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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.'"
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?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If y'all are interested in this kind of fiction, Jacqueline Carey did a really good duology on it in her Banewreaker series.
She's mostly known for steamy fantasy/romance novels (the Kushiel series), but she does a very good take on a LOTR-analogue world in which the Sauron equivalent is shown as the good guys. Or not good guys, precisely, but as more or less a guy wanting to be left alone, with the Gandalf-equivalent instigating the "good" races to destroy him in his Mordorish fortress. You really end up hating the good guys by the end of the series. =)
I highly recommend it.
http://www.amazon.com/Banewreaker-Sundering-Book-Jacqueline-Carey/dp/0765305216
Available here:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/697476f4e92d2483?dmode=source&output=gplain
>Seriously though, I have read Yeskov's novel some ten years ago, when it was
>officially published in Poland. It caused a great turmoil among die-hard
>Tolkien's fans, who considered it "blasphemous" - not because of the
>copyright issue, but because the good and the evil were so thoroughly
>reverted there. Those who remember Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples" should
>understand what I mean. Personally, I liked the book, but this reversal of
>well-established stereotypes is its main merit. Without any references to
>Middle-Earth it would have been just a second-rate spy story/political
>thriller, like the many clones of Frederick Forsyth.
For my part, I'd rather read a first-rate spy story / political thriller, irregardless of the trappings or lack thereof.
If that is not the best practical "in soviet russia..." joke, i don't know what is.
That's the classical fantasy/SF duality.
Quick-n-dirty how-to distinguish fantasy from science-fiction: It's not about elves vs spaceships. It's about conservatism vs progressivism.
A fantasy book is about preserving/restoring/keeping the old order. Calamity befalls, and it's up to the heroes to repair the world. The tyrant has obtained absolute power, and your task is to topple it and restore the rightful ruler(s). The gods are angry because the people have strayed from the "path" and things go suddendly to hell.
The sci-fi book is transformative. Change happens, and the world progresses. The old ways are discarded, the new ways begins (with their usual lot of gut-wrenching change) and life is transformed.
(and then, you have modern hi-tech thrillers, in which big change happens, except it has no lasting consequences whatsoever. But that's a different topic)
So, intrinsically, the Ring War in which Frodo and his merry band wins is fantasy. The Ring War in which Mordor wins would have been sci-fi.
And the Star War in which a desert planet dirt farmer saves the galaxy is also fantasy.
Quick-n-dirty how-to distinguish fantasy from science-fiction: It's not about elves vs spaceships. It's about conservatism vs progressivism.
A fantasy book is about preserving/restoring/keeping the old order.
I'd think that's a bit of generalisation about fantasy and sci fi both. The literature is a lot more complex than that, I mean look at one of the founding pillars of modern fantasy, Michael Moorcock's Elric series, a hero sets forth specifically to change and modernise the old order. Set against that on the sci-fi side, Star Wars fits perfectly into your description of fantasy. Its much too simple to take broad general view of a vastly wide and varied body of works.
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.
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?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Sometimes a book makes a much more effective argument. Orwell comes to mind.
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When I was a young child decades ago, Fred Rogers had the woman who played the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz on his program. She explained how they did the scene where she melted. But she also tried to get kids to think about what things looked like from the Wicked Witch's perspective. Her sister was killed. The one keepsake was stolen. Her home was invaded. Finally, she is attacked just for defending herself and trying to get back her sister's property. And so on. It really shocked me in a good way, to think that things looked different from her point of view.
Here is a FOSS project (Rakontu) my wife developed (I helped a small bit) to help people see situations from multiple perspectives.
http://www.rakontu.org/
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I have no idea what you're trying to say here... it's not a reply to anyone. And as such, makes no sense whatsoever. What does this have to do with LotR or this translation of a Russian book?
Bite my shiny metal ass!
Thats only one example though, neither sci fi nor fantasy can generally be considered "progressive" or "conservative", since there exists a full spectrum of ideologies and themes in both genres. Sci fi and fantasy are just the medium through which the themes are expressed, there's nothing intrinsically conservative about fantasy.
Russian fantasy is actually quite different. The motif of 'restoring the balance' is present in a lot of works, but quite a lot of fantasy books focus on _transformations_ of society or about factions vying to transform society. Lukjanenko's 'Night Watch' (which is available in English) is a typical example.
I particularly like Loginov's "The Many-handed God of Dalayn", though I'm not sure it's translated.
This might be a reflection of recent turbulent history in Russia.
Because people who like to download free music and movies make themselves feel comfortable by demonizing the industry they are ripping off to make themselves feel better. It's called cognitive dissonance. Accepting my explanation as valid would lead to uncomfortable feelings, so you'll see many posters make lame arguments about my very simple and valid explanation. You can see it all the time in arguments against evolution and anthropogenic global warming and other science that people don't want to believe.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
And any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. So fantasy is actually the most sci-fi.
I tried to read this a while back. I was really excited because I always was more interested in the lives of the Orcs than reading about the hicks of the Shire. My favorite scene in LotR is the two orcs talking to each other and expressing a desire to stuff this Mordor stuff and get lost in the world somewhere distant, where they can waylay passing travelers. It's the closest thing the Orcs get to being treated as characters. I was really disappointed with The Last Ringbearer. It really didn't make any sense, maybe because it was translated? I skipped ahead several times before just giving up. I had really wanted to like this book but it just didn't work.
Of course, the whole thing ignores the fact that Sauron was evil, and he committed many evil acts in his thousands of years of existence prior to the events of LotR. Sauron was a total sociopath control freak. If he were alive today he'd be in charge of a corporation poisoning the public for profit. The entire point of his forging of The One Ring was slavery. Sauron crossed the moral event horizon and went full-on evil when he helped Morgoth destroy the land of Almaren, and that was in the First Age. Honestly, this review tells us a lot more about the reviewer that it does anything. Sample quote: "The novelist Michael Moorcock has attacked Middle-earth as a childishly rose-tinted vision of the Merrie Olde England that never was, as well as willfully blind to the hardships and injustice of preindustrial and feudal societies." WTF? It's a fantasy novel, people. It's something you read when you're not reading real books. Oh. I see. The reviewer has an axe to grind. "So I was horrified to discover that the Chronicles of Narnia, the joy of my childhood and the cornerstone of my imaginative life, were really just the doctrines of the Church in disguise." Yeah, surprise surprise, lady. No wonder she sees racial demonization, it's what she's looking for. Yet another writer who can't write anything original and instead can only parody others. That's the greatest failing of The Last Ringbearer. If the author had something to say, great! Say it. But jeez it's pathetic when the only thing you can do is attach another author's name to your work while criticizing the shit out of it. Am I the only one who is utterly sick to death of sequels, rewrites, spinoffs, and reimaginings? I suppose so if that's what everyone is buying. Can't argue with the market.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
You know, Tolkien never discussed the politics of his original set of books and said they are not meant to reflect contemporary politics.
The author of the 'response' says just about the same thing at the end, telling people to find something better to do if they don't like it.
In either case, your outrage is misplaced. Each author explicitly disavows any political statement. Authors who do inject politics into every single sentence and phrase tend to be outspoken, since they are trying to achieve poltiical change.
You can read the story from the perspecive of Mordor if you like, but I'm still waiting for a version of the original LOTR that removes the offensive word "hobbit" and replaces it with the more politically correct, "large-footed halfling".
This sig is false.
He can't write any more. No amount of compensation will convince Tolkein to do anymore work.
So why should the copyright still exist on his work?
But Orwell is also an example of how a book can be misinterpreted -- Animal Farm is commonly misread as a critique of communism.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
cannot be located here! however, I have 200 differing opinions from non-copyright lawyers about copyright law.
after I read this book, I will post a review of the copyright comments entered here.
I'd say it have been commonly mis-not-read or mis-spoken-about.
Seriously, all you have to do is read a little about the author (apart from the book) and you understand what the author is critizicing exactly. You know, Napoleon (character) was evil, but the other farmers weren't nice.
You let me know when copies of Picasso sell for millions of dollars.
Millions of copies at a dollar each sell for millions of dollars.
That's actually IMHO an even worse criterion.
For a start, SF routinely relies on technologies that are very likely impossible. E.g., the quantum entanglement faster-than-light communication in Mass Effect 2 is flat out getting it wrong what "entanglement" means and does. It can't work that way. E.g., the lightsabers as a laser beam that somehow loops on itself and somehow bounces on other laser beams, is very much bogus.
Second, in fantasy the "magic" is routinely subject to rules and even calculations. In a lot of fantasy works, it _is_ basically a form of technology.
Third, fantasy doesn't really need much magic, or indeed at all. In LOTR for example -- and I use that not just because it's the topic, but also as _the_ work of fantasy that started the whole frikken fantasy genre -- there is actually very little magic and virtually none that actually impacts the main plot beyond that enchantment on the ring. The only ones who can do any magic at all, are basically angels, like Gandalf. They're few and they use spells very sparingly, if at all. I mean, what spells does Gandalf use? Making his staff glow? When he wants to help against the orcs, he charges with the sword on his horse, not chuck a fireball.
Heh, magic was sooo necessary for LOTR. Not.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The premise is NOT that Sauron was not evil but that history is written by the victor. IF Sauron had won, what would history have recorded of him?
Only in movies do the evil guys proclaim their evil. Hitler (oh come on, this is a thread about evil) never ever made a speech proclaiming that he was this evil creature who just wanted to see the world burn to create from its ashes a hellish world in which he himself would be the first in the gas chambers (diseased, crippled and non-arian)
So, if you take that history invariably is written with some propoganda motives by the victor, what if you turn it around? Read the losers propaganda. That Eisenhower was a puppet for the eternal jew (actual part of Hitlers speech on the decleration of war on the US) etc etc. Lies? Yes, we think so but would we also be thinking this if Hitler had won? How many germans actually believed this to the very core of their body so that it was reality to them?
Sauron is evil but we are told this by his enemies. Why are orcs corrupted? Because the other side said so? Well, bad luck for a lot of groups on earth then, we all have been called corrupted and evil by someone else at some time or another. Doesn't make it true does it?
Take Napoleon. Short mad man intent on forcing his will on the entire world... as told by the british. Except he wasn't short and we are told this by the British EMPIRE the largest empire ever in human history... In Napoleon's army religion did not matter, merit dictated who was promoted. Not so in the British army. Who Napoleon really is depends a lot on who you ask. And who the British are... well a LOT of people will have something to say about that.
Yes, this particular book does tend to gloss over a lot of things OR you can ask if what you read in the The Lord of the Rings, was the real story. Of course it was, it is fiction. But just imagine "how the west was won" written through a native American's eyes. The industrial revolution through a child of three forced to work in a mine with no light for 12 or more hours a day. Is James Watts a hero then? Custer a Mengele?
This is not really about trying to excuse the fictional character of Sauron and the actions that his creator dictated he has committed but trying through the Star Trek method of putting aliens in place of real life to get us to think about how history, the "truth" comes into being.
You look at this new book as if Sauron still is the guy from the Lotr, the entire premise is that the Lotr is a lie.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you've been on the Internet longer than five minutes, politics is fucking tiresome, mainly because of the zealots who insist on seeing everything through the lens of their politics.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem