Jedi with lightsabers, Gungins, Wookiees—they're all old news, so maybe it's time to go backward and start thinking about Middle-earth, where there were furry creatures, dark lords, magical powers, and clashing armies of good and evil long before Star Wars came along. Disciples of J. R. R. Tolkien still have to wait until December 2001 for The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the fans are already crazed with anticipation. Tolkien Web sites are flooding the Internet with daily bulletins about the three-film saga, and book sales put Harry Potter to shame; with 190 million Tolkien books sold worldwide since The Hobbit was first published in 1937, sales have doubled in this country alone over the last two years, thanks in part to the rabid passions generated by the upcoming movies. Scheduled for publication next spring is J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, a new biography by Tom Shippey, who, like Tolkien, taught at Oxford. So get ready for your old favorites—the hobbits, the elves, the dwarfs, the wizards, the wicked Ores and Ringwraiths—brought to astounding life, digital as well as human, under the direction of Peter Jackson, who is racing to complete the $270 million project—which is being shot all at once in New Zealand—for release during three consecutive holiday seasons. The international cast includes well-known hobbits such as Elijah Wood (Frodo) and Sir Ian Holm (Bilbo), Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf the wizard, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel the elf queen, and Liv Tyler as Arwen the elvish princess, along with more than 20,000 extras. Technology has finally caught up with Tolkien's imagination. Will Frodo save Middle-earth from the evil Sauron? What do you think?

TRIP TO MIDDLE-EARTH Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf the wizard.

newcomer Dominic Monaghan as Merry Brandybuck. Photographed on the set of The Fellowship of the Ring, Hamilton, New Zealand.

TOLKIEN GESTURES Giving the Star wars franchise a run for its box-office money starting in December 2001 will be the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with, Liv Tyler as Arwen

Ian McKellen as Gandalf

Sean Astin as Samwise Gamgee

Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins

Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn

the lovely New Zealand countryside as J. R. R. Tolkien's mythical Middle-earth

Dominic Monaghan as Merry Brandybuck

Billy Boyd as Peregrin (Pippin) Took