Comments on: The (writing) life after death

By: Kevin Andrew Murphy

Kevin Andrew Murphy — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:09:21 +0000

I’ve personally never understood the point of Beetle Bailey, except possibly to posit an alternate universe where the military never is at or ever has gone to war.

I don’t have much trouble with endless series, since someone is always reading and enjoying them, and as a kid, I remember finding The Wishing Horse of Oz, one of the Ruth Plumly Thompson Ozbooks that was far better written than a lot of the Baum books, at least so far as the plotting went.

As for Pern, I read the two main trilogies in high school and junior high and still have Moretta on my shelf, but never got around to getting back to it. I know Todd McCaffery from cons but have yet to read any of his books, mostly because I’m not in a Pern frame of mind at the moment and also because, once I discovered fandom, the Pern fans were just a bit too cutesy for my tastes. Just never had a dragon fetish.

By: Sara Lipowitz

Sara Lipowitz — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 03:18:41 +0000

Thank you! But maybe it should be called “Hi and Lois” syndrome instead. I just looked it up, and the original creator of Beetle Bailey is still working on it today. Who knew?

By: Katharine Kerr

Katharine Kerr — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 22:13:39 +0000

I love it! We can now talk about the “Beetle Bailey” syndrome when we discuss these endless series. Like a good label should, it makes the premise clear.

By: Sara Lipowitz

Sara Lipowitz — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 21:45:39 +0000

The “dead writer” novel is close kin to a trend I think is almost as bad: the strip-mining of a good series to generate new stories, almost all of which are inferior to the originals. The worst example of this I can think of is “All the Weyrs of Pern,” in which Anne McCaffrey’s dragonriders stumble over a 3,000-year-old plot point that proceeds to solve every problem for them, then “dies” melodramatically on the last few pages, perhaps worn out by its successful campaign to stamp every bit of wonder out of the storyline.

Far from being an isolated work, “All the Weyrs of Pern” heralded a stream of Pern novels that extracted every last jot of every bit of backstory underpinning the series, until the whole thing subsided into a sinkhole. Sometimes the more you find out about a world, the less it means.

And now her son is taking up where McCaffrey left off, so Pern can go on and one, like one of those cartoon strips that stopped being funny back in 1959, Blondie or Beetle Bailey or something.

By: Katharine Kerr

Katharine Kerr — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 09:04:51 +0000

Darcy, if you weren’t allergic to cats I’d gladly finance a trip down here for you. But you couldn’t stay here without misery, alas — even if you had the time, of course. My papers are full of cat hair, too, no doubt.

One of these days I WILL get to it all this stuff.

By: Darcy

Darcy — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 02:04:48 +0000

Kit, I hope you don’t destroy all of your papers. I can see destroying outlines and/or new story ideas, but everything?? The Library Technician in me says: EEEEKKK!

I still havenâ€™t gone through the boxes of stuff that Jo Claytonâ€™s friends brought me.

Y’know, once I finish grad school you could probably ship those boxes of Jo’s (and your own, for that matter) to me. I’m not going to know what to do with all that extra time - a project like organizing papers would be just lovely.

I remember packing Jo’s stuff up. Lots of people, little time, zero chance to be organized… And, yes, lots of dust - Jo hadn’t been home for a long time when we packed her things.

By: Katharine Kerr

Katharine Kerr — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 22:49:02 +0000

Tor and DAW do develop new authors. Robert Jordan has inadvertently financed a number of careers. I was thinking, as usual in my bitter way, about the big corporate houses.

By: Madeleine Robins

Madeleine Robins — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 06:06:36 +0000

Kit–

during the time I was working at Tor there was clearly a relationship between having money and buying books. I can’t speak to other publishers.

And I have read the Elizabeth/Darcy book. It was dreadful–the author got about a chapter and a half in and forgot what all the characters had been like in the source text. Worse, the diction of the faux-Austen voice became unbearably arch and clumsy. Made Thrones, Dominations sound, um, canonical.

By: David Louis Edelman

David Louis Edelman — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 04:58:31 +0000

Kevin: Ah, see, this is where I disagree with the rest of the world (the rest of the universe, perhaps) about the merits of A.I. That ending sequence with the robots (not aliens, a common misconception) is very Kubrick. It's got elements of a Spielbergian happy ending, but is also a bone-chillingly cynical statement about human futility so dark that it boggles the mind. But enough about A.I. for now -- I need to watch it again and blog about it soon. I must also admit a soft spot for the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit. Not because it was particularly good, but because it was my first exposure to Tolkien. Kate: Yes, it was Bisson who finished the Leibowitz book. It's a strange story. Apparently, Miller called 911 and reported that there was a dead man on his front lawn. Then he set up a chair on his front lawn and killed himself. Very creepy. Even more creepy when you read the last part of Canticle, which contains an extremely Catholic and extremely effective argument against suicide.

By: kateelliott

kateelliott — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 04:08:13 +0000

Kevin, I understand the desire to adapt a written story to the screen, even if the filmmakers do a crappy job of it. It’s a shift of media. It’s the remakes of mediocre movies or tv shows that I can’t fathom as anything but laziness and lack of creativity on the part of Hollywood producers.