Mr. Jackson (your name isn’t Michael is it? because that would be unfortunate),
Thanks for the reassurances. Do you happen to know if specs were given for the eclipse? We’re wondering if we can assume it’s accurately portrayed from the perspective of an astronomer (we have one of those at Theoryland, and a hobbyist as well). That’s not to say we can figure anything out about it right now, or even that we’ll be able to figure it out when the book comes out judging on recent portrayal of chronology. Just curious. No worries if no particular care was taken to portray it accurately; I understand it’s complicated, but it could have been made simple if RJ left notes about it. Also curious as to why it didn’t show up until the final draft.
We didn’t talk about it, but I can ask him. Michael has more than a passing interest in astronomy so it’s possible.
And M and R are my initials…
Michael’s response:
The few pages of manuscript I was given to work from didn’t have any mention of an eclipse. The subject didn’t come up until I had done several conceptual renderings. After sending some of them to TOR I got an email from Irene telling me that if I showed the sky through the mouth of the cave I might want to work an eclipse into the scene.
For reference I looked at a lot of photos of eclipses and liked the idea (for symbolic reasons) of indicating an imminent annular eclipse, the kind where the moon doesn’t entirely cover the sun but leaves a thin ring of light in the sky.
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