I do not think that it is unreasonable question. I generally assume that authors have more ideas about their fictional worlds and characters than are revelaed in their books. But there is clearly difference between authors about level of their internal worldbuilding, where one extreme is Tolkien and opposite one is perhaps Douglas Adams.
“Did you think of a particular model of Mac when writing that Arthur Dent had one?” would be a better question then, but I’m not sure that‘s a particularly interesting question to ask?
The thing about Adams with regards to world building is that it was always story first. This is why he wrote four different versions of the actual Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy story. One for radio, one for the book, one for the television series, and one for the movie. There are differences, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, between all of those versions. Many of those tweaks were there to make the story fit the intended medium better.
He also wasn’t afraid to co-opt his universe and shoehorn in a story from a different source, if needed. I believe that the third book started life as a Doctor Who script.
I wonder how much remaining approachable for listeners who only jump in on nth episode was a driver of the creative process. "Story first" must have meant something very different from what we might effect today.
My first contact was hearing it on the radio some night, a German language radio version likely created long after the books became the defining version. Makes me wonder which original version it was closer to. Could have been a close translation of the original radio version, could have been a radio reboot based on the books.
I will have to paraphrase this as I do not have a copy and cannot find an ebook version for sale - in Languages of the Night Ursula K. LeGuin was asked by some famous editor to do a talk / article about her research on Earthsea, show the maps, lexicon of the language and so forth to which she replied something like
"Dear famous Science Fiction editor,
While I know that this is the way many people write, it is not the way I do it. "
Her description of her process was that she made it up as she went along but because of her characters or locations there was always only one reasonable choice. So for example when Vivian is biting on Reginald's ankle he says "I do not think this is at all pertinent to the matter at hand", because, being Reginald what else could he possibly say? (anecdote about Reginald and Vivian from the article although no doubt mangled by the years between reading and now.
> Her description of her process was that she made it up as she went along but because of her characters or locations
That is a very "local" view of causality and story logic, which could lead to an inconsistent world (like a location being both a rainforest and a desert), which might not matter for the small lart of the world history that is the story, or one that leans heavily on defaults inported from the aurhor's experience (which might or might not be same as the readers')
Tolkien had an answer that he himself wasn’t satisfied with - because an “evil race” was fundamentally irreconcilable with his Catholic faith.
He talks about it in one of his Letters - and says that’s why he ended up having to reduce the amount of “orc talk” because it was making them sympathetic and he didn’t really know how to handle it - for the story he wanted generic disposable “baddies”.
The idea of orcs that you find in the Silmarillion, which is that orcs are elves corrupted by Melkor, is perfectly reconcilable with Catholicism. In Christianity it's well defined what happens to any creature corrupted by evil in the final judgement.
That explanation does not work in Tolkien's universe though. Can orcs be redeemed? Do they still have a soul? What happens to it when they die? Do they go to the halls of Mandos? Can they be reincarnated like elves?
Tolkien was never satisfied with any explanation because he could not fit them inside his world's theology, which is inspired by Christianity but does not match it one to one.
Yes, but it is not that Tolkied did not think about origin of orcs, he thought about it but dit not settled on definite answer or changed its ideas during time.
Read the Silmarillion if you haven't. It's dense (like a history book), but explains the machinations of Morgoth and Sauron, the creation of Dwarves and Orcs, and clears many things up.
The only pity is that J.R.R. Tolkien never finished it, so some things like where Hobbits came from or where the Blue Wizards went remain (mostly) unaddressed.
Some of Tolkien's other writings show that he wasn't happy with the explanation that ended up in the Silmarillion. He had multiple other explanations, and none of those is fully canon either.
