Post by annemarble on Apr 22, 2023 2:20:44 GMT
Have you seen the lawsuit brought by fantasy author Demetrious Polychron against Jeff Bezos and the Tolkien Estate? Demetrious Polychron somehow managed to publish an unauthorized Lord of the Rings sequel on Amazon. He even sent a copy of his book to Tolkien's grandson (I think Simon Tolkien) -- and got no response. And in 2019, he somehow managed to drop a copy of it off at Simon Tolkien's house?!
And now, he is suing Jeff Bezos and the Tolkien Estate -- claiming that they stole some of his material for "Rings of Power." Even though his book didn't appear on Amazon until after the show premiered.
Does he truly think Simon Tolkien read his book and just happened to send it to Amazon's screenwriters and told them to borrow some of his plot elements?! Or does he think this is going to drive sales of his Tolkien fanfic?
Of course, if you look into this, the list of similarities is ridiculously vague. This case is giving me "Nancy Stouffer sues JKR" vibes. If you remember that case, Nancy Stouffer sued JKR over "similarities" between the Harry Potter books and Stouffer's self-published book (Rah and the Muggles or something like that). But the similarities included things like a Keeper of the Keys and a castle on a moat. *facepalm*
If you're still on Twitter, check out the coverage from Fellowship of Fans, starting here. And this Twitter post from user TolkienGuide about the similarities.
I also wrote about it for Medium because I can't resist harping on about a popcorny publishing fiasco. There have been articles on many of the nerd and pop culture sites, but the Tolkien fandom Twitter posts and Reddit threads have had the most in-depth discussions.
And at least Tom Bombadil was not involved. (I added that for Brian. )