Orcs in the Deep

Today is Hobbit Day, so Stuff to Blow Your Mind returns to Middle Earth once more. Join Robert and Joe for a discussion of orcs and their origins both in the dark corners of the human imagination and the loathsome pits of Utumno.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
But of those unhappy ones who were ensnared by Melkor,
little is known of a certainty, for who of the
living has descended into the pits of autumno or has
explored the darkness of the councils of Melkor. Yet this
is held true by the wise of Eressia, that all
those of the KINDI who came into the hands of

(00:26):
Melkor errotumno was broken, were put there in prison, and
by slow arts of cruelty, were corrupted and enslaved. And
thus did Melkor breathe the hideous race of the Orcs
in envy and mockery of the elves of whom they
were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life
and multiplied after the manner of the children of Iluvatar,

(00:50):
And naught that had life of its own, nor the
semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion
in the Aino Lundeli before the beginning, So say the wise,
and deep in their dark hearts, the Orcs loathed the
master whom they served, in fear the maker only of
their misery. Welcome to stuff to blow your mind. The

(01:15):
production of my heart radio hey welcome to stuff to
blow your mind. My name is Robert Land, and I'm
Joe McCormick. And man, I had to read that opening
part quite a few times. That, of course, is from
The Sill Marillion by j. R. R. Tolkien. Yeah, and
of course we're talking about Tolkien because today's publication date

(01:39):
is September, which also happens to be the credited birth
date of both Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, the Hobbits central
to J. R. Tolkien saga of Middle Earth. Uh. Thus
this has become known as Hobbit Day, which falls during
Tolkien Week, at least as proposed by the American Tolkien
Society in Night. So this TRD and is roughly a

(02:00):
month older than I am. That's funny. So it's a
week long festival then, yeah, yeah, apparently a week long
celebration of Middle Earth and all things token. I was
not aware of it until just like last month and
I realized the publication day lined up perfectly, and I'm like, oh, well,
we've already done an episode on the One Ring. We
did another one on Hobbits and how their their biology

(02:24):
works and how they relate to multiple meals per day
and to Sunlight, and so I thought, well, we got
to come with something else that we can talk about
on Hobbit Day itself. So you wanted to talk about orcs.
I guess you've had Token on the brain all year, right,
Are you still? Are you still reading it with the family?
No way, I haven't been reading it. We've been meaning

(02:45):
to come back around to Fellowship of the Rings, but
instead we just we just got into Star Wars this year,
so that's where we are. But I couldn't. I couldn't
let the stars seemed to align on this particular episode.
So I thought, well, we've got to we gotta do something.
Started looking around, I thought, well, maybe it's orcs. Orcs
are such a central part of the work and something

(03:06):
that has been highly influential on fantasy in general, like
generally speaking, fantasy games, fantasy books, fantasy movies. They're just
lousy with orcs, you know. I was trying to think
when I first started, when I first became aware of orcs,
and I think before I ever read any Tolkien, I
played the warcraft games which which have orcs in them,

(03:31):
which are essentially the palace guards at Java's Palace from
Return of the Jedi. Yeah, they're green, and they've got tusks,
and they've got kind of like a bulldog faces. Yeah,
they have that. They look a lot like those Gamorian
guards from from Jedi Um. They also of course, of course,
um that whole gaming system I think has its roots

(03:52):
too and being inspired by the Warhammer games as well,
which yeah, which I'll touch base on that in a
little bit, because think they're very important to the history
of how we interpret orcs. Um. I I think I've
I have always pictured the Orcs of Middle Earth in
less detail, like, you know, more abstract, brutish creatures in

(04:14):
the you know, in the rough semblance of human beings.
And part of that might be that I at a
very early age I saw at least parts of the
original UH animated version where all the animation is pretty
much like that. It's kind of like abstract shapes and
less detail, and the Orcs and other evil things are
often shown in kind of a silhouette. This is the

(04:36):
ralph back she one with the does have rhotoscoping in it.
Rotoscoping animation. I believe that's the technique they used. Yeah,
it was. It's it's interesting, it's a little bit different
from the Rank and bass uh animation that you saw
on The Hobbit and then saw on the Return of
the King, which you know basically finished what this film didn't. Oh,

(04:58):
this is the one where Sauma this Santa Claus, they
give him a red robe. It's been so long, I
don't even I don't even remember that honestly, but but
I I remember flashes of it. It had it had
some sort of an impact on me. Um, I'd say
that I think in hearing about Middle Earth and all um,

(05:18):
it probably also has a lot to do with like
the two earliest stories that I remember my dad telling
me were he would tell me about Beowulf and Grendel.
So had this like really early idea of Grendel in
my head, and then I remember him telling me about
the Battle of Hastings, so I have I think I
ended up sort of cobbling together this this Middle Earth
orc as being a combination of Norseman or Viking and

(05:40):
that figure of Grendel. M M. But that's just me personally,
just based on like where I came into learning about
the Hobbit and what I've been exposed to previously. UM.
And as as we're going to discuss here. There's there's
subsequently been so many different visions of orcs and what
orcs are, and we're still in the process us uh

(06:01):
of of defining and redefining what an orc is. For
some reason, I remember thinking that the orcs of the
Peter Jackson movies have a very dickensie and villain kind
of flare, like they've got this, you know, sinister Cockney
accent that you hear. Yeah, the Peter Jackson orcs are
are are very important in our our modern perceptions of them.

(06:24):
But but even those are are suitably very There are
a lot of different visions of what an orc is
in those films. They range from like big like dark
brutes to more goblin e forms. There's like one general
that shows up and I think Return of the King
that has this very like elephant man um tumorous appearance.

(06:46):
And then by the Hobbit films they seem to have
refined it a little bit to where you have either
refined the work in general or that, or just they've
decided to portray these sort of misty mountain orcs as
being almost kind of nos Feratu in they kind of
look like big, beefy nos Feratus in a way, in
a way that I think really works more the classic
Max shrek nos Ferrat or the klass Kinski knows Ferra

(07:08):
to the Max shredded nos Ferratto. That's that's what they
are like. This is very just very beefy um je Max.
Now we mentioned mentioned um Warhammer just a second ago.
I've long been a fan of of Warhammer, and Warhammer
forty thousand one is like the fantasy version one is

(07:29):
essentially like a sci fi version of the same universe,
and it is evolved since then. And you have orcs
in both of them, and in both games orcs are
depicted as green skinned, almost bold, dog like in their
cranial structure. And even more to the point though, these
orcs are presented in a manner that I would I
would dare describe as fun. They If orcs are often,

(07:53):
you know, serving to to represent a kind of dark
savagery of humanity, I'd say that the the Orc Boys
as there sometimes called this with a z uh run
counter to that, embodying the spirit that kind of celebrates
the kind of goofy primal rebellion, especially in in Warham
or forty the futuristic version which is a very dark

(08:13):
and nihilistic, you know, grim dark kind of fictional setting.
The Orcs are pretty much the only faction that actually
resonate with any lightness in Whimsy. Like you see are
the depictions of them or the way that the various
collectors have painted them up, and they often have bright
colors and kind of a fun goofy quality to them.
I ran across one. I think this is like a

(08:33):
current figure where it's like an Orc captain and he
has like a big pirate hat on and a bunch
of cool colorful iconography. They have this kind of slap
dash technology to them. Uh, they're they're a little bit
monstars in space Jam. I haven't seen space Sham, but
it's when the nerdy aliens get really big and good

(08:54):
at sports and then they become the mon stars. Okay,
well I'll take your word for it. Um yeah, I
guess I'm imagining from your telling of it, like sort
of lighthearted monstrosity, kind of cartoonish monstrosity. Yes, Okay. Space
Jam never gets too bleak, you know, they don't. Space

(09:15):
Jam doesn't go full grim dark. A grim dark Space
Jam reboot that would be That would be scot that'd
be so good. Now, this embracing of orc nature. You'll
find this elsewhere as well. Uh. In Dungeons and Dragons,
of course, one may play a half work or even
full blooded works, which allows room for that sort of thing,
and will come back to Dungeons and Dragons in a bit.

(09:37):
But one title, and this is one that our former
co host, Christian Uh turned me onto. Uh. There's a
comic artist by the name of James um stoke O
I believe that's s. T. O. Koe, and he has
this comic series called Orc Stain, and it presents a
delightfully crude and whimsical vision of a world just overrun
with orcs. The protagonist himself is an Orc here and

(10:00):
it has this kind of I would say, you know,
the art that accompanies the British musical Um Act Guerrillas.
It has kind of that Guerrillas Tank Girl kind of
vibe to it. It has this very kind of punk
rock aesthetic, which I've I've I've seen I've seen that
with orcs elsewhere where. This is kind of convergence of

(10:22):
like punk art culture and the embracing of the Orc. Yeah,
punk monsters. I think is actually a pretty good tradition.
I don't know how it got started, but I think
of in the old the old teenage meeting Ninja turtles,
comics like the Bebop and rock Steadier. You're not actually
punk monsters exactly. Yeah, good point. So what does all

(10:42):
this mean? What are orcs and and why do they
resonate with us? So why don't we continue to tell
stories about orcs and involve works in our games and
our fiction, etcetera? Um? Can can we discuss science in
relation to Orcs? And are there problematic aspects here as well?
So that's where we're gonna be talking about in this episode.
But the first step, I imagine, is to discuss what

(11:04):
Tolkien says in universe about the creation of the Orcs,
coming back to our cold opening, and then also discuss
where he even got the name orc itself. All right, well,
let's enlist in the Orc army, all right? Okay, So
in Tolken's writing, the Orcs are the most common evil
foot soldier. They were like the ubiquitous enemy. Um In

(11:24):
the Hobbit we deal more with goblins, which are often
understood to be either lesser Orcs or a particular species
or subspecies of Mountain Orc and Tolkien apparently rolled out
a few different contradictory origin stories for the Orc in
his work. But according to the Tolkein Encyclopedia, which is
a book I typically turn into for such matters, uh,
they were twisted forms of life that Melk corps spawned

(11:47):
in the pits of Autumno. Uh. They served as the
bulk of his armies, and then after his defeat they
served as the bulk of Saron's armies as well. Now,
was melk Or the same person Saron in an earlier incarnation?
Or was milk Or the god that Sauron served? My understanding,
and this is a good point for us to point

(12:08):
out that neither of us are Tolkien scholars or or
professed to be Tolkien experts. It's you're you keep wanting
to do these Tolken episodes, and then we get the
mail from people who are like, actually, I know, and
I I and I love it. I invited. I I
definitely want to hear from from people more knowledgeable in
the in Tolkien scholarship than I am, or just in

(12:30):
general you know, or or scholarship if you will. Uh. Now,
my understanding is that melk Or was the original fallen
god that rebelled against everything. Then he was defeated Saaron
being like a fallen Hephestus type forge god had served
melk Orp, but with milk Or destroyed or you know,

(12:51):
taken out of the picture permanently. Now it's time for
Saron to shine. Basically, Sawn was milk Or's VP. Okay, cool,
Now now we keep off the episode here with that
cold reading about the creation of the Orcs in the
in the pits of Autumn. No, you know, the idea
that they would have been created, you know, this sort
of blasphemous process that takes place in a fallen god's dungeons,

(13:16):
like it was sort of a mockery of life. Yeah,
the idea that they like captured els and twisted them
through torture into this new terrible form of life, and
that the Orcs therefore were products of pain and hate.
They lived only for pain and hate, and outwardly they
were quote and this is a from the token Encyclopedia, bent,
bow legged, and squat So they were apelike in many respects,

(13:39):
but cunning and cruel. Their skin looked as if burned
in their eyes were quote Crimson gashes like narrow slits
and black iron grates behind which hot coals burn. Now,
there are different varieties of orc, we're told in Middle Earth,
from the goblins of the Misty Mountains to standard works,
and then later you get these taller, more sun resistant
or a high orcs that were made by Sawing much later.

(14:03):
And it sounds as if the idea is that Sawin
ends up combining orc stock with human stock to create
a more human stature day tolerant trooper. Yeah, and I
think that ties into the idea that a lot of
creatures in Middle Earth or in Tolken's world, like if
you're a bad creature, you're often sort of confined to
a nighttime existence. You can't go out in the sun.
Trolls are this way, and the Hobbit trolls are turned

(14:25):
to stone when Gandalf Tricks came into staying up till
till the sun comes out. And I guess the the
idea is also that maybe the orcs or the goblins
just don't really like sunlight. Yeah. Now, the Token Encyclopedia
and other sources as well, it has you'll find lengthy
passages discussing the role of orcs to the history of
Middle Earth. There's there's no shortage of of of information

(14:49):
uh there. But basically the idea is that throughout their
history the numbers swell and shrink at times when dark
lord rise up and then fall away. Um. When they
dark Lords come back to power, the Orcs so there
to fill the ranks of the evil armies. But even
when they're defeated, they never completely go away. They kind
of shrink to the hidden corners of Middle Earth. Um.

(15:11):
And even with the defeat of Saron and Middle Earth's
transformation into a modern world, there's this idea that the
Orcs are out there somewhere. So that's the the in
universe explanation or as cannon and origin stories can be
cobbled together. But of course we know that J. R.
Tolkien did not create Middle Earth out of nothing. He
forged it out of existing mythological, folkloric and historic motifs.

(15:33):
And I would say, actually maybe more than anything out
of linguistic motifs. You know, the Tolkien loved language, and
you often get the sense that his story came out
of having a word for something, you know, like you'd
find you'd find a word for something an old Norse
that's just a great word. And and it almost feels
as if the character springs from the sound of the name.

(15:57):
Sorry that that makes sense, I know, no, absolutely, I
mean that you you really you can't discuss Tolkien creating
anything without without bringing in language, like clearly, like that
was his his his primary um scholarly interest, and everything
else kind of like springs out of that. And then
thus that's where a lot of these characters and species
come from as well. Yeah, so it seems that Tolkien

(16:19):
actually derived the term orc from a usage in Beowulf.
Beowulf is of course the great epic of Anglo Saxon.
It's an epic poem from the early Middle Ages. We
don't know exactly when it was composed. It was written
in Old English, which is the ancestor to modern English,
but also which is you know, it's so unlike Modern
English that you can't just read it, you know, it's

(16:41):
basically like another language. You need you need a glossary
or translation basically to understand it. Uh. And so the
term specifically that appears in Beowulf is or cane us
or cane Us. It is a creature that's mentioned during
the introduction of the monster Grendel, you know, the real
first big bad that that Beowulf has to fight. Beowulf

(17:04):
arrives at at Rothgar's meat hall, and the meat hall
is being terrorized by attacks from this monster Grendel. And
so I'm going to read from the J. Leslie Hall
translation of Beowulf. In the part that mentions orcs uh
so or the word or knaos at least Hall translates
for that bitter murder, the killing of able all ruling father,

(17:27):
the kindred of Cain crushed with his vengeance in the
feud he rejoiced, not but far away drove him from
kindred and kind that crime to atone for meter of justice.
Thence Ill favored creatures, elves and giants, monsters of ocean
came into being. And the giants that long time grappled

(17:49):
with God, he gave them requital. Now in the Hall
translation here there are a couple of different words that
get translated as giants. One is the old English gigantis,
and the other is a yoton s, which I think
is where we also get the word yoton like the
Norse mythology giant a couple of different kinds of monsters.

(18:10):
So in the line that mentions orknas it's a yotanus
and ilfa giants and elves and or canas, which I
think here is translated as monsters of ocean, but other
translations have have chosen different terms for it, sometimes calling
it a a demon or a goblin or something like that. Uh.

(18:30):
There's also an interesting translation note in the J. Leslie
Hall version of Beowulf which notes that when Grindel himself
is introduced, the word used to describe him could be
translated as demon and often is or could be translated
as stranger. Uh. Literary and linguistic conflation of the unfamiliar

(18:51):
person with the monster of hell, and J. Leslie Hall
actually chooses stranger in in this translation, making for an
interest set of lines. A foe in the whole building.
This horrible stranger was Grendel, entitled the march Stepper, famous
who dwelt in the moor, fins, the marsh and the Fastness. Oh.

(19:13):
I love that. So if you think of Grendel as
a stranger, it gets into some interesting territory about what
monstrosity means, and that a lot of times are our
mythical monsters are sort of ways of mentally metabolizing concepts
of people who are unfamiliar or who you worry might
be threatening to you somehow. Yeah. Absolutely, But then also

(19:36):
just from a surely like in that on the other hand,
like just from an imaginative perspective, like I hear that,
and I just love the idea of Grendel as this
as as the stranger, as this you know, this being
that is um that is almost from another world, you know,
because in many many respects he is well and much
like the Orc that we were just talking about. Grendel

(19:57):
here has given an unholy origin story. Right. They say
that he has descended from Caine, who in the biblical
story murdered his brother Abel. Caine was you know, the
third human to exist, and Able was the fourth. And Caine,
I guess, got jealous of Able having having good offerings
to God that God was very pleased with, and so
Kane murdered him. And then God comes to Caine saying, hey,

(20:19):
where's your brother? And Kane says, am I my brother's keeper.
So God curses Kine and sends him off wandering in
the wilderness to the land of not and Caine's offspring
apparently become the monster Grendel. So it's like there there's
a sort of there's a generational curse that has passed
down for that original crime. Now, in a nineteenth century
glossary of Anglo Saxon terms, the scholar Thomas Wright notes

(20:43):
that Orc means possibly hell, devil, or specter or goblin. Uh,
and he notes that it is phonetically similar to Orcus,
which was a Roman god of the underworld I think
somewhat regularly conflated with Satan during times of Christian syncratism. Yeah. Yeah,
Orcus of course has come up on the podcast before.

(21:06):
And this also brings to mind that that line from
William Blake, uh that of course is um is adapted
and switched around a little bit most more probably more
famously to most listeners in Blade Runner. But that line fiery,
the angels rose as they rose deep thunder rolled around
their shores, indignant, burning with the fires of Orc. Oh, yeah,

(21:28):
that's come up before. I know you like that one,
and that's great. I mean, Blake is always great, but
Orc there is different. Orc is not so much a monster.
There is kind of, like I don't recall exactly, some
kind of character. Yeah, yeah, you you're dealing with the
Blake um Um cinematic universe there as opposed to any
of these others. Um. I should add add one thing.

(21:50):
It's it's interesting that we don't have to really discuss
what a goblin is in any of this um. There's
something about the goblin in particular that I think you'll
find just about everywhere, Like we've discussed um various Chinese
folklore's and in mythologies before that involve something that is

(22:10):
translated as a goblin, And it does seem to suggest
that there is just sort of an intrinsic goblin nous
to the human imagination, like there is a space preserved
for the goblin that we we don't even really need
to even expand on too much. Well, yeah, I mean,
I think it's just there's a general fear of something

(22:30):
that is evil, that is roughly shaped like a human
and has human capabilities in a way, but cannot be
reasoned with and has no and has no like mercy
or morality, and is just sort of like meanness and
cruelty and human form or human form, Yeah, or you know,
kind of I guess sometimes with the goblin, I get

(22:51):
a sense of like the diminutive nature of the goblin's
suggested like a hidden supernatural element to it. And even
though the the the idea of Tolkien's orcs, they kind
of evolve out of an idea of a goblin, they
become something different, They become something more like a human
and therefore kind of divorced from like the supernatural world

(23:12):
of pure fairies, in the same way that Tolken's elves
are something different than like the the ideas of the
fair folk or even the Tuatha de dan and uh
that that you find in Irish mythology. Well. Yeah, another
thing that's funny is that by the time you get
to Tolkien, suddenly elves are thought of as these sort
of like superhumans. They're like humans, but they're they're like

(23:34):
so beautiful and so graceful and so rational and good. Um.
But but here in in Beowulf, the elves just seemed
to be another type of monster. They're listed alongside the
Yotanas and the monsters of the ocean. I mean, they're
in the same line. It's a Yotanas and Ilva and
uh an Orkneus altogether. Now, Um, speaking of the idea

(23:56):
of of orc is being related to sea monsters, I
of course poked up Orc in Carol Roses, Giants, Monsters
and Dragons, one of my favorite books to to look
up various creatures and just uh and and actually she
has another book related to fairies. In the Fairy Book,
she has a listing for for Orc, just saying it's
one of Tolkien's creations, very short, not much to it.

(24:18):
In the Monster's Book, she mentions Orc or Orco, a
monster described by Plenty of the Elder in the Natural History,
came out in sev or thereabouts, and it's described as
a very large oceanic creature, said to be larger than
a whale and capable of eating whales. It was known
as Orco later on and referenced in Orlando Furioso in

(24:41):
Oh Yeah, but the poet Lodovico Ariosto so Orlando Furioso.
I must, I must admit this. We were talking about
it before we started. I just figured out that this,
this epic poem is not about a guy named Orlando
furios So. It means something like Orlando's frenzy or something.
Uh So, So, Orlando is the hero of the story

(25:03):
and he slays I think he slays a lot of
monsters in it. Um, but I looked it up in
Orlando Furios. So it's in Canto seventeen that the the
Orco monster is mentioned, And so I want to read
from the William Stewart Rose translation. So, Uh, we get
the narration, while with much solace, seated and around we

(25:25):
from the chase, expect our lord's return approaching us along
the shore, astound the orc, that fearful monster we discern
God grant fair sir. He never may confound your eyesight
with his semblance, foul and stern. Better it is of
him by fame to hear than to behold him by
approaching near to calculate the grizzly monster's height, so measureless

(25:50):
is he exceeds all skill of fungus hue. In place
of orbs of sight, their sockets two small bones, like
berries fill towards us. As I say, he speeds out
right along the shore and seems a moving hill, tusks
jutting out like savage swine. He shows abreast with drivel,

(26:12):
foul and pointed nose. Okay, so what do we know
about this monster? Uh? He's too tall to calculate his height.
No one has the skill to calculate how high he is,
and that that makes it sound like he must be
like leaving the atmosphere. Um. He also has he's a
fungus hue, and I guess there are fungus is of

(26:33):
a lot of different hues, and he in place of eyeballs,
he has bones that are like berries. Now, up until
that point, I'm definitely picturing what I think this is.
But then the tusks kind of throw it off because
the tust sound like more something you would see oll
for seen, you know, an actual tusk see creature, but

(26:53):
also in the fabulous u Chi miracle uh sea monster
that you see in various maps. Oh yeah, exactly, like
the kind of like a wild boar's face on a
whale's body exactly. I think something like that might be
kind of imagined here. Except he's advancing along the shore,
so he seems to be able to leave the water. Um.

(27:14):
I don't know. Well it brings to mind um, and
because it does seem to be there is a connection here.
So when you read this, I could not help but
picture the orca, the killer whale, you know, because there's
something about like, you know, the fungus hue uh in
place of orbs of side imagining those big white eye
spots that are of course not their eyes, even though

(27:36):
it's it's almost impossible to look at a killer whale
and not think of that as their eyes. Their eyes
are actually much you know, smaller, Um, And are there
those big eye spots I think actually make killer whales
cuter than they otherwise they look less like the like
the vicious wolves of the sea that they are. Um.
But but yeah, there's this connection between orcus and or

(28:00):
kinnis orca that's the scientific name for killer whales, or kinness,
meaning belonging to orcas or simply the kingdom of the dead. Uh.
The Roman idea of orc orco sea monsters was or
became associated with the killer whale. Yeah. I guess that's right.
And and I want to be clear. I think a
minute ago we we describe the killer whale as vicious,

(28:23):
which we don't mean in a in a negative moral sense,
but we do mean in a descriptive sense about like
their behavior as they prey on sharks, which is just awesome. Uh. Yeah,
there as when concerning um orcas and their their natural prey.
I think viciousness is a well deserved adjective. Watch any

(28:44):
nature documentary about their their hunting of baby whales, and
you will agree. Um, But then again, hey, it's that
that's the world. They're just doing their part in it.
The blessings of milk or all right. On that note,
we're going to take a break, but when we come
we'll talk more about works than all right, we're back now.

(29:07):
There are certainly a number of ways to crunch the
idea of an orc that the of Tolkien's Orc a
humanoid other that is also not human. Insignificant ways. I
have to come back to something that um, that author
Terence Hawkins Um wrote about in his novel American Neolithic,
of which there's a revised edition. Now. They believe it

(29:29):
has to do with the Neanderthal surviving into into modern days.
But there's this wonderful line where the Neandertal character is
speaking to the reader and says, quote, you for whom
we have always been the other, our existence buried deep
in your racial memories, since the time when glaciers girdled
the world and the contest between man and animal was

(29:51):
yet to be decided. We haunt your legends as we
haunt your dreams, misshapen versions of yourself bad copies formally
Cobalds or Grimlin now more locks and orcs, um so,
so in this line, basically it's uh, the idea is that, uh,
there might be some connection between the idea of orcs

(30:12):
or more locks or other type beings and maybe the
notion that humans did live alongside Neanderthals for a period
of time and played at least some role in their destruction, well,
depending on how you define destruction, because of course we
do see the disappearance of the Neanderthal as a distinct

(30:34):
branch of the homogeneous but also it does appear that
Homo sapiens and Neanderthals also intermingled. Yeah, we went to
let's see, we went a good deal into this in
our Almost Cannibals episode because we're basically there was one
point we were discussing the idea of cannibalism by neander
Dolls by early humans, and you see examples of cannibalism

(30:54):
in both groups. But there's less evidence to suggest that, say,
humans aid all the neander dolls or the neander eight humans.
Um I mean it. Basically, there are a number of
open questions about what exactly happened between Neanderthals and humans.
To what extent anything happened. Um. A lot of sources
seem to indicate that there was There was probably at

(31:17):
least a competition for resources, if not something more you know, nefarious, uh,
with of course than the inder dolls eventually um fading away,
leaving only us. But what well, I take that back,
also some trace of Neanderthals within our own genetics. Now
it's interesting to think of a true humanoid other and
how human society would process its downfall. Uh. There's another

(31:41):
huge issue to consider that, and that is that that
is our tendency to dehumanize due to xenophobic, nationalistic, uh
and or racist attitudes and and this is an issue
that certainly comes up in the consideration of orcs. Yeah.
I think one of the most difficult things when you
dig into the history of ideas about monsters. As much

(32:01):
as we love them today and they're fun in the
in the forms we have them, they may often have
their origins in ideas that if we were fully understand them,
we would find quite repugnant. I mean, I think a
lot of the origins of monster legends are probably in
some process of dehumanizing people who are human. Yeah, it's

(32:22):
and it it is. It's truly heartbreaking because you want
monsters to be this pure escapism. But then yeah, when
you start pulling the various threads, you often find yourself
confronting something like this, and if nothing else, you confront
the you know, the basic idea that that these that
monsters always emerge from, if not one particular time, they
emerge out of different times. And and token's orcs especially,

(32:45):
I mean they're emerging out of twentieth century Europe, you know,
out of the period during which there were two devastating
world wars. Uh, certainly there's plenty of European racism and
xenophobia going around at the time, the wartime demonization of
the enemy like this, these are all elements in the soup,
no matter, no matter how much you want to focus

(33:09):
on these just being purely fictional beings in a you know,
in another world, or in a world that is inspired
purely out of like the scholarly consideration of myths and
and fairy tales. Right, I mean, I think at the
very least, what you can definitely say about the orc,
no matter what else we know about them, is that
they are a dehumanized form of the enemy. To be

(33:30):
represented in war um and in a way you know,
if if Tolkien was trying to consciously sort of recreate
something like a mythology. We see something like this in
lots of mythologies, you know it. It is of course
common for humans to to to dehumanize their enemies and
to think of them as something you know, less than
the people like us, right and and I mean we

(33:54):
we see this everywhere. I mean, this is one of
the reasons that arguably that zombie fiction has been so
so successful is that it presents a completely um, you know,
ethically acceptable in any that can just be eradicated without
any second consideration. Um And I think that you know,
you remember when we did um the episode about daydreaming,

(34:14):
and one of the studies we looked at discovered that
one of the most common things that people daydream about
is they just sort of fantasize about violent conflict that
people they think like, oh, if there was a fight,
what would I do? Uh? You know, there there's this
kind of thing, and so obviously people's brains are drawn
to this kind of scenario to fantasize about, you know,

(34:35):
for understandable reasons, like you like, you want to be
like that. That's where a lot of potential risk lies
and you want to imagine, like, well, what could I
do to get out of this? How could I win
that kind of thing? But then also that, you know,
I think about In The Lord of the Rings, there's
part where sam Wise gamge Uh he recognized as a
fallen soldier from the other side, from somebody who's fighting

(34:56):
for Saron, but is a human fighting for Saron one
of the for one of the men from Harad, And
sam Wise looks at him and he feels bad. He says,
wait a minute, you know, was this man really evil
or what kind of lies or threats brought him here
so far from home? And wouldn't he rather be living
at peace? That's interesting. It's a kind of strange moment

(35:18):
where suddenly, out of this otherwise kind of manicheean uh
good versus evil war fantasy war with a with a
non human enemy, suddenly there's this this breakthrough where one
of the characters on the supposed good side thinks, wait
a minute, aren't the people on the other side humans too?
Aren't they you know? Don't they have lives? Don't they

(35:40):
have moral complexities behind their story? This is one of
the things that you see time and time again in
in this discussion. And I do want to I want
to drive home that this is a This has been
a topic of of continual consideration by token scholars and
literary cultural scholars alike, both in reference to the original
works and you know, the original writings Jared Tolken and

(36:00):
these various film are incarnations because on one hand, yeah,
like there's this idea if you read um uh you know,
like in our our cold opening, this idea of the
Orcs is just this purely inhuman thing, just made out
of savagery. Uh you know that, Like that sounds more
in keeping with a zombie myth, right, just like no
ethical problems at all. But but along the lines of

(36:22):
this example of a human fighting for Sara, and there
are plenty of examples in the Lord of the Rings
where Tolken does engage in a certain humanization of the Orcs,
like they're given some sense of individuality. I believe they're
you know, scenes where they've been taken captives by their
works and their overhearing or conversations. Uh yeah, Maryan Pippen
when they're kidnapped by the Orcs, they sort of interact

(36:43):
with the orcs in a way that suggests to me
at least that the orcs are sentient. You know, they're
they're not like, they're not like robots, you know, they're
they're not just evil killing machines, like they've got motivations
of their own. So that makes everything a lot more complicated.
Everything we're about to talk about a little more complicated.
Um now, we can't possibly cover the entire discourse on

(37:04):
this topic. It looks like there's some very good sources
out there that you can find. I ran across a
book that I've is cited in a source that I'm
going to mention by Demitra Fimi, titled Token Race and
Cultural History, that is supposedly quite good. But some of
the key issues that are often brought up about orcs
are that orcs are clearly described as having dark skin,

(37:26):
Orcs are described as being quote unquote slant eyed, And
there's this sense that, yeah, orcs are human shaped and
are more or less human like, but then they are
also less than human or described as less than human.
And it is often suggested that like, you know, nothing
but brutal violence, it's against the orcs. Is is permissible

(37:47):
and that you know that that is that they should
just be eradicated by the higher um uh species of
Middle Earth. And I mean some of this I think
might be as getting back to the oken Um duality here.
I think part of it is just by if you
start telling stories about something, you're gonna end up humanizing it.
So I can see where you could start with your

(38:09):
with your you know you're just completely um, you know,
irredeemable enemy. But then you you can't help but but
but but humanize it a bit in the same way
that Um, say, like in Um in the Clone Wars,
you know, you have the Droid army. The droids are
like a great example of an enemy army that is
set up to be easily and dispatched without any ethical quandaries.

(38:32):
And you still see this kind of creep in Clone
Wars uh storytelling, in which you'll you'll end up sympathizing
with the droids. You know you can't help, but but
apply uh, you know, sort of human characteristics to the
droids at times. Now, one of the works I was
looking at for this is um a paper by Robert T.
Talley Jr. Uh Let us now praise famous orcs simple

(38:55):
humanity and tokens in human creatures. This was published in
myth lower Back in two and um he he looks
at at both sides of the of the discussion here
basically now, Tally ultimately does not himself accused Tolken of racism,
but he does outline much of the evidence that can
be cited in such a charge, admitting quote it is

(39:16):
true that no one can read about the quote Swart
and quote slant eyed Orc so many times without becoming offended.
And he also points out that Tolkien himself notoriously wrote
in one of his letters quote the Orcs are definitely
stated to be corruptions of the human form seen in
elves and men. They are or were squat broad, flat nosed,

(39:36):
sallow skin, with wide mouths and slant eyes. In fact
degraded in repulsive versions of the two Europeans least lovely
Mongol types. That is not a good sentiment. Yeah, And
according to Anderson Ririk, the third in why is the
only good orcadel Orc published in MFS Modern Fiction Studies.
UH Tolkien's friend C. S. Lewis even made passing minh

(40:00):
And of racism in light of the book's first publication
but again but apparently did not pursue the idea all
that much. So, you know, it seems to have been
something that was at least in the conversation concerning orcs
UH for quite some time, and maybe even on on
Tolkien's mind at least at times. I mean, I can't
help but I had forgotten that passage about the human

(40:20):
servants of Mordor. But that's interesting as well. I've also
seen it argued that this sort of view of the
racial enemy tied up with the orc was also readily
exhibited in World War One and World War two propaganda
against both Germans and the Japanese, where you see like
a monstrous racial version of the enemy depicted in propaganda posters.

(40:44):
And then on top of that, we're talking about an
era of eugenics, ideas of racial purity. Um. All that
going on in the background, and this is ultimately again
the world that these works emerge from. UM now fimi
UM concludes, according to to Tally, that that Tolkien quote
objectionable racial uh characterizations are consistent with the discourse of

(41:05):
his time, and in in any event, consistent with the
quote hierarchical world in which his mythic history unfolds. Now
that being said, I don't think that makes it any
easier for modern readers or viewers. You know, once you
start focusing on these these elements, once you start you know,
noticing them in your your reading of the tax or
the viewing of the movies that spawned from them, you know,

(41:27):
you see modern adaptations dealing with this in in almost
diametrically opposed ways, right, um, because one way you could
deal with it is to try to embrace even harder
the distinctions that would make you know, whatever kind of
like monster enemy and it is it is clearly not human.
You know, you want to go full zombie or full

(41:49):
robot uh, to suggest that like, no, no, no, the
orcs can't be. They're not a metaphor for like in
any people. They're just that they're not human at all.
They're like, you know, bio robots or something. And then
the other direction would be to actually try to humanize
them more and make them seem more complicated. But yeah,
it is true. I mean, like it much fantasy and
epic writing is this way. But as there they currently

(42:12):
exist in the story, the orcs are in this uncomfortable
middle position where they are sort of human, but they're
they're they're not treated with the fairness that we would
hope should be afforded to all sentient creatures. Yeah, and
it's I guess that's that's the ambiguity of it that
makes it difficult, and um, you know, and it's also

(42:32):
I would say with Tolkien it doesn't seem to be
nearly as as clear cut of situation as we have
to say with HP. Lovecraft, you know who, we have
such you know, damning examples of racist sentiment in his
in his private letters. And then and then when you
look at his works of fiction in light of those letters,
I mean, it's just it's, um, you know, you can't
ignore these elements in his work. Um, you know told

(42:54):
Tolkien's writings certainly have been accused of containing wrong or
outmoded attitudes to ray with the works very much at
the center of all of this. But but then you
I mean, you have defenders pointing out, well, okay, Token
himself was anti racists, both in peace time and during
the Two World Wars. I don't know, you're still left
with with what we still have is just continual discussion
of like how are we supposed to process Um, Tolkien's

(43:17):
work as a as a modern consumer and a modern thinker. Well,
I mean, I guess one of the ways that we're
left to deal with it is just to uh, is
to don't let yourself get lord of the rings brain,
or at least certainly don't let yourself get orc brain. Uh,
thinking outside of the fantasy of the text. You know,
the real world does not have orcs in it, Like

(43:39):
you know, all the people, even people you might be
in conflict against our human and that you know, and
and to maybe lean more into the sam Wise Gamge
way of thinking about things, to to always try to
remember that even somebody who you might be at war
with is still a human and they've got their own motivations.
They are morally complex in the same way that you are. Yeah, yeah,

(44:00):
And I mean I think it's one of Tolkien's letters.
He even said something similar where He's like, well, in
the real world you have works on both sides of
a conflict. Um, because I guess in a sense of
the works, the orcs is us, right. Uh. I want
to note too that I thought Dungeons and Dragons UM,
the game, the company behind it, they recently made mention
of something this some of this concerning works in a

(44:23):
diversity statement. Um, they put this out. This was this year,
they wrote, quote. Throughout the fifty year history of D
and D, some of the people's in the game, works
and drought being two prime examples, have been characterized as
monstrous and evil, using descriptions that are painfully reminiscent of
how real world ethnic groups have been and continue to
be denigrated. That's just not right, and it's not something

(44:44):
we believe in. Despite our conscious efforts to the contrary,
we have allowed some of those old descriptions to reappear
in the game. We recognize that to live our values,
we have to do an even better job in handling
these issues if we make mistakes our priorities to make
things right. And then they go on to stress a
far word facing commitment to betraying Orcs and drought as
quote just as morally and culturally complex as other people's,

(45:06):
which which I think is is a way to go,
especially considering and Orcs and drought have such a prominent
role in Duns and Dragons of storytelling, the drought being
the dark elves of the Undertark. Yeah, the more I
think about it, the more I think that the clear
dividing line, really, I guess would have to be sentience, right,
that there there was an idea here, maybe in older

(45:29):
versions of D and D apparently somewhat ambiguously represented in
in The Lord of the Rings, that there are some
types of people or types of creatures that are sentient
they're thinking beings like us, but they are also wholly evil,
and in a way that's just sort of that's sort
of self contradictory, right, Like, you know, a sentient being

(45:50):
couldn't be as an entire people wholly evil because their
sentience would sort of necessarily imply that there is you know,
that there is moral complexity to them. Yeah, I mean
it works when you're talking about and basically comes down
to the alignment system in Dungeons and Dragons, which on
an individual level doesn't really work in the real world.
Like I mean the idea that I mean I am

(46:11):
I am I neutral evil? Or am I and my
neutral good? Like I think in reality, we have multiple
alignments in ourselves at all times, and it's about it's
about nurturing the alignments that are the person we want
to be, you know. And then certainly when you get
into a species wide alignment, like what is humanity's alignment?

(46:33):
I mean, it depends on what we're doing at any
given time. It depends on what you're focusing on. I mean,
they're there aspects of humanities, um, you know, role in
the world that are that would seem you know, at
least lawful evil if or neutral evil, and there are
other things that are that are not so. So Yeah,
it's it's one of these things that when it works
well within a game context, as long as you're not

(46:54):
thinking too hard about it, I guess. I mean, ultimately,
I don't think it's ever gonna go away convention of
having uh, various types of fantasy storytelling in which there
is some kind of conflict and the enemy of the
heroes is an army of monsters. But I guess that
mindset has its its place within fiction as just the

(47:14):
same way a horror mindset does or anything like that.
You know, don't pull it out into the real world
and try to use it on humans. Yeah, alright, on
that note, we're going to take a break, but we'll
be right back. Thank thank Alright, we're back. So let's
let's move back to the in universe concept of the

(47:35):
Orc and consider how we might apply science to the situation. So,
first of all, I'd like to refer back to the
writings of our Scott Baker, who have mentioned on the
show before, and heck he's been on the show a
couple of times, hasn't he. But he wrote this Second
Apocalypse SOCCO, which takes a lot of inspiration from Tolkien,
but applies a different, uh philosophical and at times science

(47:57):
fictional limbs to everything. And in the place of orcs,
he presents these creatures that are called the Shrunk, which
are described as one of the the quote unquote weapon
races that were engineered by the big batties in this series,
the the alien in Karai. So these are depraved like
thoroughly inhuman creatures from another world that they an cry

(48:20):
and they've taken members of the elf like non men
uh in this world, and they've used the technique or
the old science to twist them into savage creatures of
the basest and most violent instinct often described as retaining
the beautiful faces of the non men, only twisted with
like raw violent emotion and with kind of emaciated bodies.

(48:42):
And so they're they're engineered to combat the non men
warriors while also consisting on next to nothing, like they
were told that, they just they live off of grubs
and insects that they find, uh on as they scavenge
other lands that are otherwise fruitless. They could otherwise not
support an army at all. And they're all part of
this scheme to you know, essentially destroy the world and

(49:05):
eradicate conscious beings from it. And so I think it's
an interesting take on the idea of an orc, or
at least an orc as an engineered warrior being more
or less an organic robot made for savagery and war
that is itself incapable of self reflection. Uh. And if
you were indeed the you know, the Inkari or a
dark lord of Middle Earth, it makes sense, I guess,

(49:27):
to create such servants. Uh. And indeed, this whole concept
it probably gets closer to the idea of like a
zombie army, or a droid army, or a subservient reanimated
skeleton army, you know, something that is just purely the
tool of the great adversary. Well, yeah, and tying into
something I was talking about earlier, it seems to me significant,
probably the most significant thing that they are imagined as

(49:50):
as basically being not sentient or not able to reflect
on their own behavior, which I mean at that point
it does seem like that being probably does lack whatever
it is that that we think of as most significant
to be human, right, like, if you know you're you're
not capable of reflecting on your own behavior. Yeah, And
and the with Baker's work, Yeah, there's this idea first

(50:10):
of all, that it is not conscious. He's you know,
he's going to tell you of a creature's conscious or not.
It's kind of his whole thing. But then also the
idea that they are definitely engineered. They're a thing that
is created. They're a a new creation based on uh,
you know, some designs or raw materials from this other species.
You know. Peter Watts in the novel Eco Praxia, I

(50:33):
recall imagine something like this. But it is a type
of human soldier who has had their nervous system modified
essentially so that they have the ability to at will
turn off their consciousness during combat, essentially to become a
more efficient killer. So the brain still works the same,
except it's just not conscious while it's fighting. And apparently

(50:54):
this makes you better at being a soldier interesting. Um. So,
so I think these these are interesting ways to think
of a particular like weapons species and a fantasy or
sci fi context. But but I was also interested to
see what else could be glean science wise from the
Orcs of Middle Earth. So I turned to the book

(51:15):
The Science of Middle Earth by Henry G who is
himself a long time editor at the science journal Nature
as well as a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. And so
he covers a great deal up from Middle Earth in
this book, but beginning with the sixth chapter, he begins
to discuss works a bit, and the sixth chapter is
titled Inventing the Orcs. UM. He spends all a fair

(51:36):
amount of time discussing some of what we've already discussed,
like where do we get the word orc? What does
it mean? It's ties into mythology. Uh. But he also
points out, okay, let's let's talk about how how they're
made and how they reproduce. So he starts by pointing
out that there's a fair amount of incongruity concerning the
origins of Eric Orcs and Tolken's Middle Earth. Um, you
can look at various descriptions and cinematic depictions, uh that

(52:00):
on one hand make them look like they're bread, and
another it looks like they're created via torture. Um. And
if it's torture, are we're talking about something that is more?
Is this the way we're describing something that's being done
to the body that can't be understood, like something like
the technique, something like a sci fi genetic engineering or
is it something psychological? Right? I seem to recalling the

(52:22):
Peter Jackson movie that at least some of them, maybe
this was only the Rakai or or maybe it was
all of the Orcs, but somehow the servants of Saramon
were being like grown out of the earth, like they
came up out of the ground. Yeah. That that's and
that's something that the g UH discusses as well. Yeah,
that this idea that that there's something that's just like

(52:43):
pulled out of the earth, like this sort of primal creation.
They're just made of mud and stone. Um, or maybe
their plants or fungus. Yeah, well yeah, maybe there's some
sort of fungal element as well. Um, so he didn't
get into the fun Now now I'm thinking about the
fungal work idea. That's a whole different theory. But but
that the author here he does discuss one interesting evolutionary

(53:05):
aspect of Orcs in Tolkien, and that is that we
have in an orac army a collection of varying Orc subspecies,
which he says would ultimately fit well with the idea
that Orcs have, in periods of decline, withdrawn to various
corners of the world. You know, this bunch withdrawals to
the misty mountains, this one withdrawals to these waste lands

(53:26):
over here, et cetera. So he writes the following quote.
The enormous variety of Orcs, which is it turns out,
is crucial of the story, can be seen as a
consequence of the smallness and isolation of populations, evolving in
their own particular ways to suit local conditions, their isolation
enhanced by mutual antipathy, and incomprehension, Evolutionary theory tells us

(53:47):
that evolution happens faster and has more idiosyncratic results when
populations are small and isolated. So Tolkien's portrait of the
Oorcs as a collection of very diverse kindreds is biologically
very accurate, except that is, for one thing, sex you know,
one thing you could not accuse The Lord of the
Rings of is having too much sex in it. Yeah. Yeah,

(54:10):
apparently there have been there agievements and mentions one paper
that is like saying there's no sex in Middle Earth? Like,
what does that mean? Like if you take that literally,
does it mean like there's no They're like sex sexual
reproduction is not a thing in Middle Earth? Um, I
think that would probably be going a bit far. But
in trying to piece together exactly where it orcs come

(54:31):
from and how they reproduce it, it does become a
little sticky. Yeah. I mean there there is remarkably little
little sex in the Lord of the Rings. I mean
people are described as descending from parents basically, so you're
you imagine there is some sexual reproduction going on. I
remember GHIMII at some point gets very um, I don't know,

(54:54):
excited about the idea of how beautiful Galadriel is. But
they're just not very sex charged stories. Uh. And this
is kind of interesting if if Tolkien is in a
way trying to create a sort of epic mythology, because
I don't know, most world mythologies are pretty crammed with sex. Yeah,
I mean, people are always be getting other folks right, Um,

(55:16):
Whereas in the Tolkien books, like even with the Orcs,
there's occasionally like reference to one being the son of another,
you know, of of parentage, but there's not a lot
of detail there, and certainly there are no scenes depicting it.
So basically points out, well, if we're talking about evolution
and and the biology the orc like sex is obviously
an important part of the equation. But of course we
have little or no evidence of Orc sex in the books. Um,

(55:40):
which I don't know. This seems a little maybe nitpicky
uh to to say, uh, But but because they're I
don't know, they're apparently five references to Orc reproduction aside
from discussion of creation or breeding by others, which G
thinks is is miniscule, But to me that kind of
sounds like a lot. I would if you had to
if you asked me to guess how many references to

(56:02):
Orc reproduction there are in the book, I would have
guessed like maybe one. I would have just zo. I mean,
I think they're I vaguely remember a passage where one
character is talking about, well, the Orcs have been reproducing
in the mountains. There are a lot of them, um
like that would have been the only one that it
would have come to my mind. Not only is there
no mention of of of actual Orc sex, there's no

(56:23):
mention of female Orcs. And this is perhaps more significant now. Naturally,
this doesn't mean there were no female Orcs, nor does
it mean that there was no Orc sex. Uh, you know,
no more than the absence of sex from the rest
of the books mean that sex didn't exist for other
species of Middle Earth. But he does point out that
the idea, you know, that we could compare this to
the idea of a purely manufactured Orc species much in

(56:47):
the same way that the you know, the clones and
the droids and star wars are are created, and it
would this would actually be in keeping with the industrialized
warfare of the world wars, you know, full of cognized
artillery and this overall degregation of the individual soldier, as
well as the overall quote emasculating effects of industrialization in

(57:10):
the world. So, in other words, perhaps there's no female
or or male work at all. There's only just neutral
flesh machines that served this fallen god. You know, it's
interesting that Tolkien was was very uh, he would very
strenuously reject the idea that Lord of the Rings was
an allegory for any particular war. Like, I think the

(57:32):
thing most often raised is like people saying like, oh,
I see, you know, it's supposed to be about World
War two and Hitler is Sauron and you know, the
Orcs or the Nazis and all that, which I mean,
obviously coming out of the World War two era, would
probably be hard not to try to make that comparison
in in like an epic struggle. But Tolkien always like

(57:52):
he thoroughly rejected the idea that Lord of the Rings
was an allegory for any particular historical events on Earth.
You know, he in fact thought allegories were quite stupid
and he did not like them. But nevertheless, this is
one where it's like really hard to miss that what
would seem like allegorical significance the way that the more

(58:13):
door war machine in has these tones that so resemble
the production lines of mechanized warfare going into World War Two. Yeah, yeah, indeed,
in fact, this was interesting. I've never heard this, but
Gia pointed out in the book as well that there's
an earlier version of The Lost Tail, the Fall of Gondolin,

(58:34):
which features a siege not by Orcs and trolls, but
by quote vast articulated fire breathing machines. Tolkien apparently later
abandoned this idea in favor of living creatures you know
that works the trolls, etcetera. But at least at one
point there was this vision of the the Armies of
More Door being like mechanical industrial creations. Yeah, and I

(58:57):
think that's it's there in the book. Still. Even though
the Orcs are biological in some way mythological biological, the
the Armies of More Door, I think, are very much
seen as like a sort of an industrializing wave of
something that destroys the natural landscape and replaces it with
industry and machinery and ash and smoke. Yeah, yeah, I

(59:19):
mean yeah, it's and certainly you look at More Door
and what is more Door, but this sort of geologic
vision of like pure industrial dinm right, I mean, nothing,
no trees grow there, you know, it's just like a
it's it's a vast asphalt parking lot full of factories
for weapons. Yeah, it's exports are war weapons and and

(59:42):
volcanic ash. That seems to be it now, um, now,
all this being said that there are mentions to mention
of orcs like breeding in the wild, so they still
seem to reproduce in the wild in some manner, but
who knows, it could be like a Jurassic Park situation
right where there's some sort of mutation that observed that
that occurs or something. Um, you know, he suggests that

(01:00:04):
their own lycen. Yeah, maybe do suggests well, maybe orcs
lay eggs. Maybe that's what it is. Uh. He ultimately says,
you know, if if it's there are a number of
different ideas you could propose, since there's no real discussion
of it in the book, as long as it doesn't
break anything else in the book. I mean, it's all
kind of fair game. Like he has. He has some
fun with the idea that perhaps it works our use

(01:00:26):
social insects and there's like an unseen or queen that
does all the egg production. Uh. And indeed he points
out that the goblins of the Misty Mountains and the
uh and the the Orcs of Maria behave much like
an ant colony in some respects. That would be interesting.
But again, I think in the few glimpses we do
get into orc psychology, the orcs seem far too selfish

(01:00:47):
and and individualistic to be used social uh animals, right, Like,
I mean, the like the individual worker ants own bodily
existence matters quite little to it compare into, you know,
protecting the queen and the reproductive possibilities of the hive.
Individual orcs really do seem to sort of be in
it for themselves when they can, you know, when they

(01:01:09):
think they can get away with something. Yeah, that's absolutely now. Now.
Another idea that he brings up is, okay, perhaps works
reproduced by parthenogenesis or cloning. Uh, you know. He writes
that this could work well, especially when you're thinking about
the shrinking habitats that works have during their times of decline.

(01:01:29):
But this would also mean that all orcs would inherently
need to be female, which also might work with the
fact that there's never any mention of male and female orcs.
Orcs are kind of presented as sexless even though they're
you know, they're they're described with with male terminology. I mean,
maybe we're just talking about on all female species. Maybe
we're just getting the story told through the like paternalistic

(01:01:52):
lens of how how the men and the elves view
things could be. And speaking of elves, another thing that
he brings up. Okay, if we go back to this
other origins store, the idea that that that more goth
or milk, or that they they basically like tortured the
elves uh in order to make orcs. Well, he points

(01:02:13):
out that, Okay, well if you just because you if
you were to torture a bunch of elves and break
them and like and so forth, and then have and
breede them, you're still gonna You're not gonna produce orcs.
You're gonna produce more elves, um, you know. And then
certainly they could, you know, the the dark Lord could
use this technique over time to you know, encourage orcs

(01:02:33):
traits that you know, and you know, adapt to a
hellish dungeon environment. But this would ultimately require periods of
evolutionary time that are far beyond anything we're presented within
the Middle Earth timeline. No, I mean, yeah, this is
a more mythological way of imagining how traits are established
in a species. You know, it's it's it's kind of

(01:02:53):
a magical lamarchianism. Yeah, and any rights that ultimately, Tolkien
was of course more concerned well, certainly with with linguistic
aspects of everything, like what does it mean that Orcs
have a language that orc speak while they speak in
a more primitive tongue, you know, that sort of thing.
But then also Tolkien was more concerned with theological ramifications
like what happens to the soul of the elf if

(01:03:14):
it is made into an orc? You know, So there's
this whole line of thinking as well. So all of
this was far more on Tolkien's brain as opposed to
you know, evolutionary biology. But what if everything in Middle
Earth is actually a mushroom? Like absolutely everything, even the
ants mushrooms? It's that I'll have to carry that with

(01:03:35):
me on the next reread. Oh, I want to come
back to I want to come back to ants, uh
this October because I've got a I've got almost kind
of like an evil INNT thing I want to do.
Oh that sounds promising to me. So let's see. At
this point, we've talked about you know, Orcs as a
as a problem faced by the other species of Middle Earth.
We've talked about problematic aspects of of of the Orc

(01:03:58):
as a fictional creation. We've talked about the problems with
orc reproduction or figuring out exactly what ORC reproduction consists of.
But I understand you have you have one more or
problem for us here, Joe. Well, so this only relates
to Hobbits and Orcs in a completely arbitrary way, but
it's actually I think it's maybe the most delightful of
all the things that we're going to talk about today.

(01:04:22):
So if you're a puzzle nerd, there's actually going to
be a puzzle that you can pause the episode to
try to solve, and this is going to be the
Hobbits and Orcs problem. Now, my main source here is
a chapter in the Cambridge Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning,
which is just the jolliest of reads, but it's actually
more interesting than you might expect. That that sounds incredibly dry,

(01:04:44):
it's only somewhat dry. But specifically I'm looking at a
chapter on problem solving by Laura r. Novic who is
at Vanderbilt University and Miriam Bassock, who is at the
University of Washington. Both are psychology professors who study cognition
and problem I'm solving. Now, the study of problem solving
is actually a really fascinating field, or combination of fields.

(01:05:06):
It's highly relevant to our lives, and I would say,
to be fair, it encompasses. It encompasses actually at least
two main questions that are very different from one another.
One is a question primarily for mathematics and computer science,
and this is the study of problem solving algorithms, such
as those for search or sorting, and the study of

(01:05:28):
which methods are actually the most efficient at solving different
kinds of problems. The other question is one for psychology
and cognitive neuroscience, which is, regardless of what methods are
actually the most efficient, what do our brains tend to do?
You know, when a human is faced with a problem,
what kinds of algorithms and methods do we actually use

(01:05:49):
in practice? So where do the orcs come in? Well,
one puzzle that has been used to study human tendencies
and problem solving is known as the Hobbits and Orcs problem,
and it's a variation on the classic river crossing puzzle. Robert,
have you ever done one of these where you know
you've got a you've got a wolf and a sheep
and a cabbage all together on one side of a river,

(01:06:11):
and you've got to figure out how to get them across.
Do you know what I'm talking about. Oh I don't.
I don't have a strong memory of this. Now, okay,
well here's this version. Okay, we're gonna go to the
Brandywine River, the one that that separates I believe bree
from Buckland. Now at the Brandywine River, on the north
side of the river, you've got three Hobbits and three Orcs,

(01:06:32):
and your goal is to get all six creatures across
the river to the other side. Now there's a boat
that you can use to ferry them across, but there
are a couple of major limitations. First of all, the
boat can only hold two creatures at a time, and
there always has to be at least one creature at
least one Hobbit or Orc in the boat in order

(01:06:53):
to row it, So you can't send the boat across
the river empty. Second, you can never leave hobbit in
a place where they are outnumbered by orcs, or of course,
the orcs will eat them. And now your goal in
this problem is to figure out what sequence of steps
you can use to get all the Hobbits and the
Orcs to the other side of the river without breaking
any of the rules. Now it's not necessary, but If

(01:07:15):
you do want to pause the episode here and try
to solve the puzzle yourself, go for it. I'll give
you a hint that it can be solved in what's
usually considered fourteen steps or fourteen stages. Okay, so I'm
not going to read out all of the steps to
the solution here, but you can look it up and

(01:07:36):
find it online. If you're stumped, I'm sure just google it.
It'll come up. Um. One reason this particular puzzle is
useful for studying problem solving is in studying what's known
as the hill climbing heuristic. Now Here, Novic and Basok
described the hill climbing heuristic as a problem solving technique
in which quote at each step, the solver applies the

(01:08:00):
operator that yields a new state that appears to be
the most similar to the goal state. In other words,
you know what you're ind goal looks like, and at
each step you do whatever it is that appears to
get you into a state that looks more similar to
the goal state. So if your goal is to get
to the highest altitude, at each step you just try

(01:08:21):
going uphill. Hence, hill climbing now studies in cognitive psychology
show that we use the hill climbing heuristic a lot.
Uh Novic and Bassak site the example of Chronicle McGregor
and armor Ad in two thousand four, who found that
people naturally use the hill climbing heuristic in a task
that involved sorting coins into a particular order. What you

(01:08:43):
probably do is just like keep moving the coins in
a way that makes them look closer to the final
order they're supposed to be in until you get there.
In the context of the Hobbits and Orcs game, hill
climbing would mean that at each stage you just try
to find whatever legal move will get the most creatures
to the goal side of the river and off of

(01:09:03):
the starting side of the river without breaking the rules.
And studies have found that people do use the hill
climbing heuristic to generate steps when solving the Hobbits and
Orcs problem, and for the most part it works. But
also two studies by Thomas and Greeno, both in nineteen
four found that people hit a major roadblock around step

(01:09:25):
number seven or eight in the game because, as an
Ovic and Bassac right quote, the correct move at this
point in fact, the only non backtracking move is for
one Hobbit and one orc to take the boat back
to the original side of the river. So essentially, while
it must be done in order to complete the puzzle,

(01:09:46):
it looks counterproductive because the only way you can finish
the puzzle is to cause a temporary net migration of
creatures to the wrong side of the river. It's a
necessary step, but it actually ends up looking less similar
or to your goal state than the step before it did,
and the studies by Thomas and Greeno both found that
people really get hung up at this step. It was

(01:10:08):
the step of the problem where both the probability of
a of a player making an illegal move and the
time taken to decide on the next move suddenly go
way up compared to other steps. And Novic can Bassa
talk about how these studies highlight one of the inherent
weaknesses of the hill climbing heuristic. Sometimes, in all kinds

(01:10:30):
of problem solving scenarios, you have to move backwards or
laterally in order to reach your end goal. Like actual
mountain climbers know this in a quite literal sense, you
can't always reach the highest peak just by going straight up.
A lot of times you have to go back down
to reach a path that can actually be ascended. Other times,
you reach what's known as false peaks, which are places

(01:10:51):
that seem like the peak as you're ascending until you
get there, and then you realize that you are only
at the local highest altitude and there's actually a higher
peak just over here. And this means that it really
pays to think about what problem solving methods you're using
without realizing it, whether and whether those methods are the
best suited to the kind of problem you're facing. The

(01:11:14):
hill climbing hereist it can be very useful for problems
in which the solution space could be represented as a
kind of single peak, like one mountain and an otherwise
flat plain with an unobstructed slope. If the solution space
is like that, then basically, yeah, you just keep trying
to go uphill until you get to the highest point.
But hill climbing can be ruinous for problems where the

(01:11:36):
solution space could be represented as kind of like a
a landscape with multiple different hills and peaks and valleys,
because if you just keep trying to go uphill, what
you're gonna do here is end up climbing to the
top of whichever hill is closest to your starting position,
and then you'll just be stuck there because even if

(01:11:56):
you know there's a higher peak you have to get to,
you have to go downhill to it to it. So
I think what this means for our lives is if
you're stuck on a task, it can be really useful
to ask yourself, am I inappropriately trying to use the
hill climbing heuristic? Do I actually need to temporarily move
further away from my goal in order to actually get there?

(01:12:17):
And in myself One thing that immediately came to mind
as an example of where I find myself doing this
is sometimes when I'm writing, I'm I'm working on a
paragraph or a page or something that just does not
feel right, Like I know it is not going right,
and I'm trying to fix it by tinkering around with
word choice and junk like that, when in actuality, the

(01:12:40):
best path to my goal will be, of course, to
just delete what I have and start over in a
different way. Yeah, sometimes I I think I encounter this
when I'm Then I'm when I'm painting, like if I'm
working on a miniature, and like you reach that point
where I mean, I guess with the miniature it's it's
sometimes harder. I mean, yeah, you can, you can just
paint over everything and apply a new base pay code.

(01:13:02):
You can use something to to strip the existing paint
off of it. But like, like sometimes you're kind of
continuing to work with the same problems that you've created
for yourself on a you know, as far as a
particular detail, and the figure goes, yeah, you're stuck on
the local hill, when what you really need to do
is go all the way down and find a different hill. Yeah, probably,
like get a new figure and a new copy of

(01:13:25):
the same figure and begin again. Yeah yeah. Um. Now,
some ways around this in computer science can involve algorithms
that insert various kinds of random leaps or random steps
in sampling to make sure that you're actually moving toward
the global solution rather than the local solution. And in
a way I think this is this is sort of
the algorithmic way of characterizing what we would call outside

(01:13:48):
the box thinking, you know, thinking that lands on strategies
that may take you pretty far away from the local
peak in order to possibly find out that there is
a much higher peak somewhere else, and a certain amount
of randomness or willingness to be apparently counterproductive at least
for the moment, can go a long way, and this
is clearly what's been found like in in these studies

(01:14:10):
using the Hobbits and Orcs problem, because it's like people
really get stuck at the part that the part that
they have the hardest time figuring out is the part
where you have to move multiple pieces away from your
in state in order to actually get there. Coincidentally, I
think the dangers represented by the hill climbing heuristic are
actually played out in literal topography in The Hobbit and

(01:14:31):
Lord of the Rings. For example, I recall in Fellowship
of the Ring there's a lot of frustration about the
straightest paths to more door being blocked, such as when
they try to they try to go across the Red
Horn pass of Kara Dress and they're blocked by bad weather,
forcing them to backtrack and go a different way, even
though you know they probably should have backtracked earlier, but

(01:14:51):
they're they're stuck trying to go this way because it's
where they already are. And I can't recall another specific passage,
but it seems like they're more problems in the two Towers,
you know, like uh, Frodo and Sam having to go
down to go up, or having to go back to
go forward and so forth. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm remembering
that now. So anyway, keep the Hobbits and Orcs in mind.

(01:15:13):
If you're stuck on a problem, consider are are you
hill climbing? Are you refusing to send your Hobbit and
Orc back across the river even though that's what you
have to do? Yeah, that's interesting. I don't think i'd
heard of this before. Um, but now now I guess
I'll think of all problems in my life as being
uh ones where it works might potentially eat me, or

(01:15:35):
one where you're the orc and you're gonna fill up
on Hobbit and ruin your dinner. You don't want to
do that? All right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and
call this, uh this episode here. Um. Obviously we didn't
get to, you know, get into everything about orcs within
Tolkien's creations or within creations that have you know, come

(01:15:55):
in the wake of the Lord of the Rings. Uh.
So we would love to hear from everyone out there
if you have particular of thoughts on on anything here
related to Tolkien scholarship to you know, how we use
orcs and popular culture. You know what, why we're fascinated
by them, what we should be doing with them, etcetera.
We you know, we're always open to hear from everybody. Uh,

(01:16:17):
We're always happy to be corrected as well. In the meantime,
if you would like to listen to other episodes of
Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can find us wherever
you get your podcasts and wherever that happens to be. Uh.
Just rate, review, and subscribe. Those are great ways to
help out the show. Huge thanks as always to our
excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you'd like to
get in touch with us with feedback on this episode

(01:16:38):
or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact.
That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For
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(01:16:58):
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