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I highly recommend "The Last Ring Bearer" for people who like to have a bit of fun with Tokien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wi

I highly recommend "The Last Ring Bearer" for people who like to have a bit of fun with Tokien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer Eskov's version of the story describes Mordor as a peaceful constitutional monarchy on the verge of an industrial revolution, that poses a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting the Final Solution to the Mordorian problem") and the racist elves.[2] For example, Barad-dûr, Sauron's citadel, appears in chapter 2 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. The shining tower of the Barad-dûr citadel rose over the plains of Mordor almost as high as Orodruin like a monument to Man – free Man who had politely but firmly declined the guardianship of the Dwellers on High and started living by his own reason. It was a challenge to the bone-headed aggressive West, which was still picking lice in its log ‘castles’ to the monotonous chanting of scalds extolling the wonders of never-existing Númenor.

peace4all 4y ago
I should add that Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist and science popularizer. Here's his own explanation how he wrote "The Last Ringbearer": one of the reasons he mentions is that Middle Earth was impossible geologically: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x... In which he also mentions another famous book: "It would hardly occur to anyone to seriously analyze the functioning of the ecosystem of a barren desert inhabited by predatory worms the size of a multiple unit train that feed on walking excavators and then sweat psychedelics: fantasy is fantasy, what do you want from it?" He also wrote a great book on the Earth evolution and life evolution, in which he also explains how science works and worked earlier, and what were older theories, and Popper criterium as well. Here are some of his lectures for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEp7o0-w-uU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEp7o0-w-uU ..and an interview with some charts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdyW9V10IEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdyW9V10IEQ (unfortunately, auto-translated automatic captions aren't readable, giving just an idea of what the talk is about)
- CrazyStat 4y ago
  >Being a paleoantologist, he made a question to Tolkien's book: why the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible. And this started the "Last Ringbearer" book. Unfortunately he missed the answer: at the time Tolkien was writing, plate tectonics was still considered an absurd hypothesis, the subject of mockery by "serious" geologists. As such the understanding of "geologically impossible" at that time was rather different than when Yeskov was writing a few decades later. It was not until the 1950s that widespread sea floor mapping and research, made possible by the now-unnecessarily-large-and-mostly-idle US Navy, provided conclusive evidence that forced the geology establishment to accept plate tectonics. It's easy to forget how recently we stopped being totally wrong about things like that.
  - antifa 4y ago
    > the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible I would love to watch a YouTube video explaining the geology of Middle Earth and the geology science explaining why it's impossible.
    - peace4all 4y ago
      Here's Kirill Yeskov's own explanation how he wrote it, Google-translated: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x...
      - CrazyStat 4y ago
        Here's a proper human translation of the same essay: https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation/ https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation... Note how he discusses plate tectonics and Tolkein's ignorance, having forgotten (or never realized) that plate tectonics was not taken seriously in Tolkein's time.
        4y ago
klik99 4y ago
Honestly this reinterpretation is not that far from themes that exist in LOTR, given that it was partly an allegory of the wars. It's just making Mordor not represent fascism. Reminds me of something I learned last week when I was thinking about how the Harry Potter goblins are (probably unintentionally) built from second-hand racist stereotypes. Apparently the Dwarves of Middle Earth represent Jewish faith and the Elves Christian. During the writing of The Hobbit, Tolkien was influenced by the anti-Jewish sentiment and there's a few questionable throw away lines about the warlike treasure hoarding Dwarves. Between The Hobbit and LOTR though, with an intense hatred of Hitler and having a brief and intensely close relationship with a Jewish friend he realized the error of his ways - showing the Dwarves in more positive light and making the Dwarves and Elves work together a key part of the story. Some say he was inverting the stereotypes of Wagners Ring and intentionally highlighting positive stereotypes. This isn't entirely conjecture or revisionist analysis of the text either - he talked about how the Dwarfish language was intentionally Semite and indeed it has a Hebrew-like qualities. So in a sense, "The Last Ring Bearer" isn't a unique idea - you can argue that Middle Earth of LOTR itself is a reinterpretation of the Middle Earth of The Hobbit.
- jdmichal 4y ago
  On the topic of Harry Potter and reimaginative fan-fiction, there's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, in which Harry is reimagined as a science- and technology-savvy rationalist. http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/ It also, IMO, has better and fairer treatment of the houses than the canon, which I felt was pretty reductive. (Gryffindor good, Slytherin evil, the other two may as well not exist.) I think the books would have been better to have, say, Hermione in Ravenclaw, Ron in Hufflepuff, and Harry in Gryffindor. The only thing that would have had to been dropped was the silly "Gryffindor wins the house cup every year" bit.
Symbiote 4y ago
I liked the idea of The Last Ringbearer, but I found the writing pretty awful, like something written by a teenager for an English assignment. > Mordor then made its second mistake ... although, as it always is with strategic decisions, that could only be judged post factum: had the move worked, as it had every chance of doing, it would no doubt have been recorded as brilliant. > That was when the Mirror first made a difference; imagine a contemporary fast-moving war in which one side has the advantage of spy satellites. https://archive.org/details/TheLastRingbearerSecondEdition https://archive.org/details/TheLastRingbearerSecondEdition
- drewzero1 4y ago
  I would consider that a fault of the translation rather than the original writing, though not knowing Russian I couldn't say for sure. Translating literary works is a necessarily imperfect art, and as I understand it this translation was done on the translator's free time without compensation, so I'll take what I can get!
  - tut-urut-utut 4y ago
    Translator is not to blame, since he's not a professional translator. Not even sure if he is a native English speaker. He did a translation because he was a fan of the original book in Russian, and I'm grateful to him, since otherwise I would not be able to read it. It's a pity that Tolkien Foundation actively battled any attempt to publish this book in English. Has that not been the case, I'm sure some publisher would appoint a professional translator to do a much better job at it.
    - drewzero1 4y ago
      Like I said, I'll take what I can get. I don't mean to sound ungrateful.
nextaccountic 4y ago
I love those two articles about the book (specially the second, written by the author himself) https://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/ https://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/ Middle-earth according to Mordor https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation/ https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation... Why I reimagined "LOTR" from Mordor's perspective

peace4all 4y ago

I should add that Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist and science popularizer. Here's his own explanation how he wrote "The Last Ringbearer": one of the reasons he mentions is that Middle Earth was impossible geologically: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x... In which he also mentions another famous book: "It would hardly occur to anyone to seriously analyze the functioning of the ecosystem of a barren desert inhabited by predatory worms the size of a multiple unit train that feed on walking excavators and then sweat psychedelics: fantasy is fantasy, what do you want from it?" He also wrote a great book on the Earth evolution and life evolution, in which he also explains how science works and worked earlier, and what were older theories, and Popper criterium as well. Here are some of his lectures for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEp7o0-w-uU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEp7o0-w-uU ..and an interview with some charts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdyW9V10IEQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdyW9V10IEQ (unfortunately, auto-translated automatic captions aren't readable, giving just an idea of what the talk is about)

CrazyStat 4y ago
>Being a paleoantologist, he made a question to Tolkien's book: why the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible. And this started the "Last Ringbearer" book. Unfortunately he missed the answer: at the time Tolkien was writing, plate tectonics was still considered an absurd hypothesis, the subject of mockery by "serious" geologists. As such the understanding of "geologically impossible" at that time was rather different than when Yeskov was writing a few decades later. It was not until the 1950s that widespread sea floor mapping and research, made possible by the now-unnecessarily-large-and-mostly-idle US Navy, provided conclusive evidence that forced the geology establishment to accept plate tectonics. It's easy to forget how recently we stopped being totally wrong about things like that.
- antifa 4y ago
  > the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible I would love to watch a YouTube video explaining the geology of Middle Earth and the geology science explaining why it's impossible.
  - peace4all 4y ago
    Here's Kirill Yeskov's own explanation how he wrote it, Google-translated: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=ru&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x...
    - CrazyStat 4y ago
      Here's a proper human translation of the same essay: https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation/ https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation... Note how he discusses plate tectonics and Tolkein's ignorance, having forgotten (or never realized) that plate tectonics was not taken seriously in Tolkein's time.
      - 4y ago

klik99 4y ago

Honestly this reinterpretation is not that far from themes that exist in LOTR, given that it was partly an allegory of the wars. It's just making Mordor not represent fascism. Reminds me of something I learned last week when I was thinking about how the Harry Potter goblins are (probably unintentionally) built from second-hand racist stereotypes. Apparently the Dwarves of Middle Earth represent Jewish faith and the Elves Christian. During the writing of The Hobbit, Tolkien was influenced by the anti-Jewish sentiment and there's a few questionable throw away lines about the warlike treasure hoarding Dwarves. Between The Hobbit and LOTR though, with an intense hatred of Hitler and having a brief and intensely close relationship with a Jewish friend he realized the error of his ways - showing the Dwarves in more positive light and making the Dwarves and Elves work together a key part of the story. Some say he was inverting the stereotypes of Wagners Ring and intentionally highlighting positive stereotypes. This isn't entirely conjecture or revisionist analysis of the text either - he talked about how the Dwarfish language was intentionally Semite and indeed it has a Hebrew-like qualities. So in a sense, "The Last Ring Bearer" isn't a unique idea - you can argue that Middle Earth of LOTR itself is a reinterpretation of the Middle Earth of The Hobbit.

jdmichal 4y ago
On the topic of Harry Potter and reimaginative fan-fiction, there's Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, in which Harry is reimagined as a science- and technology-savvy rationalist. http://www.hpmor.com/ http://www.hpmor.com/ It also, IMO, has better and fairer treatment of the houses than the canon, which I felt was pretty reductive. (Gryffindor good, Slytherin evil, the other two may as well not exist.) I think the books would have been better to have, say, Hermione in Ravenclaw, Ron in Hufflepuff, and Harry in Gryffindor. The only thing that would have had to been dropped was the silly "Gryffindor wins the house cup every year" bit.

Symbiote 4y ago

I liked the idea of The Last Ringbearer, but I found the writing pretty awful, like something written by a teenager for an English assignment. > Mordor then made its second mistake ... although, as it always is with strategic decisions, that could only be judged post factum: had the move worked, as it had every chance of doing, it would no doubt have been recorded as brilliant. > That was when the Mirror first made a difference; imagine a contemporary fast-moving war in which one side has the advantage of spy satellites. https://archive.org/details/TheLastRingbearerSecondEdition https://archive.org/details/TheLastRingbearerSecondEdition

drewzero1 4y ago
I would consider that a fault of the translation rather than the original writing, though not knowing Russian I couldn't say for sure. Translating literary works is a necessarily imperfect art, and as I understand it this translation was done on the translator's free time without compensation, so I'll take what I can get!
- tut-urut-utut 4y ago
  Translator is not to blame, since he's not a professional translator. Not even sure if he is a native English speaker. He did a translation because he was a fan of the original book in Russian, and I'm grateful to him, since otherwise I would not be able to read it. It's a pity that Tolkien Foundation actively battled any attempt to publish this book in English. Has that not been the case, I'm sure some publisher would appoint a professional translator to do a much better job at it.
  - drewzero1 4y ago
    Like I said, I'll take what I can get. I don't mean to sound ungrateful.

nextaccountic 4y ago

I love those two articles about the book (specially the second, written by the author himself) https://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/ https://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/ Middle-earth according to Mordor https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation/ https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation... Why I reimagined "LOTR" from Mordor's perspective