An Atlas of Imaginary Worlds 1: Narnia

Following my brief journey into the bizarre and sinister world of the censoring of internet maps I have come across a range of different imaginary worlds that are mapped in detail. The leading one has to be the Middle Earth of The Lord of the Rings story, as you can see there are stacks of those of different kinds, though lawyers are keen to stamp them out. Next in terms of internet popularity comes Narnia. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963; the part of his life are shown in the movie 'Shadowlands' (1993). Like J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973 who apparently converted him to Christianity though Tolkien was Catholic and Lewis Church of England) he lectured at the University of Oxford in the 1950s, they were both in the 'Inklings' writers' club and used to drink in the 'Eagle and Child' pub which still exists in Oxford. Lewis's 'The Chronicles of Narnia' consisting of seven books (a heptology I suppose): 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (1950), 'Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia' (1951), 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' (1952), 'The Silver Chair' (1953), ' The Horse and His Boy' (1954), 'The Magician’s Nephew' (1955), 'The Last Battle' (1956). Like Tolkien's work they are adventure stories (though probably aimed at a younger audience than 'The Lord of the Rings' and certainly shorter in length) with moral themes, and Christian undertones (notably the character of Aslan the lion, who like Jesus Christ in Christian theology redeems characters through his death and rebirth).

As with 'The Lord of the Rings' the CGI capabilities of the 21st century enabled Lewis's work to be revived through a blockbuster movie, with 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' (2005). The scene in which the White Witch, Jadis, (very well played by Tilda Swinton who has a suitably otherworldly demeanour; the witch is white because she is icy rather than good) sneers at the boy Edmund Pevensie who betrayed his friends to her in return for sweets (he had admittedly come from Britain in the Second World War where sweets were unavailable) is a good lesson for today's very demanding youth.

Anyway, as with any decent fantasy novel, there is a map. Narnia, by the way, is named after a city North of Rome in ancient times. Like Tolkien and Robert E. Howard (more on him another post), Lewis drew on his knowledge of the Classical world to provide names and locations. He also used other cultures, for example Jadis comes from the Turkish word for witch. So, below is a selection of maps of his Narnia:

Whereas Tolkien's Middle Earth faces North-West, Narnia seems to face East. Wildlands or wastes of the North seem a common element, and probably reflects authors coming from northern Europe and North America. Maybe the fantasy worlds of authors from the Mediterranean, Africa or South America would be very different. I suppose another thing is that you need wide plains to ride across in dramatic fantasies and to counter this maybe why when we turn to the work of Le Guin and Moorcock who eschew their predecessors, you have lots of archiepelagos instead.

The Black Riders of the Internet II

I was not able to get all the maps in one posting, so this is the sequel, so if you have not had your fill of Middle Earth maps quite yet:

So if for some reason you find yourself transported there, then you have no excuse for getting lost. Now this is a list of some of the websites and parts of websites which have been closed down by these lawyers (information courtesy of The One Ring fansite):

Annals of Arda: Maps- Star map still available, others had to be dropped. Licensing attempted.
Map of the Shire -Removed due to lawyers.
Map of Arda - Removed due to lawyers.
Fangorn Area- Removed due to lawyers.
LotR Maps - Removed due to lawyers, whole site.
Jeroen Map of Rohan, Gondor up to Mordor - Removed due to lawyers.
Rolozo's Tolkien Map Collection - Removed due to lawyers.
r3t's LotR Maps -Removed entire site due to lawyers. Forum also removed.

These sites were not ones making money, they were fan sites. Many of the maps were drawn by fans, so this was not a copyright issue. In addition, the law is being applied inequitably as it appears only English-language sites are targeted, not for example, French-language ones. In addition, removing forums is clearly suppressing freedom of speech, there are no grounds on which to claim that a discussion infringes copyright. I also thought that challenges to anything I posted would come from the government not from a group of profiteering lawyers pretending somehow to defend the legacy of an author who died in 1973 (we have to wait until 2044 until the copyright is clear, it having been extended from 50 to 70 years in the UK). I am sure Tolkien himself would have loathed such an attitude especially when it suppresses enthusiasm about his work. I always thought 'The Lord of the Rings' was about geeks have anorak fun, but clearly it is now about free speech in the face of attacks by faceless minions something both Tolkien and his fans could appreciate. Read this before it gets (il)legally suppressed!

The Black Riders of the Internet

It is interesting how I have been on quite an internet journey in the last couple of days. First I am interested in 'what if?' history and then become interested in book art and its possibilities of visually expressing counter-factuals. Then working up some of those I begin looking for counter-factual maps across the internet and in turn this leads to maps of fantasy and imaginary places and in turn that leads to me finding out about how a group of lawyers are seeking to rein in the internet in a serious way.

Growing up, unlike the bulk of teenage boys that could read that I knew, I was never a fan of 'The Hobbit' or 'The Lord of the Rings'. I enjoyed writing fiction myself and seeing so many people rip off ideas from those books I thought that if I read them I would contaminate my own writing and other things I did at the time, such as playing role playing games (this was the 1980s when the most sophisticated computer games were rather blocky and teenage boys would spend hours in stuffy rooms describing gloomy castles and rolling to see if they were killed by orcs). The work of J.R.R. Tolkien has sort of been subsumed into mainstream fantasy culture anyway. Of course, he did not invent it all himself anyway. His elves and dwarfs (or dwarves as he called them) and dragons all come from traditional Western mythology; the rings in his books borrow from Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas and much of the politics of his books are analogies for Europe's battle with Nazi Germany's and then the Soviet Union's expanding influence in the world when he was writing ('The Lord of the Rings' was written between 1937-49 published 1954-5), with the reluctant help of the USA (i.e. the elves). He did invent the Orcs, but even their name comes from Orcus who was one of the Roman gods of the underworld, stemming from Etruscan myths and subsumed by Pluto. A lot comes from Norse and German myths, though tempered with Christianity though less overtly than by his fellow Oxford witer, C.S. Lewis, in his Narnia series.

Anyway, so 'The Lord of the Rings' has become globally successful. A movie in 1978 was a flop, but with technology having advanced a great deal to allow the fantastical scenes to be portrayed convincingly, the trilogy of films 2001-2003 made it globally successful and as with all movie franchises it sparked off loads of merchandising. The internet is littered with websites by fans, companies and other groups all with something to say about the stories and the films and the products. What I found out very quickly, though is that the lawyers of Tolkien's estate have been rampaging across the internet (very like the ghoulish Black Riders who remorselessly hunt down Frodo in 'The Lord of the Rings') threatening a score of internet sites with legal action unless they remove images of Middle Earth (Tolkien's setting for the stories, itself derived from Midgard in Norse myths). You can find a long list of websites closed down by these lawyers. They even threaten people who have drawn their own maps of Middle Earth and only permit them to restore them once they have paid for a licence.

I can accept copyright, though it seems silly when people are not deriving any income from the images, simply just putting them on a website for decoration or to discuss. However, this attempt to intellectually control what appears on the internet and to seek to close down websites which seek to express visual views of a topic is very sinister. Does the Chinese government try to remove Andy Warhol's image of Chairman Mao, does that of Cuba seek to licence the image of Che Guevara (I know he was not Cuban, but that is the authority with the strongest cultural claim over the image)? How close does my map have to be for the Tolkien lawyers to intervene? Can the outline be the same and the names changed or the names be the same on a different map. If I did an underground railway map of Mordor would I be sued and by whom, London Underground? I doubt it.

There are numerous websites and blogs out there that I would love to see removed because of their views or what they depict, but I accept that in a world of free speech they will be there. It is alarming that a group of lawyers, so assiduously, are policing what is produced, especially when only intellectual and not financial gain is being derived. Do they really believe that someone who wants a map of Middle Earth on their wall is going to settle for a fuzzy jpeg rather than buying one? Clearly they do. I think this is an attitude is self-perpetuating, they have no desire to benefit the estate of Tolkien just to line their own pockets combating the 'threat' that twenty websites have a picture of Middle Earth on them. Of course, fortunately, there are many they have not yet stopped and if you, unlike me, are interested in Middle Earth here is a range of maps:

Inverted Earth: Land Is Sea; Sea Is Land

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘Other Earths: Alternate Outcomes of Geological Developments & Prehistoric Times’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Other-Earths-Developments-Prehistoric-ebook/dp/B0089EIJBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339081071&sr=8-1 

UK readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Other-Earths-Developments-Prehistoric-ebook/dp/B0089EIJBQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339081015&sr=8-1

What If? Art 3: The History Book That Never Was

Last night I was thinking that in my recent counter-factual book covers, though I am not certain what the University of West of England's definition of a 'history book' is most of mine so far had been memoirs or books written at the time of the divergence from our world's history. Then I got to thinking, why not try some history books, i.e. looking back from somewhere around 2007 in an alternate world, back in time to a period which would be different to ours. One advantage of this was it was difficult to fake up contemporary book covers from any period much before the late 19th century. So to address earlier issues a history book of the 20th and 21st centuries would work better. As before, what I have done is look for the type of book that I am seeking to replicate with an alternative history. I try to use the same fonts and colouring as they use for those books in our world. I have tended to avoid putting actual publishers on them, especially in the cases of dictator's books, but hope they are not offended that I have done a few others that clearly reference their style.

I hope that it is clear to all that as with the millions of manipulated images of celebrities that are available on the internet, these are meant in parody and not to cause offence. In fact I think they are mildly educational as, at a glance they can provoke debate about history. As I have noted before, counter-factual history is a legitimate academic tool for testing the relative importance of causes of particular events. If anyone is upset by what I produce, please let me know via a comment and I will alter the offending image.

'The Failure of the Holy Land Crusade 1095-98'

By Steven Runciman (1951; 11th edition 2004)

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘On Other Fields: Alternate Outcomes of the Middle Ages’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436531&sr=1-8

UK readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436579&sr=1-9

'Patterns of Byzantine Industrialization: The Eighteenth Century'

By W.A. Lewis (1958; 4th edition 2002)

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘On Other Fields: Alternate Outcomes of the Middle Ages’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436531&sr=1-8

UK readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436579&sr=1-9

'Selected Congressional Speeches of Senator Harold Wilson

1950-62; With Foreword by Governor Douglas Jay' (1965)

For this one I was trying to imitate Harold Wilson's actual book 'The New Britain: Labour Plan Outlined by Harold Wilson' which was published by Penguin in 1964 and in line with their current affairs books of the time had a very red cover. Unfortunately I could not find an online image of that so this was as close as I could come. In reality Harold Wilson was an MP from 1945 and in 1947 at the age of only 31 he became President of the Board of Trade, a post he held until 1951. In 1964-70 and 1974-6 he was Prime Minister. Whilst not as pro-American as contemporaries in the Labour Party, notably Hugh Gaitskell, he was not opposed to the Americans either and continued Britian's 'special relationship' with the country as prime minister. A Wilson whose political career had developed in a more US-focused Britain would no doubt have had a different, possibly even more positive outlook on relationships with the Americans.

How would this have come about that a Briton would sit in the US Senate? Well, Following the First and Second World Wars in the space of just over 30 years, the UK which had fought in both almost throughout, was financially and industrially exhausted. It also faced the burden of a huge empire that had always cost more money than it had generated. The UK was facing bankruptcy and had to take out another loan from the USA in 1946 (which was only finally paid off in 2006) with harsh terms such as to make the pound convertible in 1947, which the UK did though had to stop as it almost wrecked the economy.


In 1948, seeing how difficult Europe was finding it to recover (there was starvation in Germany) and fearing that this would drive countries like France and Italy to Communism (the Americans were even a little hesitant over the British Labour Government's views) they launched Marshall Aid which gave dollars for the Europeans to buy the necessary resources and machinery from the USA. UK alone got half of the total sum given. The UK was also plagued by harsh weather in the Winter of 1947 and 2 million people went unemployed as a result. Some Americans politicians suggested that the UK should become a full part of the USA as the 49th state (Alaska and Hawaii did not become states until 1959) and have senators sit in the Senate. The UK is only the size of Rhode Island, but with about 50 million people in 1951 it has more than even the most populous state in the USA in 2006 (California with 36 million people), but as with the senatorial system it would still get 2 senators as the largest and smallest states of the USA do. British politicians rejected the offer but the USA and UK have remained politically close ever since.

This what if? envisages that the UK could not sustain itself in the late 1940s and that by 1950 it was electing senators to Congress. There is no limit on how often a US Senator can stand. Their term of office is 6 years and a third of the Senate is re-elected every two years. So, if Wilson had won in 1950 he would have served until 1956 and could easily have won again to serve to 1962. I have also added in Douglas Jay as Governor of the State of the United Kingdom. Jay was a 'moderniser' in the Labour Party and an Atlanticist. He supported Hugh Gaitskell who, if he had not died in 1963 would have led the party towards being more like the Democrats of the USA; he was opposed to British involvement in the EEC. Jay served under Wilson as President of the Board of Trade 1964-7, so it seems that he might have been a good candidate for governor in an Americanised UK.

'The Causes and Consequences of the Assassination of Charles De Gaulle, 8th September 1961' by Serge Bernstein (1995)

I have been more cheeky with this one as Serge Bernstein is actually author of a book called 'The Republic of De Gaulle 1958-1969' (1993) which is in the Cambridge History of Modern France series. The book above of course has never existed. General Charles De Gaulle, leader of the Free French Movement 1940-5, prime minister of France 1944-46 and 1958 and president of France 1958-69 died peacefully in 1970. This was quite an outstanding achievement given there probably 31 attempts on his life from 1940-69. He came back to power in 1958 to resolve the situation of Algeria which had been owned by France from 1830 and was considered part of France rather than a colony. About 1 million out of a population of 9 million were Europeans (including Spanish and Italians as well as French) and at the time Algiers was the second largest French city after Paris. Colonists were unwilling to give up Algeria to Algerian control and received much support from sections of the Army. In May 1958 French paratroopers seized Corsica as the first step in a coup to overthrow France's government. Only De Gaulle's credibility among the military combined with his willingness to fight for democracy enable that crisis to resolved and another attempt at a coup in April 1961 called the Generals' Putsch which followed the French referendum decision of January 1961 to grant Algeria independence. De Gaulle went on to reform French politics to a more stable basis, establishing the 5th Republic in 1958 which remains in place today.

De Gaulle's opponents in the 1950s and 1960s were the CNR (Council of National Resistance) of those who supported Algeria remaining French. They had a military arm, the OAS (Secret Army Organisation). They tried repeated assassination attempts on De Gaulle. He was in an almost unique position as the only person who could keep France away from civil war or a dictatorship. Not many people have been in such a position in history that there is not someone who could have replaced them: Hitler and Stalin could easily have been substituted for by someone else in their party. The most famous attempts against De Gaulle came at Pont-sur-Seine 8th September 1961 when a bomb combined with napalm misfired as De Gaulle was driving past. It showered his car in flaming napalm but the explosion was too weak to cause damage. The other well-known attempt was at Petit Clamart 22nd August 1962 when assassins sub-machine gunned De Gaulle's car putting over a hundred bullets into it. De Gaulle's wife and son had been in the car and his retribution was swift and brutal: he acted outside the law to have the would-be assassins picked up by snatch squads and had them executed without trial. The Petit Clamart attempt (and its many blunders) is reconstructed in the first 10 minutes of the movie 'The Day of the Jackal' (1973).

So, with this book, I envisage that the assassins at Pont-sur-Seine built a better bomb with newer explosives. De Gaulle is killed in the explosion. What then for France? Well, though the coups of May 1958 and of April 1961 were seen down, I doubt there would have been anyone who could have stopped a third. I imagine troops would have seized power in Paris and you would have seen another general, probably General Jacques Massu (1908-2002) who had led the attempted coup in 1958. The referendum would have been revoked and France would probably have fought a bloody colonial war stretching on into the late 1960s. This would have meant upheaval across Europe as refugees fled the fighting. France along with Germany was the cornerstone of the EEC (European Economic Community) which had excluded dictatorships such as Spain and Portugal from joining. So the EEC which has now evolved into the EU may have dissolved. Would the Americans have intervened? They were not yet involved in Vietnam, but they also had not problem with dictatorships and may have let the French go their own way. I do envisage that the stability and thus the prosperity of Europe would have been disrupted severely and the development of its economy and the EU which now includes so many European states would have been greatly retarded: things that might be discussed in this book.

British Civil Liberties Deteriorate Further

In previous postings on this blog, 'Combating Terrorism - Responding to Whose Agenda?' and 'Return of the Sus Laws', I have outlined how the fear of terrorism has been used to pass harsher and harsher legislation in the UK, eroding civil liberties and yet doing nothing to reduce the risk of terrorism. The erosion of civil liberties has taken a further step this week. BAA (formerly British Airport Authority, the largest controller of airports in the UK, including the three main ones in London) moved to get injunctions against climate change protestors complaining the expansion of Heathrow Airport, London's largest, would seriously worsen CO2 emissions and so worsen global warming. This comes at a time when even world leaders are beginning to pay attention to pollution and its effects on the climate. These protestors are not violent, they simply want to stand outside the airport with banners and chant. BAA claimed that this would be a threat to security and allow terrorists to get in and act. Of course, the real reason is because BAA does not want the embarrassment of legitimate protest against its activities.

There have been injunctions made against named protestors, but now things have gone further and anti-terrorist legislation is being used to stop and search protestors. Two women simply cycling past Heathrow airport were arrested and held for 30 hours without charge under the legislation. It was claimed that they were attempting to record information which could be used in a terrorist attack, but they had no cameras or equipment and have been charged now with 'conspiracy to cause a nuisance'. Clearly just keeping your eyes open when passing a publicly-accessible airport is recording vital information and cycling is a public 'nuisance'. What is happening is a poweful company is simply using very harsh laws to get annoying people or even just passersby out of its way.

It is a human right that you are not held in prison without charge. However, first the time was increased from 72 hours to 7 days to 28 days to 56 days. How long will it be when people can simply be taken off the streets and held indefinitely. That is what happened under the Nazi regime, under the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, that is what happens in China and numerous other dictatorships. Amnesty International has campaigned for decades against such laws across the world and now this situation is happening in the UK.

Airports have always had strict security. People tend to forget that before September 11th 2001, the UK had experienced terrorist activity for thirty years as had Germany, France and Italy. Thus, airports have long been secured. They are the only places in the UK where police habitually carry firearms. However, airport and airline companies have quickly caught on to the fact that they can blur the line between legitimate protest and terrorism. Since the early 2000s people making complaints about treatment on airlines are now often told they have to move away from the desk or will be fined on the spot. If they do not then they are branded a terrorist threat by the airline companies and are hauled off by police. This has had a great benefit for the airline companies who see their complaints fall away, though in many cases their customer service quality has deteriorated.

Airline companies will go further than simply having complainers removed by police. In 1993 a former policeman, John Gorman (not to be confused with Sir John Gorman, a regional manager of British Airways 1969-79), complained when he found a piece of glass in a drink that he bought on a British Airways flight from New York. For the next five years he was intimidated by British Airways, charges were brought against him for trying to defraud British Airways, though these were later dropped. His car was attacked and his house was broken into. Throughout British Airways said he was a 'professional claimant', though if he had been, given how long it took to get to court (in 1998) he would hardly be making much money out of the business.

What is clear is that large corporations are using the government's foolish adoption of ill-thought out anti-terrorist legislation, to keep any criticism out of their way. In the 1990s they had to use intimidation, but in the late 2000s they do not have to bother, they can simply brand someone a terrorist, without any evidence required at all, and have the government do all the intimidation for them. In 1998 the Human Rights Act finally brough the European Convention on Human Rights (which was established in 1950 by the Council of Europe, a body the UK was part of; it is a different thing to the European Union) into British Law, but since then our human rights have rapidly deteriorated. Whilst Gordon Brown's premiership has introduced some good new policies, his unwillingness (or inability) to stop the deterioration of civil liberties in the UK which are now being used to suppress legitimate protest (a key part of a democracy and something Brown's Labour Party was found on), is alarming and a disgrace. Read this now, before the UK authorities bar me from the internet!

What if? Art 2: The History Book That Never Was

My views on on Theodore Roosevelt being re-elected US President in 1912 and going on to serve as High Commissioner for US mandates in the former Ottoman Empire can be found in my e-book ‘Other Americas: Alternate Outcomes for the USA in the 18th, 19th and 20th Centuries’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: 

http://www.amazon.com/Other-Americas-Alternate-Centuries-ebook/dp/B0085CYKI8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337759999&sr=8-1