The Audacity . . .

Fan fiction is one thing.

Writing fan fiction based on a highly-popular intellectual property is another thing.

Continually harassing -- and then suing -- the holders of said IP when they don't respond to your requests to "collaborate" and have official sanction of your fanfiction, well, that can only be said to be Demetrious Polychron.

Who is this dude? Well, I don't really know. His self-assuredness knows no bounds, however, as he wrote what he calls a "pitch-perfect" sequel to JRR Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings.

And yes, everything about the lawsuit, the attempts to get attention from Amazon (producers of a Lord of the Rings-based TV series I haven't seen) and the Tolkein estate, and his lawsuit arguing Amazon was impinging on his copyright is all true. Read about it here.

Mr. Polychron has posted(!) some of his work in The Fellowship of the King online here. And while my own writing isn't anything to brag about, his certainly isn't either. If this is pitch-perfect, then Tolkein's tone is really insipid. Which it is not. This guy's deluding himself on the quality of his writing to be sure.

Most fan fiction is of this ilk and variety.

What came of the lawsuit, well, per the BBC:

On Thursday Judge Steven V Wilson called the lawsuit "frivolous and unreasonably filed" and granted the permanent injunction, preventing him from selling his book and any other planned sequels, of which there were six.

The court also awarded lawyer's fees totalling $134,000 (£106,000) to the Tolkien Estate and Amazon in connection with Polychron's lawsuit.

The estate's UK solicitor, Steven Maier of Maier Blackburn, said: "This is an important success for the Tolkien Estate, which will not permit unauthorised authors and publishers to monetise JRR Tolkien's much-loved works in this way.

"This case involved a serious infringement of The Lord of the Rings copyright, undertaken on a commercial basis, and the estate hopes that the award of a permanent injunction and attorneys' fees will be sufficient to dissuade others who may have similar intentions."

Tolkein's work doesn't enter the public domain until at least the mid 2040s. By then I'll be dead, of course. Mr. Polychron's writing will be dead long before that. Going to the author's publication website, fractalbooks.com, is already telling.