Tom Clancy’s Name Sold
Ubisoft just bought Tom Clancy’s name. Ubisoft, you’ll recall, are the makers of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six and Tom Clancy games I don’t care about. In a manner of speaking, Mr. Clancy would seem to have sold his name years ago, but in truth he had merely licensed it out. Rather than paying something like $7 million every year to renew their rental, though, Ubisoft decided to just shell out a lump sum and buy the name outright. Whether this comes with Clancy’s birth certificate, driver’s license, and SSN, I don’t know.
Does this mean that Clancy’s ghost-written novels, self-authored things, and spin-offs now go through Ubisoft? Probably. Most of the “Tom Clancy” novels that come out now seem to be ancillary to the games anyway, except for the Jack Ryan novels (do those still exist?) which Paramount more or less has dibs on anyway.
Is this the dream? Become such a successful author that you can be given millions for the right to use or abuse your name? Is this the dream? To be the name of an empire that employs other writers who no doubt wish their names counted for something? Is this the dream? To affix your name to other people’s work and collect a paycheck? Like Jeff VanderMeer, I’m left wondering… does Anne McCaffrey still write books? Or does she just assign her name, franchise-like, to other people’s McCaffrey-esque works?
The good news is, I don’t have to care. I haven’t read Clancy in a decade and I don’t think I’ve ever finished a McCaffrey book. I know them only as money-making names. Are they worth the money they make? You tell me.
I believe McCaffrey does still write. While most, if not all of her books, in recent years have been co-written with someone else, if you recognize her distinctive style. you’ll recognize “vintage” McCaffrey in those stories. Additionally, it gives her worlds, her stories, a sort of resurrection, or perhaps more accurarely, an extension on the lives of those stories and worlds, so that when she finally passes on to wherever really good writers pass on to (I’m convinced she’s going UnderHill), her fans won’t find themselves starved for lack of new stories.
Besides, I think she’s in her 80s, at least now. I would think, with as amazing an imagination as she has, she might not have in energy to share that imagination with us on her own, anymore.