Strikingly tall with shoulder-length hair, Chu possesses a delicate, considerate nature beneath. Had he been born in ancient times, he might have been a renowned warrior and hero. In the present age, he is the godfather of fantasy literature in Taiwan. (Chi Chiu-chi)

The 2001 Christmas season saw the spectacular release in the US of the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, the first part of the fantasy novel trilogy The Lord of the Rings by the late J.R.R. Tolkien, author and professor of literature at Oxford University. The lavish production drew worldwide attention.

In January of the following year, The Fellowship of the Ring opened in Taiwan. Riding the wave of that sensational opening, Linking Publishing Company's Chinese version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) sold 600,000 copies. That success also brought fame for Lucifer Chu, the translator of this work and the moving force behind the fantasy literature movement in Taiwan.

Those who have heard of Chu invariably have the same reaction: "Oh, he's the young man who got rich translating The Lord of the Rings."

When inquiring into the astronomical sum Chu is supposed to have received, guesses range from NT$10-20 million. According to Chu himself, who just turned 30 this year, "The accurate figure is NT$27 million."

While the media keeps coming back to the issue of royalties, the young Lucifer Chu has not fallen into the vanity or discomfiture that great wealth can bring. Instead, he has taken NT$10 million out of those proceeds and founded the Fantasy Foundation, an organization dedicated to introducing quality fantasy literature and computer games to the public. Chu has even funded his own fantasy art prize to encourage public creativity and share in the delight of the world of fantasy.

But just when everyone was getting used to the idea of seeing Chu as a spokesman for fantasy literature, he once more became the object of media attention with a new venture in September of last year.

This time, however, he did not make the news because of fantasy literature, but because of his volunteer work on the Internet, a realm that knows no borders. Chu has assembled 700-some Chinese volunteers to participate in a massive project aimed at translating the contents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS) into Chinese. This project, operating without paying a penny in salary, fully demonstrates the Internet's striking potential for "borderless knowledge" and "knowledge sharing."