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Orcward writes:

From Wired [wired.com]

Fantasy author Andy Duncan was inspired to write his story “Senator Bilbo” after noticing that the segregationist senator Theodore Bilbo shares a name with J.R.R. Tolkien‘s hobbit hero Bilbo Baggins.

The story, which appears in Duncan’s new collection An Agent of Utopia, was also inspired by Michael Moorcock, who has criticized Tolkien for depicting creatures such as orcs, trolls, and goblins as intrinsically evil.

“It’s hard to miss the repeated notion in Tolkien that some races are just worse than others, or that some peoples are just worse than others,” Duncan says. “And this seems to me—in the long term, if you embrace this too much—it has dire consequences for yourself and for society.”

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