# J.R.R. Tolkien J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) was an English writer and philologist, author of *The Hobbit* and *The Lord of the Rings*, and the founder of modern high fantasy. He is not a science-fiction writer — but no author has stamped his vocabulary more directly onto the companies of the defense-tech right, which is why he belongs in this cluster. Where Asimov gave [[Elon Musk]] a mission, Tolkien gave [[Peter Thiel]] and [[Palmer Luckey]] a naming cosmology. ## The naming cosmology Thiel, who has said he read *The Lord of the Rings* at least a dozen times, built an entire corporate vocabulary from Tolkien: [[Palantir]] (the *palantíri*, the seeing-stones), Mithril Capital (the fictional metal), Valar Ventures (the angelic powers who shape the world), Lembas LLC (elvish waybread), and Rivendell LLC (the elven refuge). The choices are pointed rather than decorative — a palantír is a surveillance device that shows true visions while letting a hidden power manipulate the viewer, an unusually frank name for a data-and-surveillance company. Luckey extended the lineage independently: [[Anduril]] is named for Andúril, Aragorn's reforged sword ("Flame of the West"), and his 2025 digital bank Erebor takes Tolkien's Lonely Mountain. (The theme stops at the company names — Anduril's products are functional names, not Middle-earth references.) ## Why it resonates on the tech right Tolkien's appeal to this cohort is structural. *The Lord of the Rings* is a story of a small fellowship of the good defending Western civilization against an encroaching, faceless darkness — a self-narrative the defense-tech right finds irresistible. The aesthetics of noble lineage, ancient artifacts of power, and a righteous war for the West map onto how these founders describe their own mission. Whether that reading does justice to Tolkien — a devout Catholic skeptical of industrial modernity and machine power — is another instance of the selective inheritance traced in [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]]. ## See also - [[Palantir]] · [[Anduril]] — the companies named from his work - [[Peter Thiel]] · [[Palmer Luckey]] — the two superfans - [[Science Fiction and the Tech Elite]] — the hub