And now, the rest of the story ... (part I)

Jane Belson, Douglas Adams' widow, authorized Eoin Colfer, the author of several young adult and children's books including the popular Artemis Fowl series, to write the sixth book in the even-MORE-increasingly misnamed Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy.

The announced title is And Another Thing ..., and you can read Belson's and Colfer's thoughts on this here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/17/douglasadams

This got me to thinking about other stories officially sanctioned by a writer's estate, or by the legal copyright holders.

While some estates would sanction this type of work to appease the fans, especially in the case where the originally published work is unfinished, most of the commissions are made because the estate and the publisher think they can make some money. That isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as the new author produces something the readers enjoy.

I would imagine it would be difficult for a writer. First the writer would need to be a fan of the original, or perhaps is just looking for a challenge or possible notoriety, or he or she may just need some cash. Second the writer would need to decide if they were going to write it in their voice or try to imitate the original voice of the author. Both paths are fraught with danger. To some extent, this would probably depend on how much the author left behind. Were some parts already written? How much of an outline did the original author provide? The new author would also have to take into consideration how different her or his style is from the original author's.

In some cases, the new author is left to use the character(s), world(s), and ideas however they like. These are probably the types of continuations I am less of a fan of. I don't know if Colfer is basing this new book on notes and ideas the Adam's left behind or not. That will probably push me a little in one direction of the other. The fact that I have read some of Colfer's other novels makes it more likely that I will read this one, but I will still probably wait to get a feel for the response of others. I just don't have time to read everything, or maybe I am just a literary sheep.

Much like the movie versions of a book, my opinion is the original is still there to love, enjoy, ignore or loath regardless of how I feel about the new prequel, sequel or adaptation. If I really don't like it, I can just compartmentalize it as non-canonical. There is not any guarantee I would have even liked the prequels or sequels written by the original author had he or she lived - there are times I wish the original author would have left things well enough alone as they were. We have WAAAYY too many unneeded sequels and story extensions with living authors.

Using the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy as an example, I really liked the first two books [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)], and I thought the other three books had their moments, but for me the went sequentially down hill and I found Mostly Harmless (1992), the fifth book, mostly neh. (Interestingly, the books were based on a radio program (1978), and a TV series followed in 1981, with the movie in 2005. Adams was directly involved with the radio and television programs, and the movie followed a treatment he worked on before his death, and still all of these differ from the each other and from the books.)

Anyway, as I mentioned somewhere near the beginning, this announcement got me thinking of some other authorized completions, continuations and prequels:

• Lee Nelson finished Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer Among the Indians (2003), a recently found, half-written sequel to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
• The Special Trustees of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, who hold the copyright to J.M.Barrie's Peter and Wendy (1911), selected Geraldine McCaughrean to write the official sequel - published in 2008 as Peter Pan in Scarlet
• Margarett Mitchel's estate authorized Alexandra Ripley to write Scarlett (1991), a sequel to Gone with the Wind (1936)

(the list and discussion continue in the next post)