Willis @ 15: I hadn’t even remembered those Dawn of Amber books, but it raises an interesting point about new authors writing not sequels but prequels. On the one hand, I feel like it puts the integrity of the series at less risk, but there’s also much less need of it. And as I recall the Dawn of Amber series didn’t even get finished up.

I totally agree with you in regards to whether the book needs to be written. For me, that “need” can be determined by asking a basic question about the series plot: is it a “quest” plot? If so, then heck yes, for crying out loud, finish it! If not…eh…*shrug* not so much.

Quest plots have to come to a proper conclusion. That’s pretty much the whole point of the story. The basic premise of quest-plot books never changes: Character X looks for Thing A, meets lots of interesting people/animals/winged cephalopods (named B, Q, and F respectively) in lots of interesting places and undergoes some sort of personal growth and transformation as a result of the journey. Sometimes you find out that the quest was not really for Thing A, it was purely for this personal transformation and growth all along! How profound! (I kind of always thought was a bait and switch…I mean wtf, Thing A seemed sooooo important, now you’re telling me it’s not?! Bugger off dude!)

Anyway, point being that quest plots have to reach a conclusion. WoT, LotR, etc., those are quest plots. HHGTTG, not so much a quest plot in my mind. I love Douglas Adams to tears and will always wave a towel to fellow hitchhikers in his memory, but I’m not really feeling the need to round out the series like I am with WoT. Arthur, Marvin, et. al. would be just fine chillin at Milliways for the rest of their days I think.

Should someone complete these? Or take them further? To me, it would depend on the writer chosen for it. While i would love to see holes filled or a major storyline epic finished, I wouldn’t buy it if the quality blows.

I’d read that.

It took beloved characters from Austen and turned them into total freaks complete with explicit detail and over the top chicka-wocka-bow-bow cliches. According to her, they all but had the pizza guy show up and the bass riffs begin after each scene began.

I figure that the more I write, the better I’ll get (up to a peak point, of course, and then I’ll rapidly go downhill faster than David Bowie on methadone). So rather than letting someone else carry on my legacy and write increasingly bad novels, I will write progressively better novels backwards.

I expect the first novel to be finished and hopefully published a few years before my death, so I can enjoy the acclaim and fan worship of the founding trilogy, and maybe sue Parker Bros. for making a Monopoly board game based on it, just for kicks.

Years ago when I was teaching community college, I gave the following assignment: write 500 words about your favorite book explaining why you liked it.

Half the papers came back, at much shorter than 500 words, and these papers explained why and how the writer managed to avoid ever reading a book. Of the remaining half, half of those have only ever read one book — a teen mother read a pregnancy book, one kid was found out by a high school teacher and forced to read a whole book over the course of a semester while the teacher stared at him to make sure the book was being read, a single assignment that couldn’t be “bullshitted around” led a third person to actually read a whole book about the Meadowlands in NJ, etc.

Of the final 25% of the class, most of them declared that the Bible was their favorite book for extraliterary reasons. Only two people actually read with any regularity. Of the two declared that his favorite book was Taltos the Vampire because it was “erotic, without trying.”

The final student declared that her favorite book was “anything by V.C. Andrews”, and that she was pleased that new books would appear so frequently so that she would have more to read. However, she did admit, she had a feeling that the books were getting worse and worse.

I told her that V.C. Andrews is just a trademark — the original author died after the first three books and that everything else had just been ghostwritten. “She’s dead? She’s been dead for a long time? Well, no wonder the books are getting worse each time!” she exclaimed.

Also, since whether we like it or not there will always be estates of famous authors trying to suck a bit more golden marrow from the corpse of their cash cow, another exception (and new trend) might be to do what so many directors of Shakespeare have done and re-envision the existing work in an entirely different era and culture. Rewrite Lord of the Rings in an entirely Asian or African mythological setting. Re-envision Dune as set in a mythical Egypt or Persia. Rewrite Thomas Covenant as a Victorian woman traveling to a steampunk alternate/inner world.

It would be a nice compromise between the estate milking the legacy for every last drop, and not directly screwing with the original author’s own vision and style, etcetera.