AND ANOTHER THING
Oct. 12th, 2009 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogSpeaking of H2G2 ... I have no idea how I missed this story for an entire year, but I did. So if this is old news to you, then just humor an old man for a moment.
ITEM: Apparently there’s a new Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy book coming out today. Here’s the cover.
Notice the author’s name is Not Douglas Adams.
Which is perfect, because it raises a topic I’ve been meaning to bring up ever since I saw Dracula the Un-Dead – the official sequel to Dracula written by Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew Dacre – in a Dymocks shop window a week or so ago:
Authors taking over characters from other authors. Especially authors who are now dead.
I remember all the kerfluffle in the 1980s when John Gardner was green-lighted to take up where Ian Fleming left off and write new James Bond adventures. Fleming purists were aghast at the idea. But Gardner still went on to write more Bond books than Fleming ever did, and has since been succeeded by Raymond Benson and Sebastian Faulkes.
Meanwhile, sequels have been done for a number of classics (some authorized, some not). Then there are slightly weirder examples – like KW Jeter writing official sequels to Blade Runner (as in the film, rather than PK Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, though Jeter sort of refers back to the book as well).
So there’s tons of precedent, sure. But as a rule I never read “official” sequels written by other people. Eoin Colfer’s H2G2 will be no exception – and not just because I wasn’t all that impressed with Artemis Fowl.
Here’s the thing:
For my money, writing is the purest and most personal non-oral form of storytelling there is. As such, writing novels is an intensely personal project to the point that it’s hard to separate the creator from the work.
To put it country simple, I’m not just a fan of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin et al – I’m a fan of the bloke what wrote them. The H2G2 books (and the radio series before them) are what they are because Douglas Adams brought his own personal experiences and observations and sense of the absurd into the narrative and the characterizations. Not just anyone could have written it to the same effect.
By the same token, unless it’s a series designed from its inception to be written by multiple writers (Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Sweet Valley High, etc) – or unless yr Frank Herbert’s boy, perhaps – not just anyone can simply take over a story and get the same result. It might be a good different result – but it wouldn’t be the same experience any more than it would be if you hired Garrison Keillor to write a sequel to Tom Sawyer, or Warren Ellis to write a sequel to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
Nor should it be. And to be fair, I don’t think Eoin Colfer wants to pass himself off as the New Douglas Adams any more than John Garder wanted to be the new Ian Fleming or Dacre Stoker wants to be his great-grand-uncle. And since I do respect the idea of public domain that leads to things like new Sherlock Holmes stories and a zombie version of Pride And Prejudice, I guess technically official sequels by new authors are no different.
But I’ll pass anyway. Best of luck to Colfer, but I’d rather re-read the Adams books.
To be continued,
This is dF
ITEM: Apparently there’s a new Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy book coming out today. Here’s the cover.
Notice the author’s name is Not Douglas Adams.
Which is perfect, because it raises a topic I’ve been meaning to bring up ever since I saw Dracula the Un-Dead – the official sequel to Dracula written by Bram Stoker’s great-grandnephew Dacre – in a Dymocks shop window a week or so ago:
Authors taking over characters from other authors. Especially authors who are now dead.
I remember all the kerfluffle in the 1980s when John Gardner was green-lighted to take up where Ian Fleming left off and write new James Bond adventures. Fleming purists were aghast at the idea. But Gardner still went on to write more Bond books than Fleming ever did, and has since been succeeded by Raymond Benson and Sebastian Faulkes.
Meanwhile, sequels have been done for a number of classics (some authorized, some not). Then there are slightly weirder examples – like KW Jeter writing official sequels to Blade Runner (as in the film, rather than PK Dick's Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, though Jeter sort of refers back to the book as well).
So there’s tons of precedent, sure. But as a rule I never read “official” sequels written by other people. Eoin Colfer’s H2G2 will be no exception – and not just because I wasn’t all that impressed with Artemis Fowl.
Here’s the thing:
For my money, writing is the purest and most personal non-oral form of storytelling there is. As such, writing novels is an intensely personal project to the point that it’s hard to separate the creator from the work.
To put it country simple, I’m not just a fan of Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin et al – I’m a fan of the bloke what wrote them. The H2G2 books (and the radio series before them) are what they are because Douglas Adams brought his own personal experiences and observations and sense of the absurd into the narrative and the characterizations. Not just anyone could have written it to the same effect.
By the same token, unless it’s a series designed from its inception to be written by multiple writers (Hardy Boys, Bobbsey Twins, Sweet Valley High, etc) – or unless yr Frank Herbert’s boy, perhaps – not just anyone can simply take over a story and get the same result. It might be a good different result – but it wouldn’t be the same experience any more than it would be if you hired Garrison Keillor to write a sequel to Tom Sawyer, or Warren Ellis to write a sequel to Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas.
Nor should it be. And to be fair, I don’t think Eoin Colfer wants to pass himself off as the New Douglas Adams any more than John Garder wanted to be the new Ian Fleming or Dacre Stoker wants to be his great-grand-uncle. And since I do respect the idea of public domain that leads to things like new Sherlock Holmes stories and a zombie version of Pride And Prejudice, I guess technically official sequels by new authors are no different.
But I’ll pass anyway. Best of luck to Colfer, but I’d rather re-read the Adams books.
To be continued,
This is dF
