Hi folks

This page:
http://www.tolkienbooks.net/html/links.htm

refers to, "the late Åke Bertenstam." Has he really passed away?

wellinghall

I hope not! I just exchanged emails in late June (about a month ago). Perhaps the fact that the bibliography updates stopped suddenly (at least online) in 2003 led to a misunderstanding?

I can't remember who told me that, but I am very glad to be told that I am wrong. I have updated the page.

I met Åke very briefly at Oxonmoot when he was buying a Serbo-Croat translation of The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun from Daerons Books. He had the collector's gleam in his eyes!

Oh, yes, I've heard of that edition! We wants it, my preciousss!

Happened to find this forum thread when I was googling on myself yesterday, and I hasten (well, actually I was caught up by the fact that I wasn't able to register yesterday and had to call on Jeremy for help) to confirm I'm indeed alive (and kicking and well...)

The reason for this misunderstanding might have been what Jeremy suggests above. However, another factor couald have be involved as well. Some years ago I heard of a similar rumour. That time I think I was confused with another person. The thing is that my name used be Åke Jönsson until I changed my surname to my mother's maiden name. However there was also a (another) Swedish sf fan named Åke Jonsson, and it happened a few times that we got mixed up. At the time he died I think there might have been someone who remembered my former name and falsely believed it was me that had died.

As for the fact that the bibliography has been updated since 2003 this doesn't mean that I have stopped working on it. The problem is rather a combination of the explosion of books being published in the wake of the LR films and the far too little time I have had available to spend working on this project. I have indeed made several starts on updated versions of it but somehow work has petered out before I have been able to bring the work to a satisfactory stopping point (at least for me). And when I have been able to start working on it again at least another dozen of books have been published in the mean time. The current status is that I have a work-in-progress version of it with something like 110-120 additions to the currently published edition. Prompted by this thread maybe I ought to put up this unfinished version of it somewhere as a temporary measure.

Åke