Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I'm with you partway. I have strict rules about canon, personally. Publication draws a line under reworking a story, even by the author. I don't like revised editions (Waugh's rewriting of Brideshead Revisited as one example; I'm glad the new version wasn't published here). And witterings outside the published material by the author don't count, either. J.K. Rowling needed to shut up a long time ago about gay Dumbledore and all the rest of it. Alas, I admit that if she publishes a book about Dumbledore backstory it becomes canon, as she's the author and it's her right.
That said, I don't care what a greedy, money-grubbing estate licenses, anything by someone other than the original author which fleshes out the published material, whether sequel or backstory, whatever, does not count. It didn't happen, it won't happen. I wish heirs had more respect for the artisty and integrity of that golden-egg-laying goose of an original author.
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Well, of course it won't be canon and of course it won't be Tolkien. It would be someone else. Just look at the sheer number of authors, some of them quite well known, such as Robert Jordan and de Camp, who have written Conan the Barbarian books. I think there are some 50 Conan books that were written after Howard died. This whole, Thou Shall No Write in Another Author's Universe, commandment is a very recent thing.
What would happen if it got opened up? Probably the same thing as you got with the Conan books and the Star Wars books, 90% of it drek with a handful of quite good works, but non of it canon.