnet, as does the Cloud itself. Depending on the Cloud’s orientation and direction of travel, it may “suck up” a ship it passes over, removing it from play entirely.

It is a simple mechanic, but a remarkably effective one. There is no certainty that a ship will be lost even when the Cloud passes directly overhead – the magnets were quite finicky, as I recall – and that unpredictability only heightened the tension. Would the ship survive or would it "vanish?" That moment of suspense, repeated again and again, gave the game a sense of menace wholly out of proportion to its rules complexity. I am convinced that this single feature carried the game for us, encouraging repeated play of what might otherwise have been dismissed as a fairly ordinary, even dull, roll-and-move affair.

Seen in retrospect, Bermuda Triangle feels like a perfect expression of its era. Its mechanics are serviceable, its strategy modest, but its theme and, crucially, its physical embodiment of that theme tapped directly into a cultural fascination with mystery and unseen forces. The game didn’t explain the Bermuda Triangle, but simply assumed its reality and invited us to suffer its consequences. In doing so, it captured something about those days as I remember them, namely, that the world was unstable, unpredictable, and perhaps unknowable. 

The game left a lasting impression on me in a way that Monopoly or Sorry! never did, since, on many levels, it's no better of a game design than either of those staples of childhood. The combination of the Mystery Cloud and its ostensible subject matter, though, was enough to elevate Bermuda Triangle in my imagination. Until I started thinking about this again, I hadn't realized how much I liked this game – or how much of a role it may have played in feeding the earliest embers of my lifelong fascination with the Unexplained. Not bad for an old boardgame!

A Commemoration of the House of Worms

My longstanding Empire of the Petal Throne campaign, House of Worms, ended in early October of this year, after ten and a half years of more or less weekly play. It is, to date, the longest sustained RPG campaign I've ever refereed or indeed been involved in. Its conclusion was therefore an event of real significance, one I felt deserved to be marked in some lasting way.

I chose to commemorate the campaign by commissioning a group portrait depicting all the player characters and major non-player characters who played an important role over its long history. For this, I turned once again to the artist Zhu Bajiee, who has produced so much excellent work for me over the years. The complete portrait is quite large, and I’ve decided to share it in full only with my patrons. That said, I also wanted to give other readers a sense of it, so I’m presenting selected portions of the image here.

More information about many of these characters, along with earlier depictions of them, can be found in this post from late last year. All of the illustrations here show the characters at the time of the conclusion of the campaign.

This is Huné hiNokór, a scholar priest of Hrü'ü, the Supreme Principle of Change within Tsolyánu's pantheon of gods. He is not a member of the House of Worms clan but joined them on their adventures after encountering them in the underworld beneath the city of Sa'á Alliqiyár. 

From left to right: Keléno hiNokór, Mírsha hiGirén, Jangáiva hiTlélsu, and Ssúri hiNokór. Keléno is a scholar priest of Sárku, the Tsolyáni god of death, while Mírsha, his third wife, is a lay priestess (sorceress) of Ksárul, god of secrets. Jangáiva is a temple guard, shown here with her demonic hammer, Ikh Tèn ("Little Sister"). Ssúri is a ritual priestess and dancer for Sárku's temple. 

Toneshkéthu Vokrón is a fourth stage student at the College at the End of Time, where Sinustragán Dzáshu is her master. She's also the youngest daughter of the Engsvanyáli priestking Girándu XV, who died more than 10,000 years prior to the start of the campaign. 

From left to right: Znayáshu hiNokór, Tu'ásha hiNarkóda, and Chiyé hiZhunrán. Znayáshu is a lay priest of Durritlámish, as well as an astrologer and a seller of protective charms and trinkets. Tu'ásha is his wife – as well as undead. She hides her hideous countenance behind a jade mask. Chiyé is a priest of Sárku who has a particular interest in the magic of the Ancients, like the "eye" that he holding.

From left to right: Nebússa hiTéshku, Srüna hiVázhu, Kirktá hiNokór, and Nye'étha hiSsáivra. Nebússa is a scion of the mighty Golden Bough clan and an agent of the Omnipotent Azure Legion. He is clan-cousin to Keléno's first wife, Hmásu. Srüna is Nebússa's wife, a member of the Iron Helm clan and a potent lay priestess of Ksárul. Kirktá is a scholar priest of Durritlámish, the protégé of Keléno, and a secret heir to the Petal Throne (his claim since renounced). His wife, Nye'étha, is a lay priestess of Ksárul, and another clan-cousin to Nebússa.

Left to right: Qurén hiQolyélmu, Grujúng hiZnáyu, and Aíthfo hiZnáyu. Qurén is a member of the Jade Diadem clan and a scholar of the Mihálli originally in the employ of Prince Rereshqála. Grujúng is a former legionnaire and the uncle of Aíthfo, who was once governor of the Tsolyáni colony of Linyaró.

Though I remain somewhat sad that House of Worms is now done, I am nevertheless glad that we brought it to a satisfying conclusion, something that, I am told, happens relatively rarely for RPG campaigns. That's why I'm especially pleased to have this portrait of the characters and NPCs who played important roles in it over the decade and a bit that we gathered each Thursday afternoon. Zhu Bajiee did a terrific job with all these depictions. They really capture the essence of the characters and serve as a tribute to them and the players who portrayed them.

The Articles of Dragon: "The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games"

I strongly considered not writing a post about this particular article from issue #95 of Dragon (March 1985), since I know it’s likely to stir up strong feelings and perhaps understandably so. At the same time, the guiding principle behind my revival of the Articles of Dragon series has been to focus on pieces that had a particular impact on me when I first read them, and this one – “The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games” – most certainly did. Of course, if you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog, that should come as no surprise.

The question of Tolkien’s influence on the creation and later development of Dungeons & Dragons is a topic to which Gary Gygax regularly returned. From nearly the moment the game appeared, Gygax denied that Tolkien’s tales of Middle-earth, especially The Lord of the Rings, held any special place of honor among the many fantasy works that inspired him. He never denied having read and enjoyed The Hobbit, nor that he had borrowed certain monsters and creatures, such as orcs and halflings, from Tolkien. What he seems to have rejected was the idea that this borrowing meant D&D was primarily inspired by Tolkien, rather than being a mishmash of many different influences.

I say "seems," because I really don't know why this particular question so vexed Gygax. That he kept writing articles like this more than a decade after the first appearance of the game suggests that it somehow mattered to him. I suppose the easy explanation is ego – he simply couldn't countenance the idea that someone might think D&D's success was owed, in whole or in part, to the popularity of Tolkien's work rather than his own imagination and ingenuity. But is that what was going on? Honestly, I don't know and I'm not sure anyone else does either.

"The Influence of J.R.R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games" is a strange article. For one, Gygax begins it by admitting – in the very first paragraph – that "the popularity of Professor Tolkien's fantasy works did encourage me to develop my own." This is undeniable, since the Fantasy Supplement to Chainmail directly references J.R.R. Tolkien and includes not just hobbits but orcs, balrogs, and ents among its bestiary (all of which appeared in OD&D, at least in its earliest printings). Gygax continues that "there are bits and pieces of his works reflected hazily in mine," before stating that "I believe his influence, as a whole, is minimal" [italics mine].

Gygax then recalls the many, many fantasy books and authors he read, beginning in childhood. He points particularly to Robert E. Howard's only Conan novel, Conan the Conqueror (more accurately The Hour of the Dragon) as being his first exposure to sword-and-sorcery literature. He then goes on to cite L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Abraham Merritt, and H.P. Lovecraft as also being important to developing his sense of fantasy. None of those names should come as surprise, since he highlights all of them in Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. (Of more interest to me is why Jack Vance is not mentioned at all, despite Gygax's regular praise of him and his works and his role in inspiring the D&D magic system.)

With that out of the way, Gygax says he "thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit" but found The Lord of the Rings a "tedious ... allegory of the struggle of the little common working folk of England against the threat of Hitler's Nazi evil." Tolkien would, of course, object strenuously to that characterization of The Lord of the Rings, but we must take Gygax at his word. He claims to have found the novel's action to be slow, its magic unimpressive, and its resolution disappointing. Moreover, Tolkien drops his favorite character, Tom Bombadil, soon after introducing him, which contributed to the slowness with which he finished it (three weeks).

Gygax then goes on, rather unconvincingly in my view, to say that many of the common elements of Middle-earth and Dungeons & Dragons have common sources, like Norse mythology for dwarves, and that therefore no one should assume the game he created owed much to Tolkien. In fairness, he also admits once again that there were some things he borrowed with the intention of "capitalizing on the then-current 'craze' for Tolkien's literature." He did this in a "superficial manner," believing that, once he'd attracted these Tolkien fiends to D&D, they'd soon realize that there was only "a minute trace of the Professor's work" therein.

As I said, I really don't know what to make of all of this. On the one hand, I generally agree with Gygax that D&D's similarities to Tolkien's creations are skin-deep at best and probably included solely for the purposes of enticing Middle-earth aficionados to the game. On the other hand, the fact that Gygax kept beating this particular drum makes me wonder if he actually believed the lines he was saying. Furthermore, Gygax was never shy about admitting the debt he owed REH or Vance or Leiber, so why did the charge he was borrowed Tolkien rankle him so? It's frankly baffling to me.