One of the stress points of the modern age is the pace and power of technology. Will our knowledge and gadgetry outstrip our ability to control and channel it? The theme of this threat is at the core of the popular Terminator science fiction franchise, and it has echoed through modern culture since the fateful and fatal days of August 1945 when the world woke up to the reality of utter devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Having survived the nightmare of the first World War, J.R.R. Tolkien knew well the tension of technology and the threat of the machine. In a long letter to Milton Waldman, who he had hoped would publish The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien explains the use of magic in his great myth and how it relates to machinery.[*] Neither a dullard nor a Lollard, Tolkien had thought through, with great clarity, the difference between the magic of the elves and that of Mordor.
He observes that the hobbits do not understand the difference between the magic powers exercised by the elves and that of the Dark Lord Sauron: “the Elven queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused use of the word [magic] both for the devices and operations of the Enemy and for those of the Elves.” Tolkien says the lack of a proper word (other than “magic”) for the work of the elves indicates the same confusion in our own minds and mythologies.