…but I’m not totally sure what to do with it exactly. Having said that, I reread the departure of the ship from the havens at the end of the LoTR with the space lens, and I must say that the idea seems to fit relatively well with how Tolkien describes it.

We read of what that experience was like in two places. The first is when Frodo and his friends slumber at Bombadil’s and Frodo has a prescient dream of what it will be like when he sails west, although I doubt he knew what it was at the time. It is described as follows:

“That night they heard no noises. But either in his dreams or out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in his mind; a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to glass and silver, until at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a swift sunrise. The vision melted into waking; and there was Tom whistling like a tree-full of birds; and the sun was already slanting down the hill and through the open window. Outside everything was green and pale gold.”

When they do actually sail west at the end of the book, this dream is referenced and the journey is once again described using similar terms:

“… and the ship went out into the High Sea and passed into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”

It seems clear that initially, they did actually set sail on the water in a way that any mariner would, out on the “high sea” which we would assume means open ocean. Perhaps Tolkien meant “high” as in altitude and this was a spaceship, but then how to explain the “night of rain” that precedes the rest of it? No, I think this started essentially as a joy ride on the ocean either for kicks or because they had to first sail to a specific point before then finding the Straight Road that would take them to the True West.

Regardless, what caught my attention was the rain-curtain turning to silver glass and then being rolled back. Doggoneit if that doesn’t sound an awful lot like passing through a portal or a journey through space in some fashion. It doesn’t sound too far off from what you see in Star Wars when they go into hyper space/ light speed. Here’s a non-canonical rendition that is pretty good. Just imagine at the end a “far green country” rather than a barren gray moon:

Granted, the white lines are stars rather than rain but the way they blend into something like a curtain of silver glass and then “roll back” at the end of the journey, you might say, is reminiscent of what is described by Tolkien.

I wish I could point to some hint of this in the Nephite or Jaredite journeys but I don’t think it’s really there. But I do like how this journey in LoTR BEGAN as your standard ocean cruise before going all sci-fi on us and since that’s what the Bill space theory needs to make sense I think it’s pretty cool that Tolkien describes that journey in this way.

One of my sons and I have a working theory that tries to bring it all together but it’s still a work in progress. Hopefully soon we will be able to put something out there.

I did try getting the much-maligned GPTs to illustrate Tolkien’s depiction but they were so, so bad. Grok’s was pathetic, showing image after image of a regular boat on a rainy ocean. Chat was better for sure. It came up with this idea which isn’t at all what I’m imagining:

Chat interprets Tolkien as saying they sailed through a typhoon or something, which does sound a lot like what we read of the Nephite and Jaredite travels. But I like my interpretation better.