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Comment by drewying | Hacker News Reader

Can someone who is a little more into Lord of the Rings comment on this? This guy didn't really get a lawsuit dropped by claiming that Tolkeins books were actually written 5000 years ago did he?

Or is there something here whooshing over my head?

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It's a satire piece that suggests that authors who pretend to write translations of fictional books (such as Tolkien with LotR and Goldman with The Princess Bride) may actually be opening up their stories to plagiarists who claim to be "translating" the same source material. Or at least, that's my reading of it.

In a world where the Red Book of Westmarch actually existed, this other translation would be legal.

The latter. Had anyone actually written a supposed translation of the "Red Book" I'm pretty sure the Tolkein estate has enough movie money to fund an orc army of lawyers who would march to court thumping their shields, or, rather briefcases with swords, or, rather, umbrellas, chanting "We are the Triple Eagles, sons of BC High!"

I suspect that if the book were written as described -- foul-mouthed Galadriel, hobbit sex, diarrhea in Moria -- it would end up a parody.

That's pretty much what Harvard Lampoon did back in 1969:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bored_of_the_Rings

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_of_Westmarch

Edit: this is a work of fiction 'blog post' in a pretty fictional-oriented 'blog'

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