Sequels that equal the prequel.
January 15, 2011 8:52 PM Subscribe
Sequels by different authors that equal or better the work of the original author.
I was talking with someone recently about the diminishing returns in novels, author mortality, and how sequels by someone other than the original author are usually disappointments (cf. almost any mention of Kevin J. Anderson on the blue). We were trying to think of instances of another author picking up the story or characters and doing justice to the original, or even exceeding the original. The only one either of us could bring to mind was (arguably) The Seven Per Cent Solution. Any other suggestions?
Note that I am looking specifically for other authors taking up the mantle and, ideally, leaving things in better shape than they found them. This is not a general chatfilter about good and bad series of novels.
I was talking with someone recently about the diminishing returns in novels, author mortality, and how sequels by someone other than the original author are usually disappointments (cf. almost any mention of Kevin J. Anderson on the blue). We were trying to think of instances of another author picking up the story or characters and doing justice to the original, or even exceeding the original. The only one either of us could bring to mind was (arguably) The Seven Per Cent Solution. Any other suggestions?
Note that I am looking specifically for other authors taking up the mantle and, ideally, leaving things in better shape than they found them. This is not a general chatfilter about good and bad series of novels.
There's a lot of gray area to this question, e.g. the whole realm of superhero comics, where new writers frequently do a much better job than the original writers or breathe new life into minor characters. That happens in written fiction too, e.g. George Macdonald Fraser writing a great series of historical novels about Flashman, the bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:02 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:02 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
A Colder War, by Metafilter's Own™ Charlie Stross. It's Lovecraft, without all of the "Yeah, but... time and place..." handwaving and apologia. He just took the Mythos and ran with it in an exciting and relevant new direction, espousing a deeper morality rather than giving voice to ugly paranoias.
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:03 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Slap*Happy at 9:03 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
Some of the Land of Oz books that followed L. Frank Baum's books, namely the ones by Ruth Plumly Thompson, entertained me as a kid.
posted by dfriedman at 9:10 PM on January 15, 2011
posted by dfriedman at 9:10 PM on January 15, 2011
Fraser's the only author I'd admit in this category and largely because Flashman was such a minor character. All the rest suck. The Wind Done Gone is really entertaining, but that's the best I can say even though I really admire the author as a person.
posted by Ideefixe at 9:14 PM on January 15, 2011
posted by Ideefixe at 9:14 PM on January 15, 2011
Eoin Colfer did an okay job with And Another Thing..., the posthumous continuation of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide novels. Colfer never reaches the brilliant heights that Adams did in the first couple of books, but I think he managed to match the tone set in the later part of the series.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:38 PM on January 15, 2011
posted by Rhaomi at 9:38 PM on January 15, 2011
I really liked Fuzzy Bones, by William Turing?, which was a sequel to Little Fuzzy, by H. Beam Piper.
(MeFi's Own jscalzi has also apparently written a sequel (?) to Little Fuzzy, but I haven't seen it yet. )
posted by leahwrenn at 9:51 PM on January 15, 2011
(MeFi's Own jscalzi has also apparently written a sequel (?) to Little Fuzzy, but I haven't seen it yet. )
posted by leahwrenn at 9:51 PM on January 15, 2011
In Franco-Belgian comics, were authorship is usually more "traditional", Spirou is an example: the Franquin albums are much superior to the early stuff. The same thing is true for Lucky Luke, with the arrival of Goscinny, who replaced Morris for the writing (Morris kept drawing).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:59 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 9:59 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
Frankenstein's Monster, by Susan Heyboer O'Keefe has been getting some very good reviews, most of which say she does a good job matching Mary Shelley's style.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:43 PM on January 15, 2011
posted by Pater Aletheias at 10:43 PM on January 15, 2011
This may not be a really good example: Starting around 1910, there were a series of novels about Tom Swift, written by Victor Appleton. They featured titles like "Tom Swift and his motorcycle", "Tom Swift and the giant telescope", and other things that were gee-whiz a hundred years ago.
In the 1950's, when I was a kid, there was a new series about Tom Swift Jr, written by Victor Appleton II. Junior had a flying lab, a rocket ship, a submarine, and a lot of other cool stuff.
I never read any of the original books, but when I was about 8 I really loved the second series.
But all is not as it seems here. "Victor Appleton" was a collective pseudonym used for a group of ghost writers who did the original books. "Victor Appleton II" likewise, and in fact it's entirely possible some of the same people worked on both series.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:53 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
In the 1950's, when I was a kid, there was a new series about Tom Swift Jr, written by Victor Appleton II. Junior had a flying lab, a rocket ship, a submarine, and a lot of other cool stuff.
I never read any of the original books, but when I was about 8 I really loved the second series.
But all is not as it seems here. "Victor Appleton" was a collective pseudonym used for a group of ghost writers who did the original books. "Victor Appleton II" likewise, and in fact it's entirely possible some of the same people worked on both series.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:53 PM on January 15, 2011 [1 favorite]
TV Tropes Knows (Almost) All: My Real Daddy, though with only one reference specifically to literature.
The Wicked Years series by Gregory Maguire is based the Oz books and continues past that series timeline, and I love them as much as the originals.
Pride and Prometheus by John Kessel is a crossover sequel to both Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein; it won the Nebula Award for Best Novella, is utterly brilliant, and is the only Austen-sequel I've yet been able to tolerate. His story "Every Angel is Terrifying" is a sequel to "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor and is also brilliant. Both stories are published in his collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence, which is available for free.
posted by nicebookrack at 10:57 PM on January 15, 2011
The Wicked Years series by Gregory Maguire is based the Oz books and continues past that series timeline, and I love them as much as the originals.
Pride and Prometheus by John Kessel is a crossover sequel to both Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein; it won the Nebula Award for Best Novella, is utterly brilliant, and is the only Austen-sequel I've yet been able to tolerate. His story "Every Angel is Terrifying" is a sequel to "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor and is also brilliant. Both stories are published in his collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence, which is available for free.
posted by nicebookrack at 10:57 PM on January 15, 2011
It strikes me that the game is a bit rigged. If an original author is not very good, no one will be interested in doing sequels because the original author's books won't be very popular.
If an original author is good, the books will be popular and there will be demand for more, but it will be hard for successors to live up to the original author.
That said, I can think of at least one case where, reportedly, sequels were done which were the same quality as the original. Robert E. Howard died much too young, and didn't really create all that many stories about Conan the Cimmerian.
He left behind a number of unpublished manuscripts, some unfinished, some merely outlines or synopses, and a fair number of big-name fantasy writers took on the challenge of continuing the series, including L. Sprague DeCamp amd Lin Carter. (More of a list here.) I can't testify to this personally, but reportedly many of them were as good if not better than Howard's originals.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:00 PM on January 15, 2011
If an original author is good, the books will be popular and there will be demand for more, but it will be hard for successors to live up to the original author.
That said, I can think of at least one case where, reportedly, sequels were done which were the same quality as the original. Robert E. Howard died much too young, and didn't really create all that many stories about Conan the Cimmerian.
He left behind a number of unpublished manuscripts, some unfinished, some merely outlines or synopses, and a fair number of big-name fantasy writers took on the challenge of continuing the series, including L. Sprague DeCamp amd Lin Carter. (More of a list here.) I can't testify to this personally, but reportedly many of them were as good if not better than Howard's originals.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:00 PM on January 15, 2011
Robert Jordan / Brandon Sanderson.
posted by J. Wilson at 11:06 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]
posted by J. Wilson at 11:06 PM on January 15, 2011 [3 favorites]
L. Sprague DeCamp was involved in another effort which may or may not satisfy the question here. In the 1940's he worked with Fletcher Pratt on the "Harold Shea" series.
Without getting into too much detail, Shea is a mathematician and figures out a way to use logic to move himself and certain others out of his current reality into other timelines. Each of the stories in the series is placed in a different reality -- and all of them are based on myths or on books known to Shea from his home world. (One of the hooks is that Shea and his friends are not able to leave until they make a critical change to the continuity that alters what they know about it.)
One of the Shea stories is placed in the world of Spenser's "The Faerie Queen", for instance. Would that be considered a sequel?
Moving right along, there are two cases I can think of in the recent past where authors worked on sequels to another authors' works.
First is the "Man Kzin Wars" series. Larry Niven sought out other writers and invited them to write stories placed within his "Known Space" scenario, specifically writing about the wars between humanity and kzinti, which Niven himself only wrote about a couple of times.
Second is the "Wild Cards" series from George R.R. Martin.
These are both examples of what is known as a "shared universe", and it's quite common for later participants to create stories more memorable than the originator's own.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:14 PM on January 15, 2011
Without getting into too much detail, Shea is a mathematician and figures out a way to use logic to move himself and certain others out of his current reality into other timelines. Each of the stories in the series is placed in a different reality -- and all of them are based on myths or on books known to Shea from his home world. (One of the hooks is that Shea and his friends are not able to leave until they make a critical change to the continuity that alters what they know about it.)
One of the Shea stories is placed in the world of Spenser's "The Faerie Queen", for instance. Would that be considered a sequel?
Moving right along, there are two cases I can think of in the recent past where authors worked on sequels to another authors' works.
First is the "Man Kzin Wars" series. Larry Niven sought out other writers and invited them to write stories placed within his "Known Space" scenario, specifically writing about the wars between humanity and kzinti, which Niven himself only wrote about a couple of times.
Second is the "Wild Cards" series from George R.R. Martin.
These are both examples of what is known as a "shared universe", and it's quite common for later participants to create stories more memorable than the originator's own.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:14 PM on January 15, 2011
The New Testament
posted by surenoproblem at 12:34 AM on January 16, 2011
posted by surenoproblem at 12:34 AM on January 16, 2011
You might look at some of the books that are sequels, inspired by, or tributes to Dracula.
posted by Houstonian at 4:07 AM on January 16, 2011
posted by Houstonian at 4:07 AM on January 16, 2011
Benford, Bear, and Brin did a "second foundation trilogy" that directly added to Asimov's universe. I really liked two of the three, but I read it so long ago I cant recall which. I think Benford's might have been the best one though.
There is a book called "Grendel" that is beowulf told from the other side. I've never read it; keep meaning to.
posted by about_time at 4:14 AM on January 16, 2011
There is a book called "Grendel" that is beowulf told from the other side. I've never read it; keep meaning to.
posted by about_time at 4:14 AM on January 16, 2011
Besides the previously mentioned Laurie King books, I heartily recommend Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin, a sequel to R.L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; and Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, a companion to Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre.
If you're a Jane Austen fan, there's a wide range of choices out there (scroll down to "List of sequels, etc."). These lists from various libraries feature some interesting sequels to the classics. And here's a short list with a more mass-market bias.
I have to admit to not having read any of these, but Vonnegut's Little Psychic Women is very tempting.
Given the preponderance of "classic" titles that have been the basis for sequels, I think it's interesting to note that in 2009, a Swedish author was prohibited from publishing a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye.
posted by Paris Elk at 6:22 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
If you're a Jane Austen fan, there's a wide range of choices out there (scroll down to "List of sequels, etc."). These lists from various libraries feature some interesting sequels to the classics. And here's a short list with a more mass-market bias.
I have to admit to not having read any of these, but Vonnegut's Little Psychic Women is very tempting.
Given the preponderance of "classic" titles that have been the basis for sequels, I think it's interesting to note that in 2009, a Swedish author was prohibited from publishing a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye.
posted by Paris Elk at 6:22 AM on January 16, 2011 [1 favorite]
I never read it it, but Scarlett by Alexandria Ripley the follow up to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind.
posted by wocka wocka wocka at 8:20 AM on January 16, 2011
posted by wocka wocka wocka at 8:20 AM on January 16, 2011
Though not strictly a sequel, Robert Silverburg's wrote a very good novel re-telling (and expanding) Isaac Asimov's short story "Nightfall".
posted by jb at 8:21 AM on January 16, 2011
posted by jb at 8:21 AM on January 16, 2011
Seconding Wide Sargasso Sea, although I'd certainly never say it surpassed Jane Eyre - the novels are too stylistically different to make that comparison.
Scarlett, the "sequel" to Gone With the Wind, is absolutely atrocious. In my family, we refer to it as "The Abomination." I will admit to having stomped on this novel on more than one occasion, and afterward thoroughly relishing the satisfaction it gave me.
posted by pecanpies at 12:56 PM on January 16, 2011
Scarlett, the "sequel" to Gone With the Wind, is absolutely atrocious. In my family, we refer to it as "The Abomination." I will admit to having stomped on this novel on more than one occasion, and afterward thoroughly relishing the satisfaction it gave me.
posted by pecanpies at 12:56 PM on January 16, 2011
(And also, of course, Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel, not a sequel.)
posted by pecanpies at 5:30 PM on January 16, 2011
posted by pecanpies at 5:30 PM on January 16, 2011
I absolutely loved, loved, loved The Last Sherlock Holmes Story by Michael Dibdin - warning, please don't read the reviews because they are spoiler-ridden. Suffice it to say, it's dark and nasty and awesome.
And without giving too much away, what I loved about this book is that you can draw an entirely different conclusion from the evidence than the one given in the book!
posted by Ziggy500 at 9:38 AM on January 17, 2011
And without giving too much away, what I loved about this book is that you can draw an entirely different conclusion from the evidence than the one given in the book!
posted by Ziggy500 at 9:38 AM on January 17, 2011
Response by poster: Thanks, all. This turned out to be not so much a listing of books I could agree or disagree with as to their merits but rather a reading list, as about two-thirds of these I did not even know existed.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:34 PM on January 19, 2011
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:34 PM on January 19, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by lollusc at 8:59 PM on January 15, 2011 [2 favorites]