[gmw]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Well, the Illiad and the Odyssey were really just novelizations of the oral performances anyway. Making Homer the classical Alan Dean Foster?

So what you're telling me is that the Illiad and the Odyssey were effectively fan-fiction of the TV series of the time.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Because I always like to balance the abundance of love/hate that this topic tends to generate. And to remind others that there need be no general consensus on it.

I did a search first but didn't find old threads that answered what I was looking for, my apologies if you feel this thread is too much of a repeat of what has gone before.

General consensus is not what I was looking for here. I was curious about what it was that people that enjoy fan-fiction were looking for, and have been pleased that some of the responses have included a few examples that I might like to try and ways to discover the better examples. So far I've always just said, "nah, that's not for me," but since I've never actually tried it that seems a fairly narrow view. I think it probably demonstrates how little I knew about the subject to have been so surprised about the volume of fan-fiction targeting TV series.

Originally Posted by crossi

What about Heron Crane's "Miss Seeton" series. After he died Hamilton Crane wrote some Miss Seeton novels as did another author. How is this different from fan fiction?

There are a number of authors whose efforts pass on to a new generation of writers: Frank Herbert's Dune series comes to mind here, also the new Tolkien Middle Earth books. There are a number of authors who try to boost their output, support new authors, and perhaps provide a longer term future for the series and ideas, by co-writing: Clive Cussler comes to mind here as do Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov among others.

What makes these different to fan-fiction? I don't know the history with the "Miss Seeton" books, but in my other examples here the new works are published with at least the permission, and often the blessing, of the original author or his estate. In theory this gives the reader some comfort in the idea that the book is consistent with what the original author intended - and if the original author is still about, that this new book is not going to conflict with anything further that they decide to write.

The result can be quite a mixed bag anyway. I tried one of the newer Dune books but didn't like it (but then I was getting tired of it by the time Frank had stopped anyway). I tried a few co-written Clive Cussler stories but found them much less enjoyable - one written with his son wasn't bad. A few Clarke and Asimov co-written books worked okay I thought, but some just put me off ever trying that second author on his own. (A reaction that I suppose helps to explain why I had not been tempted by fan-fiction to date.)