Book of Sand

Why I reimagined "LOTR" from Mordor's perspective   Kirill Yeskov explains what led him to write "The Last Ringbearer," his parallel version of Tolkien's classic  It’s unlikely that anyone will devote any serious effort to analyzing the ecosystem of a barren desert populated by train-sized predatory worms that eat excavators and sweat psychedelics: fantasy is fantasy. Not so the Middle Earth; the developed perfection of Tolkien’s world quite impels one to conduct natural history studies of it, sometimes provocatively so. This invites another comparison, however strange at first blush, between Tolkien and Yefremov. Tolkien was a practicing scientist, too, but a linguist rather than a natural scientist like Yefremov, so the foundation of professional knowledge he had used to erect Middle Earth was different. It is fairly obvious to me that the game the Oxford professor decided to play with nature began, in essence, with the creation of imaginary lang...

  "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. "           Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Masque of Pandora. "For those whom God for ruin has design'd, He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind."            John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther . "Whom God wishes to destroy, he first makes mad." Seneca, Maxim 911 (Misattribution? Should be Publilius Syrus, see below, Lyman translation.) "When falls on Man the anger of the gods, first from his mind, they banish understanding." Lycurgus, from an oration. "Those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of their senses." Euripedes, fragment of a poem. "When divine power plans evil for a man, it first injures his mind." Sophocles, Antigone. All of these were listed in Richard Powell's novel "Whom the gods would destroy" (1970) and called The Long Lineage of a Title .  ============================================= While this is often attributed ...

Historian Michael Wood returns to his first great love, the Anglo-Saxon world, to reveal the origins of our literary heritage. Focusing on Beowulf and drawing on other Anglo-Saxon classics, he traces the birth of English poetry back to the Dark Ages. Travelling across the British Isles from East Anglia to Scotland and with the help of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney, actor Julian Glover, local historians and enthusiasts, he brings the story and language of this iconic poem to life.  https://youtu.be/1C0sFXU0SLo

On Youtube (4 parts) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRD0RO4sE79wvioM3elDZSrzgsOhXPUsX SYNOPSIS Michael Wood tours the English locations important to William Shakespeare as he explores the playwright and poet's life and work.  A review "In Search of Shakespeare" is a beautifully presented historical documentary in which the always enthusiastic and energetic host/narrator Michael Wood ("In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great" "In Search of Beowulf" "In Search of The Trojan War" ) retraces the footsteps and life of the man know to us simply as the Bard. At the outset Wood dismisses any question or controversy about Shakespeare's credibility and attributions as mere conspiracy theory and then launches into a telling of the Shakespeare's biography in a sort of detective story format by rediscovering the bits and pieces of historical evidence of Shakespeare's life which exist outside his body of work.  Taking the aud...

SYNOPSIS A man, having fallen in love with the wrong woman, is sent by the sultan himself on a diplomatic mission to a distant land as an ambassador. Stopping at a Viking village port to restock on supplies, he finds himself unwittingly embroiled in a quest to banish a mysterious threat in a distant Viking land.   PLOT A cultured diplomat from Baghdad joins a band of savage warriors in time to meet an even more fearsome enemy in this historical adventure. In 922 A.D., Ibn Fadlan (Antonio Banderas) is a Muslim emissary from Baghdad en route to meet with the King of Saqaliba when he encounters a band of Vikings. While Ibn and his people are intelligent and well-mannered, the Vikings are a rowdy and sometimes unpleasant lot, with an unquenchable appetite for food, alcohol, and women. However, in time he develops an understanding and respect for the Viking warriors and is welcomed into their society by their leader, Buliwyf. However, Ibn must now join them as they return ...

This is a "real life Davinci Code," obviously meant to be, and yet it is fascinatingly good fun and exceptionally well done. SYNOPSIS This is the amazing story of Petter Amundsen, who believes he has deciphered a secret code hidden in Shakespeare’s first folio, and Dr. Robert Crumpton, a skeptical historian and Shakespeare expert. Is there truth in Amundsen’s claims? Are these codes part of something larger, secrets spanning centuries? Crumpton follows along as Amundsen reveals a coded map found in Shakespeare’s texts that may lead to one of history’s greatest treasures. Director: Jorgen Friberg Cast: Petter Amundsen, Robert Crumpton, Stanley Wells. On Youtube  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJzi3Junuc

 Nothing Is Truer than Truth introduces Edward de Vere, A-list party boy on the continental circuit, who travels to Venice in 1575 and becomes Shakespeare. The film argues that the author's bisexuality is the reason for the pseudonym. on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Truer-Truth-Derek-Jacobi/dp/B07L42RLRC   see also The Shakespeare Mystery PBS Frontline, April 19,1989 On Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkqcLJZ9I3s&t=5s