I found this story to be pretty neat in a non-neat sort of way, because it involves real-life assassins! Writer Steven Barnes revealed on his blog that his planned trilogy of novels that would have served as a prequel to Ubisoft’s upcoming action game Assassin’s Creed have been canceled due to a protest by decendants of the ORIGINAL ASSASSINS portrayed in the game.
I don’t know about you, but being involved with real assassins, or at least decendants of original assassins, is pretty crazy. Unfortunately, the whole ordeal got pretty messy and the book deal was dropped. Here’s the word from Barnes himself about the mess:
"..No, there was nothing wrong with it: Marco Palmieri at Pocket Books was perfectly happy with it. But it seems that the video company got visits from descendants of the ORIGINAL ASSASSINS, members of the Ismaeli sect currently led by the Agha Khan in India. They…suggested that Ubisoft, the game company, show more respect for their ancestors, and Ubisoft went all pitter-patter. Next thing we knew, they wanted to remove all religious references from the book. I guess the Crusades were about shoe size or something. Then they hired an expert to vet the book. Curious that they hadn’t thought about that before, eh? And finally, they wanted to send the book to the Agha Khan’s people for their suggestions. By this time, Marco was thoroughly disenchanted."
