Lord of the Rings told from the Perspective of Mordor

[WalkingDistance]

Originally in Russian, Kirill Yeskov wrote a version of the Lord of the Rings from the perspective of Mordor. Now, he has released a version that is "officially" translated to english.

Link deleted by moderator

[jkeene]

I saw that linked from link deleted and immediately grabbed it for my next fiction book. Have you started it yet? What do you think?

[Namekuseijin]

Part of the ongoing series "twisting classics by our modern crackhead standards". You can take a peek at another example of such phenomena in the most popular, tale-like comment in the goodreads entry for "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz".

However fun to read, it's really just a dumb and imaginetiveless retelling from our current amoral point of view: what was wicked and evil is now good and the norm, what was noble and virtuous is now lame and twisted, if not downright depraved as old Disney cartoons and catholic fathers. Angels and demons changed places, people feed themselves junk, listen to noise and watch violence and violent sex as a popcorn-munching ancient Collosseum regular...

[WillAdams]

This was discussed on usenet:rec.arts.sf.written and I thought this comment was cogent:

http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...&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.

I'd rather read a first-rate thriller, thank you, or find the time to finish reading _The Complete History of Middle Earth_ (burnt out at Vol. 4).

To be fair, there was some interesting discussion on Slashdot of why Russians are inclined to this sort of re-write for historical reasons.

William

[HarryT]

Moderator Notice
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MobileRead Moderating Team

[rogue_librarian]

Actually the (non-commercial) translation was done with the blessing of the author. Even "The Wired" has an article, and so does Salon: surely you're not accusing them of copyright infringement?

[HarryT]

Pretty much all FanFic violates copyright law. Unless this was written with the permission of the Tolkien literary estate, it certainly does. That's why MR has a policy of neither hosting, nor permitting links to, such works.

[rogue_librarian]

So glad we're once removed from evil now, only linking to sites linking to the book ... (I get it Harry, and I don't really mind the policy.)

[jkeene]

Ack, sorry about that. It was one of my very up-and-up sites for quality commentary, never got a whiff of that from them before.

[carld]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Pretty much all FanFic violates copyright law.

That's debatable. The only court case I've heard of came down in favor of fanfic, though it might have been some other fan created content. It's been a decade or better since I read about it.

[snipenekkid]

Originally Posted by carld

That's debatable. The only court case I've heard of came down in favor of fanfic, though it might have been some other fan created content. It's been a decade or better since I read about it.

don't forget that whole mess over the Harry Potter encyclopedia thing a few years back. As I recall it went to court and was found to be infringing. So better MR error on the side of caution. Otherwise they let us talk about most anything just no overt stuff or direct links. I like MR despite the people and want it around for a while... (for the humor impaired that is a JOKE...)

[chilady1]

This sounds very interesting!

[Luke King]

The whole point of copyright is that people can't take characters and worlds you've created and then "piggy-back" on your hard work by writing fanfic. I have no problem with fanfic on free sites, but if someone is making money out of someone else's work (without their permission) then that is a clear infringement of copyright. It's the point of copyright.

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by Luke King

The whole point of copyright is that people can't take characters and worlds you've created and then "piggy-back" on your hard work by writing fanfic.

That is almost, but not entirely, exactly what copyright is not about. Copyright protects words, not ideas, only the expression of it. The ideas behind a work, or even the facts embodied in the work, are free for all to use. It is legal to take the plot from somebody else's mystery novel, and write your own mystery novel based on that plot.

Whether fictitious characters, worlds, histories and names are copyright protected is heavily disputed amongst scholars. It certainly is not "the whole point of copyright".

[Bricorn]

Hmmm, I'm glad I jumped on this while the links were up.