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

Great book

[KiloByte]

It's a great book, I've read it ten years ago, in the Polish translation.

Quoting Wikipedia: "fear of the vigilant and litigious Tolkien estate has heretofore prevented its publication in English". Tell me again, how exactly copyright encourages creation of new works?

Re:Great book

[snaggen]

exactly! Without copyright nothing of any quality would ever be written. It would all just be the cheap amateurish crap like shakespear and mozart. Thank god for copyright so we can enjoy good culture like die hard 4 and Britney Spears.

Re:Great book

[Jason Levine]

I agree. Lord of the Rings was first published in 1954 and 1955. According to current copyright law (assuming no extensions are passed, which is a huge assumption), the copyright will end in 2049/2050. It's been under copyright for about 56 years already and still has about 39 to go. I know the Tolkien estate profits off of Lord of the Rings, but I don't see how that encourages new works. Yes, we got the LoTR movies, but those could have been made if LoTR passed into the public domain. The only people who would lose out would be the children/grandchildren of JRR Tolkien.

Of course, even worse is Gone With The Wind. It was published in 1936 and is still considered to be under copyright protection 75 years later. We need to wait until 2031 until it enters the Public Domain. Meanwhile, the author, Margaret Mitchell, has been dead for 62 years. Her children (if she had any, I can't find any reference to kids) would be grown up by now with grandkids of their own. Copyright was not intended to be a paycheck for your great-grandkids.

A fair copyright term would be 20 years plus a one time 20 year renewal. (And I'm being generous as I think the ideal would be 14/14.) Under this, Lord of the Rings would have passed into the public domain in 1994/1995. In fact, under this copyright term length, anything published before 1971 would be in the public domain. How many works published prior to 1971 create substantial income for their authors (or their estates)? How many languish in obscurity because no publishing house wants to re-release them and small presses can't secure the rights to print them? How many derivative works could be made from stories that are over 40 years old (thus bringing the originals back into the public light)?

Re:Great book

[vadim_t]

The original owner of a work may be dead, but the franchise lives on. Shouldn't the franchise holders be protected from losing their investment to copy-cats?

Why should they be? My idea is simply reducing the length. It would be simply the question of planning to make a profit within 14-30 years. And if you can't make a profit in 14 years they'll probably never make it, anyway.

If George Lucas died today, should Star Wars immediately become public domain, even when there's a huge MMO and lots of movie memorabilia with full licensing and lots of money still to be made by the people who paid for the right to do so?

No, because having copyright expire on death would provide a perverse incentive for murdering authors of famous works, like George Lucas for instance.

Copyright should be much shorter, but it should last the same whether the creator lives or dies.

Re:Great book

[Myopic]

You have made a moral argument for copyright, which I reject. I don't pay the workmen who built my house each year that I live in it; General Motors didn't get a cut when I bought my used Jeep Liberty vehicle; I don't pay the Ginsu company a royalty every time I cut meat with its knives -- and I reject a moral argument that I "should" do so in any of those cases. For intellectual works, I feel similarly. I get up every morning and make my money by performing my craft, which is software programming, which is just like almost everybody makes their money, for performances.

The arguments in favor of copyright which I accept are practical arguments. I want the best ongoing media creation I can have, and I support whatever laws help me get it. Some intellectual property doesn't lend itself to performance-style income, such as long-term-use-with-no-support software, or literary novels, or blockbuster movies. Because I like software, novels and movies, I support laws that help me get those things.

The question, then, is not what do we "owe" the authors (answer: nothing) but rather what system do we need to encourage them. Do we need copyrights that last longer than two human lifetimes? I don't think we do. Do we need copyrights that preclude derivative works? I don't think we do. How about preventing collage and sampling? I don't think so. I think we can have all the benefits of copyright, and much less of the drawbacks, if we change the balances in the copyright system.

Re:Banewreaker

[ShakaUVM]

>>The WW2 allies were hardly virtuous, what with fire-bombing of innocent civilians

It's not that simple.

Hamburg, for example, was partly in retaliation for Coventry earlier in the war. But Hitler only took the gloves off and started targeting civilians after the RAF started dropping bombs on German civilians. Why did the RAF target civilians, when the (evil) Nazis were refraining? Because the Luftwaffe had radar navigation, but the RAF thought they had the skill to astronavigate accurately enough to put bombs onto military targets. They didn't.

Then you could get into the whole Battle of the Beams (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams), and whether it was ethical to redirect German bombers onto English farmhouses...

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

I don't think you know what the words "death camps" actually mean.

Re:Sounds about right

[sourcerror]

Set against that on the sci-fi side, Star Wars fits perfectly into your description of fantasy.

A lot of people think (me included) that Star Wars is fantasy.

Re:Sounds about right

[Nimey]

Wrong. The difference between SF and Fantasy is that SF *could* happen - its setting high tech. Fantasy *can't* happen - its setting requires magic of some sort.

Why do some people have to inject their politics into everything?