
Middle-earth according to Mordor - The Lord of the Rings retold - aarghh
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/the_lord_of_the_rings/index.html?story=/books/laura_miller/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer
======
ddlatham
This is an example of creative, derived work that should be enriching the
public commons, when the original is quite old, by a long dead author, yet is
still troubled by potential copyright claims.

~~~
tptacek
And it could have been written straightforwardly as a roman-a-clef without
incurring copyright hazards. The reason it wasn't is probably the reason it's
at risk: marketing.

It might even make for a better book that way.

~~~
Tycho
Yes, like Coral Island vs Lord of the Flies.

Although I'm not against the idea of people writing in other peoples'
universes, ie. fan fiction. In fact I _hate_ the snotty attitude (seemingly)
almost everyone takes towards fan-fiction: it's a win for everyone, like the
literary equivalent of forking open-source software, but it's never
encouraged.

~~~
makmanalp
Slight tangent: Here's a secret about forking. When you fork a project, you
anger the loyalists. A lot of large open source projects fork because of deep
disagreements / polarization within the team. For minor stuff, it usually just
gets settled internally. If the project does get forked, it usually ends with
either the original project dying or the fork dying. I can't recall any
projects off the top of my head that were forked and both the fork and
original remained successful.

~~~
tptacek
Emacs / xemacs.

NetBSD / OpenBSD.

Debian / Ubuntu.

XMBC / Plex.

KHTML / Webkit.

sbcl / cmucl.

~~~
makmanalp
I guess I might be wrong. However, consider:

Regarding XBMC / Plex and Emacs / xemacs, instead of a fork it looks like it's
more of adding feature X that the original devs didn't want (not being
derogatory here, it's substantial work). I'm sure that they merge in new code
continuously and the codebases haven't diverged so much as to be independent.
It doesn't look much like a fork in that sense.

I'd argue that KHTML is fairly dead. No one really uses Konqueror (I worked
for a shop that developed a KDE based distro and even there everyone used
Firefox / Chrome), which is probably KHTML's largest user apart from some
internal KDE stuff. Hell, even Konqueror has had webkit mode since about a
year ago. Qt supports webkit. Tons of other browsers, mobile and otherwise,
use webkit.

I see the same downward trend for Debian, from being all over the place to
being reduced to mostly a server distro. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is coming up with
its own server version with pre-made virtualization images and stuff.

So, maybe the "weaker" forks just didn't die fast? Of course, this whole idea
isn't a law or anything and I can't expect it to apply to everything, but
that's the general trend I see anyway.

Also, I guess another thing I could claim is selection bias: You've probably
never even heard of most of the forks that died. Of course, I don't have the
data to prove it either.

~~~
Maro
You know you're on Hacker News when a discussion about Tolkien turns into a
discussion of Emacs forks =)

~~~
Tycho
There are two activities that can change a nerdy fourteen-year old's life:
reading The Lord of the Rings and learning emacs. One is a childish fantasy
that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable
inaccessibility, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled
adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves
orcs.

;)

~~~
DennisP
That's why John Galt uses Vim :)

------
Scriptor
I really need to get around to reading this. The original LOTR did have a
rather "western" bent to it. Looking at things in another way would be pretty
fun.

Also related: <http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2003/04/22fellowship.html>, if Noam
Chomsky and Howard Zinn watched The Fellowship of the Ring.

~~~
hnhg
Being non-white myself, I like to jokingly explain to anyone who will listen
about how LOTR is all about racial purity and the perils of rampant
immigration of brown folk. I certainly can't think of anyone good in it who is
'non-white'. I grew up on the books and I still have a soft spot for them, but
I do like to make fun of this aspect of them.

My other hobby is outlining the racial stereotypes in sci-fi shows/movies...

~~~
patrickgzill
So blacks and Indians (from India) are orcs? Who's the racist again?

~~~
albertsun
There's a deaded comment by nostromo here that I thought was good and don't
see why it was killed. The interpretation of LotR as a book about the
domination of non-white peoples is really not that much of a stretch.

\--

No, not Orcs. There are men who are allied with Mordor in the books.
Specifically "Haradrim", men who are described as black-skinned
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southrons#Haradrim>), and Easterlings, men who
are described as swarthy, dark-haired, and dark-eyed
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlings>).

I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of these
people as indian and black respectively given the book's description.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _I'm not saying the books are racists, but it's not a stretch to think of
> these people as indian and black respectively given the book's description._

It's a stretch because Indians and other people live on this Earth and not in
some fantasy reality created by an author.

Sure if you want to imagine that one species/race in the book is visually akin
to a race/group/country of real humans that's fine, why would it matter.

This sort of argument to me is like saying that the books stereotype elephants
because the great war beast Mamulik (sp?) are elephantine.

In short I think you're over analysing it, it's just a yarn.

------
Flemlord
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has been mentioned many times on
HN but is worth mentioning again.

[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_M...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

~~~
kmfrk
And again, and again, and again. You don't have to be a Harry Potter nor
science and philosophy geek; it's accessible and thrilling to everyone.

------
twp
This is a really interesting idea but the text itself really needs to be
adapted by a native English speaker. I really wanted to plunge into the book,
but it's barely readable. Here are the first two sentences of the second
paragraph, a typical example of the book's style:

> It was at such a midnight hour that two men moved like gray shadows along
> the gravelly inner edge of a sickle-shaped gap between two low dunes, and
> the distance between them was exactly that prescribed by the Field Manual
> for such occasions. However, contrary to the rules, the one bearing the
> largest load was not the rear ‘main force’ private, but rather the ‘forward
> recon’ one, but there were good reasons for that.

It's probably brilliant in Russian, but an English speaker has to unravel and
reconstruct each sentence. It makes for heavy going.

I say this not to negatively criticise, but simply to warn readers hoping to
discover a fantastic interpretation of an epic tale. A future translation, I
am sure, will make for brilliant reading.

~~~
Swizec
That reads a lot like a NaNoWriMo novel. Many many word padding and abuse of
the 'the'.

However, one should not that the original LOTR was written by a linguist. As
such it tended to be pretty wordy and often full of horribly complex sentence
structures.

For example: > That night they heard no noises. But either in his dreams or
out of them, he could not tell which, Frodo heard a sweet singing running in
his mind: a song that seemed to come like a pale light behind a grey rain-
curtain, and growing stronger to turn the veil all to silver and glass, until
at last it was rolled back, and a far green country opened before him under a
swift sunrise.

~~~
listic
> However, one should not that the original LOTR was written by a linguist. As
> such it tended to be pretty wordy and often full of horribly complex
> sentence structures.

This is exactly what delighted me in Tolkien (LOTR; Silmarillion was over the
top for me) or Maria Semyonova
(<http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/880518.Maria_Semyonova_> , translator,
Russian fantasy writer, bad film, no English translations that I know of) I
was disappointed to discover that many other fantasy and fiction writers don't
share the love or skill for such flowery language. It never occured to me that
some readers might not enjoy it.

When I was reading some of the acclaimed fiction writers e.g. Vernor Vinge's
"A Fire Upon The Deep" not once did I think "Heck, I bet I could write better
than this!" I have no illusions of my chances of being a writer in English,
when I haven't been one in my native Russian yet, but still. I would not think
that thought when I was reading Tolkien or Semenova.

~~~
darren_
Mervyn Peake writes very nice English prose that I think you might enjoy. See
his Gormenghast series (Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone). It's sort-of-
fantasy but not really (no magic, no non-humans).

~~~
Tycho
Omg, yes. I think that Titus Groan has got the most beautiful prose I've ever
encountered. Well, that's what I thought when I read it years ago. I must
revisit it.

------
neworbit
David Brin wrote an interesting piece on this a few years back. I think Salon
picked it up then, too.
[http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ind...](http://dir.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/index.html)

------
wooster
It's unlikely they'd infringe on Tolkien's copyrights, at least in the US:

    
    
      Tolkien was re-editing because in that year, Ace Books in the 
      United States published an unauthorised edition. The Fellowship 
      came out in May 1965, the other two volumes in July. 150,000 copies 
      were printed of each volume! The main text was reset, and introduced 
      new errors, but the appendices were reproduced photographically, and 
      thus contained only the errors already there. Ace Books were exploiting 
      a copyright loophole which meant they did not have to pay Tolkien or his 
      publishers any royalties. Houghton Mifflin appears to have imported too 
      many copies, and the notice they contain, 'Printed in Great Britain' 
      meant that the texts were deemed to be in the public domain in the 
      United States.
    

<http://www.tolkiensociety.com/tolkien/tale.html>

------
Semiapies
So, instead of a bourgeois tale of an epic fight against evil forces
threatening a dubiously idealized analogue of a society that no longer exists,
it's a socialist tale of an epic fight against evil forces threatening a
dubiously idealized analogue of a society that no longer exists?

------
georgecmu
For whatever reason, Tolkien had a huge following in Russia. At least one
fantasy writer [1] made a career writing LOTR sequels. Eskov himself is
actively blogging on Livejournal [2].

    
    
      [1] http://www.perumov.com/books/
      [2] http://afranius.livejournal.com/132382.html

~~~
ringm
One of the most important factors in popularity of a foreign work in Russia is
a good translation which does not try to be too literal. Muraviev and
Kistyakovsky did a great job with LOTR.

Another reason is that this translation was published in late 80s, when the
Russian public was particularly receptive to anything spiritual and/or capable
of carrying them away from the grim reality of a collapsing country.

------
dawson
This kind of opportunity doesn't come around often on HN, so for the sake of
karma, I have two big Tolkien related sites <http://planet-tolkien.com> and
<http://the-hobbit-movie.com/> for anyone interested :)

------
DTrejo
Link to download the book:

<http://www.sendspace.com/file/a75r7u>

------
michaeldhopkins
This sort of thing is fun, but it sounds more simplistic than Tolkien's
universe and philosophies. I will read it with interest. Can someone comment
as to the quality of the Russian version?

~~~
ak1394
It's absolutely brilliant. I especially like that it doesn't try to simply re-
tell the LOTR from a different point of view, but changes aesthetics of the
story as well. While LOTR is 'an epic saga', 'The Last Ringbearer' reads more
like an historical account.

BTW, the russian text is freely available as well:
<http://lib.ru/PROZA/ESKOV_K/last.txt>

------
DjDarkman
Just like hearing the story of World War [1-2] from different sides.

~~~
fedd
just like hearing the story of the Cold War from different sides

------
regehr
If you can forget the silly musical, _Wicked_ was a pretty awesome book along
these same lines.

------
Graham24
Anyone read Bored of the Rings?

~~~
neworbit
Yeah - it's full of really dated cultural references - I'm not exactly a
spring chicken and Serutan meant nothing to me until I looked it up.

------
bane
Sounds like what _Grendel_ is to _Beowulf_ , which is a good thing.

------
indrax
You may also enjoy: The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster

<http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/Darth_Vader/>

------
rapicastillo
cool. This is like the Middle Earth's Der Untergang (The Downfall)

------
klbarry
The problem with this book, of course, is that it ignores the lore Tolkien
shares in the Silmarillion, his letters, and other books regarding the origin
of Sauron and Orcs.

~~~
rsaarelm
Maybe the idea of the new book was to point out that you can read LotR and
Silmarillion as myths and histories written in-universe, instead of an
objective and reliable narrative. Suddenly all sorts of things might be
slanted to make the winners of the war look good and noble and paint those who
opposed them as beastly savages.

------
lotusleaf1987
If you enjoy the retelling of popular stories from a different perspective,
one of the best I've read is Superman: Red Son by Mark Millar. Superman lands
in the USSR, is raised as a communist, becomes the villain, Lex Luthor is the
hero in America trying to outwit the communist supervillian, Batman is a
freedom fighter... I shall say no more, but check it out if you're a nerd like
me.

