[davem]

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

It would be easy, for example, to write a story in which Myra Hindley explains why she committed her crimes. It would be easy to have Saddam Hussein be forced to explain himself to the family of a murdered political dissident, but in the end those stories would have no real value, because they would reflect what the author would like those people to be, or wants the audience to think they were, rather than reality; whilst giving the appearance of reality by the use of real names and personas. Reality is always more challenging, and ultimately more beneficial to the observer, which is why the best historical fiction avoids painting too detailed a picture of any real figure.

But should an author be banned from writing such stories - or punished if they do? Should the author of such fiction be dragged through the courts & risk losing their livelihoods & made bankrupt for such 'presumption'? Define 'reality' - & prove that it is more 'beneficial' (in fact, define 'beneficial' in this context...) Where I disagree with you is here is that you seem to want to restrict BY LAW! what an individual can do with his culture, what use he can make of the people who preceded him. Are you really saying that the story of the real 5th century warlord on whom King Arthur is ultimately based is actually more beneficial than what Malory or the Gawain poet made of it? Should Malory have been forbidden to write the Morte d'Arthur because it was not historically acurate? Or was it permissible because Malory wove the 'real' Arthur into a 'romance'? And then why not the weaving of the real Tolkien into a romance?

you can't have Cecil Rhodes condemning imperialism, for example, or Richard the Lionheart extolling the virtues of England. One of the great advantages of history is that the events of the past have no overriding purpose or message; the facts seldom support any one view, and they make no account of sensibility or taste. The very nature of fictional writing ensures that it embodies one person's beliefs and opinions, and the very events bear out those opinions. To present the latter as the former is to present the author's opinions as historical reality, which is profoundly dishonest.

Yes - you absolutely can! And why should you not? If you make clear that you are weaving a fantasy & that you are not presenting the 'truth' - which Hillard clearly does. You seem to want to hog tie, to cripple the human imagination. Why should not Tolkien be a character in a fantasy. Copyright only prevents you reproducing his works, it does not, & should not, prevent you writing a fantasy about him flying to New York, or playing with the conceit that he didn't invent Middle-earth but merely translated the stories in the Red Book. Mirkwood is a fantasy novel which plays around with that conceit.

The purpose of Mirkwood is manifestly different.

Yes - its a fantasy novel.

I can see why Tolkien's estate would like to stop its publication, and personally I can't understand why a literary critique can't be written and published as such. I doubt that the wider implications had occurred to them, to be quite honest; although some sort of standard for the presentation of reality in fiction ought to exist.

Perhaps the Government could set up a committee to determine what authors can & cannot write. Artists are too dangerous & certainly too bloody cocky to be allowed to write what they want. Apparently there are people out there publishing books full of stuff they've just made up!

Perhaps they liked Here There Be Dragons, but thought that Mirkwood was awful. I suspect you may be right, though. I can't blame them for trying, because I can't imagine that they would object to something sympathetic and this wasn't after all a factual account of Tolkien, but the product of a mind that had never known him personally.

I can blame them. This would have been the thin end of a very nasty wedge. It wouldn't simply have prevented any unauthorised depiction of historical figures, it would also have put the kibosh on speculation about them & their motives. It would effectively hand total control of the person & character of a historical figure over to that person's estate & while that might prevent the individual being exploited or 'misrepresented' by an author, it would effectively mean that the individual could only be depicted in the way his/her estate approved of - if the estate 'own' the person & character they could even prevent factual depictions of the individual if they didn't approve of those facts or want them made public - which is effectively what has happened with Wheelbarrows at Dawn - they've used copyright to prevent facts being published.