Wyrd Science Issue 9 (Frederik Hornung cover)

"The Company of the Ring shall be Nine; and the Nine Walkers shall be set against the Nine Riders that are evil", explained Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings. Of course what he left out was that with all that travelling they'll need something to read too, which is why Wyrd Science issue 9 is dedicated to the father of fantasy, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.

Few books published in the twentieth century have has as much of a profound effect as Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, so much so that, for good and bad, its brand of heroic, epic fantasy became the standard for the genre, Middle-earth the template for most fantasy lands, and its inhabitants the archetypes we instinctively reach for.

So, like gold mad dwarves it felt like it was about time we delved deep into Tolkien's legendarium and explored its long and tangled relationship with tabletop games. In this issue...

• Shannon Appelcline looks back over the decades and explores how Tolkien's Middle-earth became the cultural phenomenon that it is, and in turn played a pivotal role in the history of roleplaying games.
• Folklorist Dr Francis Young untangles the twisted roots of Middle-earth to look at where Tolkien himself drew inspiration from for his creations.
• We speak to Gareth Hanranhan, one of the lead writers for The One Ring RPG, and whose recent books have taken us deep into both the mines of Moria and the mind of the White Wizard.
• Matt Leacock, creator of the bestselling Pandemic game, reveals how Tolkien played a pivotal part in his becoming a game designer and would eventually lead to his latest triumph, Fate of the Fellowship.
• We catch up with game designer Alessio Cavatore and miniature sculptors The Perry Twins as they tell us about how Games Workshop got in on the hobbit game back in the early 2000s.
• We look at the many ways that we can explore Middle-earth today and how different roleplaying games, both official and very much not, have focused on several of Tolkien's key themes.
• We celebrate Tolktober, the annual art challenge that is re-enchanting and rewinding both Middle-earth and our imaginations and we look at how musicians, from Led Zeppelin and Leonard Nimoy through to Hole Dweller, have found inspiration in Tolkien's works.

But, of course, that's not all.

Throughout the rest of the issue we meet with a group of Germans who enjoy nothing more than spending their weekends as Warhammer townsfolk; we summon occult rockers Green Lung and synth wizard Jim Jupp to discuss their new albums; catch up with author Molly Tanzer to discuss resurrecting a sword & sorcery legend and The Merry Mushmen about their new S&S comic anthology, XNOO; explore the haunted country of Hookland and force ourselves to watch the apocalyptic Threads again, in 4K ultra HD no less... the things we do for our readers.

Plus we have game reviews with everything from Mythic Bastionland to Frontier Scum hitting the table, there's news, original art, anarchic gnome pin badges and goblin rugs, basically all kinds of weird and wonderful algorithm beating stuff you won't get from doomscrolling social media. There's even 2 different covers from artists Frederik Hornung and Tammy Nicholls to choose from. Epic in every sense.