LotR Rewritten From a Mordor Perspective

Hugh Pickens writes writes "It's been said that history is written by the winners but Laura Miller writes in Salon about a counterexample as she reviews a new version of Lord of the Rings. The Last Ring-bearer was published to acclaim in Russia by Kirill Yeskov, a paleontologist whose job is reconstructing long-extinct organisms and their way of life. Yeskov performs essentially the same feat in his book. The Last Ring-bearer is set during and after the end of the War of the Ring and told from the perspective of the losers. In Yeskov's retelling, available in translation as a free download, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies because science 'destroys the harmony of the world and dries up the souls of men' and Aragorn is depicted by Yeskov as a ruthless Machiavellian schemer who is ultimately the puppet of his wife, the elf Arwen. Sauron's citadel Barad-dur is, by contrast, described as 'that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic.'"

Comments

Re:Great book

[Guido von Guido]

Shakespear was published under a regime of perpetual copyright.

Which is why Hamlet and King Lear, among other plays, are thought to be reworkings of older plays.

At the time England didn't have copyright laws. They did have the Stationer's Company, which was the printers' guild. In theory once a printer entered a work into the Stationer's Company Register, other printers weren't able to print a copy of that work. In practice, this wasn't well enforced, and publishers often printed works registered to other printers. The first actual copyright law didn't come until the 18th century.

Re:Banewreaker

[tophermeyer]

You're about to be modded troll for this bit:

throwing minority Americans into death camps for the crime of having german/japanese grandparents.

It's untrue as it is offensive. My grandfather, an off the boat German immigrant from the early 30's, joined the US Marines and fought during the war. His family was not rounded up into camps.

And death camps? Seriously? While the Japanese internment camps were indeed an atrocious violation of basic civil rights, they were limited to the West coast, and had living conditions a fair sight better than some other contemporary 'death' camps.

I get your point, soldiers on both sides did some pretty horrible things. But implying that we were not better than governments engaged in active genocide is inflammatory. And as an American, incredibly offensive.

Re:Great book

[Compaqt]

>Shakespear was published under a regime of perpetual copyright.

Well, I'm no expert, but this guy from Duke says Shakespeare was written before the "Statute of Anne" or any other copyright law:

http://library.duke.edu/blogs/scholcomm/2011/02/18/shakespeare-and-copyright/