The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by philologist J.R.R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit (1937), but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, much of it during World War II. Although generally known to readers as a trilogy, Tolkien initially intended it as one volume of a two volume set along with The Silmarillion; however, the publisher decided to omit the second volume and instead released The Lord of the Rings in 1954-55 as three books rather than one, for economic reasons. It has since been reprinted countless times and translated into many languages, becoming one of the most popular and influential works in 20th-century literature. Early in the 21st century, The Lord of the Rings film trilogy consisting of three live action fantasy epic films: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Two Towers (2002) and The Return of the King (2003) were released.

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Lord of the Rings in The Valley-Westside War
The Lord of the Rings continued to be popular in the home timeline, so much so that the Mendoza family used the word "Mellon" (or friend from the fictitious Elven language) as the vocal password to their safe-room. They used it because of a memorable scene in the first film where the Fellowship were trapped outside the door into Moria until Gandalf used the word to magically open the door.

Since the film trilogy came out well after the POD of the two timelines, the Mendozas thought it very secure. However, the books had been published before the divergence and had been very popular when the nuclear war had broken out and continued to be so. Surviving copies of The Lord of the Rings were cherished by the people struggling to rebuild something of the devastated world, and were passed on from generation to generation and regularly read by parents to their children. Moreover, "Frodo", the name of Tolkien's protagonist, came to be used as a male first name in this timeline. Dan thought of this when confronted by the sealed door and used the word "Mellon" to successfully open it. If that hadn't worked, he would have used "Open, sesame" next.