Arbitrar Of Quality wrote:
> On Feb 5, 6:02 pm, Rowan Hawthorn <rowan_hawth...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Ian Galbraith wrote:
>>> xposted to alt.tv.buffy-v-slayer,alt.tv.angel
>>> On Tue, 5 Feb 2008 13:11:20 -0800 (PST), Gary Thompson wrote:
>>>> Posted about this in rec.arts.sf.written, and didn't hink to
crosspost
>>>> it here. Fantasy author Steven Brust (author of the Vlad Taltos
>>>> series among other things) has finished a fanfic set in the Firefly
>>>> universe. Check it out here:
>>>> http://dreamcafe.com/firefly.html
>>> For those who don't know about this Brust wrote this off his own back
>>> intending to sell it as a tie in novel because he loved the show.
>>> Obviously it couldn't be sold.
>> IMO (and experience,) writing an entire tie-in novel on spec is an
>> excellent example of a waste of time unless you *do* plan on posting it
>> as fanfic. I did the same thing (well, except for the posting part)
>> back in the mid 70s, with a comic series which shall remain nameless,
>> and couldn't even get the thing looked at. Instead, the publishers
went
>> with an established sci-fi author (which I can understand) who wrote
>> *such* a piece of crap that it almost ruined the original for me. What
>> irks me is that I've read some of that author's other works and - while
>> he's not a favorite of mine - they were okay. I'm reasonably sure he
>> could have done a better job if not for what appears to have been a
>> "grab the money and run" attitude coupled with a complete lack of
>> respect for the source material, which, by and large, was better
written
>> than those adaptations.
>
> There's no inherent reason media tie-ins can't be as good as wholly
> "original" work,
Of course not. The "Modesty Blaise" series is proof of that. Of
course, they're written by the original comic author, but still...
> but perhaps because of the cash-in to quality ratio,
> it's assumed that they're a lower level of literature than even the
> maligned "genre" novel. I know about the stigma attached to playing
> in someone else's universe, because I feel it myself. Although I
> should know better, neither "official" nor "unofficial" fanfic feels
> like "real" writing. Again, the higher crap:quality ratio (which is
> itself secondary to the larger population of stuff that can get
> published/widely distributed). I almost got over my prejudices when I
> was reading Timothy Zahn's _Star Wars_ tie-ins, but then I "moved on"
> to his non-SW work and am anxious to let people know that, like Brust,
> he's a good "real" author.
>
> -"A" "O" "Q"
I've read a few that were quite well done; some of James Blish's "Star
Trek" adaptations, for instance. Pity that all of those authors don't
make the same effort.
--
Rowan Hawthorn
"Occasionally, I'm callous and strange." - Willow Rosenberg, "Buffy the
Vampire Slayer"
|
