Cover Illustration for Sub-creating Arda.

Sub-creating Arda: World-building in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Work, its Precursors, and its Legacies (ISBN 978-3905703405) is a collection of writings about J.R.R. Tolkien and fantasy world-building. It was compiled by Thomas Honegger and Dimitra Fimi as the fortieth book of Walking Tree Publishers’ Cormarë Series, and published in paperback in 2019.

At over 400 pages, it is the longest Cormarë release.  Sub-creating Arda features twenty essays by Tolkien scholars (such as Tom Shippey) and other enthusiasts on a variety of subjects regarding Tolkien’s concept of sub-creation, the forms and growing indulgence of world-building, the limits of world-building, the dynamics of Tolkien’s world Arda, et cetera. Examples are a study by John Garth of possible Middle-eastern inspirations for Tolkien’s Ainulindalë and his early uses of Akkadian, and a comparison by Łukasz Neubauer of Arda’s divine beings (Eru and the Ainur) to that of George R. R. Martin’s Westeros.