Saruman appears as a minor villain in "Lego Dimensions", in which he allies himself with main antagonist Lord Vortech. Asteroid 418532 Saruman was named after the wizard and in honor of actor Christopher Lee. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 25 September 2018 (). [a] The volume published as "The Silmarillion" in 1977 contains four books in addition to the "Quenta Silmarillion". The last of these—"Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age"—covers Saruman's earlier history, but was written after "The Lord of the Rings". Note: For ease of reference, citations of "Letters" include
Saruman in the book of "wraithing", a distinctive 20th-century view of evil that he attributes to Tolkien in which individuals are "'eaten up inside' by devotion to some abstraction". Referring to Saruman's demise, Kocher says that he is one example of the consistent theme of nothingness as the fate of evil throughout "The Lord of the Rings". Saruman has appeared in film, audio and stage adaptations of "The Lord of the Rings". BBC Radio produced the first adaptation in 1956, in which Saruman was played by Robert Farquharson, and which has not survived. Tolkien was apparently disappointed by it. In Ralph