LotR Rewritten From a Mordor Perspective

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

LotR Rewritten From a Mordor Perspective

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 21, 2011 @01:11AM from the up-is-down dept.

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.'"

16 of 583 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Great book by KiloByte · 2011-02-21 01:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.
1. Re:Great book by snaggen · 2011-02-21 01:29 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
2. Re:Great book by vadim_t · 2011-02-21 01:30 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Copyright is needed, but it's currently far too long.
  Tolkien has been dead and buried for 38 years now. His estate is preventing the translation from being published for what reason exactly? Where's the benefit to society from that?
3. Re:Great book by thijsh · 2011-02-21 01:38 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Oh, I know the answers: 'greed' and 'none'. I shall now claim this free PDF as my prize...
4. Re:Great book by Jason+Levine · 2011-02-21 02:09 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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)?
  
  --
  My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
5. Re:Great book by Guido+von+Guido · 2011-02-21 02:14 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  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.
6. Re:Great book by Compaqt · 2011-02-21 02:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  >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/
  
  --
  I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
7. Re:Great book by vadim_t · 2011-02-21 03:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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.
8. Re:Great book by shikaisi · 2011-02-21 03:23 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  I wouldn't want to abolish it, but I'd like to make it much shorter.
  I totally agree.
  Oh, sorry, you were talking about copyright. I thought you meant Lord of the Rings.
  
  --
  No left turn unstoned.
9. Re:Great book by Haeleth · 2011-02-21 04:41 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  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.
  And, in the case of Hamlet, the earliest edition is widely believed to be an unauthorized copy -- basically the 17th-century equivalent of a camcorder. There is no record whatsoever of anyone ever being sued or punished for that.
10. Re:Great book by Myopic · 2011-02-21 08:51 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  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 by ShakaUVM · 2011-02-21 02:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

>>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:Banewreaker by tophermeyer · 2011-02-21 02:28 · Score: 5, Informative

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:Sounds about right by sourcerror · 2011-02-21 02:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by Nimey · 2011-02-21 02:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

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
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and the Oz Wicked Witch by Paul+Fernhout · 2011-02-21 02:50 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.