ToME WikiPernAngband was a RogueLike game set in Middle-earth but with elements of Pern. Later, PernAngband was renamed to ToME.
NeilStevens: DarkGod was pressured into renaming the game by representatives of Anne McCaffrey's estate and UbiSoft, and because of that I will never buy or read her books.
LukeHaub: That's a little harsh don't you think. Her books are great, I couldn't live without them.
NeilStevens: Great or not, I don't want to give money to bullies.
NerdanelVampire: I've read in various anthologies a few (four) Anne McCaffrey short stories. I thought they were plain bad. It seems to me that authors who are against fanfic and things like PernAngband are secretly insecure about their quality of writing, often with reason.
FuriousOne: Hear, hear. I've never read Anne McCaffrey before stumbling across ToME, and I don't plan on starting, because I've come across ToME - fan fiction and fan-derived works are some of the most sincerest forms of flattery an author can receive, and if an author rejects her fans' attention and homages to her work in favour of making money (because obviously, UbiSoft was involved due to a Pern-based video game, yes?) then I don't think her writing comes from the heart. And if it does not come from the heart, then it cannot be good fiction, IMO.
RavenRed: Anne McCaffrey's stories vary from brilliant to bland. She's one of those authors who started out in a very genre-challenging way and descended into fairly anodyne stuff in the end. As an example, the Dragonriders were originally portrayed as sexually omnivorous in the early books, but all her later heroes and heroines were monogamously hetrosexual. She seems to have shied away from the internal logic of her earlier work. She also got more interested in the science of science fiction, but it was very much at the expense of good plot and character. Get into her early stuff (Dragonflight and To Ride Pegasus), it's grittier and more adventurous writing. And whilst Ms McCaffrey is a bit more aggressive with fanfic than your average writer, the contractual guff with Ubisoft is more likely to be a restrictive license-based contract than personal vindictiveness. It's can't be that bad, if it inspired Darkgod to begin coding *bands...
LukeHaub: But it wasn't Anne McCaffreys fault. According to her son Todd McCaffrey, It was UbiSoft that was against PernAngband and Anne McCaffrey was bound by the contract she had signed with UbiSoft. And i agree NerdanelVampire, her short stories aren't very good, her books are much better.
FuriousOne: An author (or their estate) always retains the copyright to his/her original work, regardless who they sign contracts with. That she or her representatives were daft enough to believe that something like PernAngband could pose any threat to sales of a mass-marketed game speaks volumes.
NerdanelVampire: There are a lot of official games made of Tolkien's books too, and no one has tried to forbit things like ToME or Tolkien fanfiction.
ReenenLaurie: I've never read an Anne McCaffrey, and with the small amount of reading I do, I'll rather go through other fiction... there is enough to choose from. (Just reading Tolkien can keep you busy for a very very long time). But what legal concerns would who have against tome? Isn't Tolkien old enough to be a little like classical music? Or not yet?
NeilStevens: Copyright length varies by country. In the US it's really long for works as recent as Tolkien's.
MassimilianoMarangio: A rough estimate is lifespan of the author plus 70 years in the USA and the European Union, lifespan plus 50 in Australia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright.
FuriousOne: Tolkien was the most fan work-friendly author you could imagine. He's always encouraged people to use his works as springboard, to write stories about his setting and about his characters. Tolkien's work isn't 'old' enough to be in the public domain, it takes 75 years IIRC, and I think that's 75 years counting from when the Tolkien estate no longer has copyright on the works.