# Are novels ever remade? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 11, 2017, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253 "2017-04-11T17:51:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/61 "2017-04-12T12:50:23Z")
It’s been a while since I read them, but one big change between the first and third editions was that in the first, Elizabeth was a distant relative who came to live with the Frankensteins so Victor would have a playmate growing up, whereas by the third edition, they outright bought Elizabeth from an impoverished Italian couple (She was never an orphan, IIRC). I think there was also a different motivation for Capt. Walton’s presence in the Arctic. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/62 "2017-04-12T12:53:12Z")
There are certainly instances of novels being retranslated, so are in effect re-written from the standpoint of a reader who is not reading in the original language. One striking example is Sigrid Undset’s books, which were written in the early 1900s. The translation that was widely read in English had the brilliance of a Thomas Hardy novel. But there is now a recent translation that reads more like Danielle Steele. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/63 "2017-04-12T12:59:26Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Yes. Thomas Hardy (for example) made lots of little revisions to his novels whenever a new edition came out, sometimes just correcting typos, but sometimes altering more significant things. I still can’t forgive him for the version of _Tess of the d’Urbervilles_ where Greedo shot first. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/64 "2017-04-12T13:46:08Z")
The Oompa-Loompas of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory were originally African pygmies (and called Whipple-Scrumpets). Roald Dahl later rewrote them to be white-skinned and golden haired, probably in the name of political corectness. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/65 "2017-04-12T14:13:25Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > This is something I wondered. Can an author publish the same book twice, without violating his own copyright? There are several early/pre/Golden Age sf authors who rewrote the same story multiple times, most notably (according to Clarke’s reminiscences of the field) Ray Cummings and his originally brilliant work “The Girl in the Golden Atom.” I think the same thing could be said of Robin Cook, who has written the same boilerplate story, changing only nouns, somewhere between six and a dozen times. (I read at least three or four that bore no significant difference from _Coma_.) ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/66 "2017-04-12T14:21:56Z")
Okay, here’s a head-scratcher: Back in 1994, there was a film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s **Little Women** (Winona Ryder, Susan Sarandon, that one). As a commercial tie-in, they paid someone to write a version of the book that specifically adapted the movie. This was not Alcott’s original novel. Um, it is no longer in print… I think there used to be a practice of releasing truncated paperback versions of famous novels, a la _Reader’s Digest_. It’s alluded to in the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer.” These aren’t novels, but Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825) wrote cleaned-up versions of Shakespeare’s plays and of Gibbons’ _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/67 "2017-04-12T14:26:47Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > Yes - the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys examples are the most analogous to movie remakes: they take the same basic characters and plots but update them for a more current culture. Was anyone else ever Konfuzed Az Hel by reading a mix of (you-)contemporary versions and 1920s versions found at the library or Goodwill? ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/68 "2017-04-12T14:34:13Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > I knew that “If This Goes On–” was rewritten, but I hadn’t realized that it expanded from 33,000 words to 57,300 words. That certainly qualifies as expanding a novella to a novel. I think that’s the single biggest piece of rewriting Heinlein did, but a few others approach it and there were many minor works updated for postwar era publication. My grasp of the fine details has faded from disuse and I am at that peculiar state of pulling my own reference works off the shelf to check things… ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/69 "2017-04-12T17:52:12Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > David Gerrold has rewritten several of his books, most notably _When HARLIE Was One_. (I have a great story about that book, me and The David.) > [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > I came into this thread to mention that book, so cough up the anecdote! So. HARLIE was originally written in 1972. Gerrold decided to do a pretty substantial rewrite, released in 1988. At the time, on a general SF forum I can’t remember - very late FIDO SF or very early alt.fan.sf - I raged and argued and declaimed and generally gave many thumbs down to authors rewriting books. (Among my arguments were that while the computers in v1 were dated, the this-week’s-version-of-DOS ones in v2 would date much faster and more badly… and I will maintain I was right. Also, squishy-wet sex scene in v2, serving no useful purpose except “could, now.”) Someone bundled up the whole multipart criticism and sent it along The David. In the words of Lyta Alexander - “Captain? [del]They’re[/del] He’s _pissed_.” This would be the second time I pissed off David Gerrold. I spent some months in my bomb shelter and nothing ever happened. In 2007, I had the pleasure of chatting with him and reminding him of both incidents. He laughed. I think he wrote something amusing in my copy of _The Man Who Folded Himself_… the same one I found out he’d updated on the flight home. Sigh. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/70 "2017-04-12T17:54:32Z")
**Amateur Barbarian** , thanks for sharing that. I never met the guy myself, but maybe someday. Now let’s bug him about the Chtorr . . . ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/71 "2017-04-12T17:54:42Z")
While we’re here, I have to question something I noted in looking up HARLIE’s dates. The wiki notes that it’s a “fix-up” - a novel assembled and rewritten from previously published stories. I have never heard this term in almost 50 years of sf reading dabbling into fandom, and alla sudden it’s kind of everywhere. When did it arise? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/72 "2017-04-12T18:25:46Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > While we’re here, I have to question something I noted in looking up HARLIE’s dates. The wiki notes that it’s a “fix-up” - a novel assembled and rewritten from previously published stories. > > I have never heard this term in almost 50 years of sf reading dabbling into fandom, and alla sudden it’s kind of everywhere. When did it arise? It’s a fairly old term as I recall - it was applied to the novels that A. E. Van Vogt cobbled together from shorter pieces. .googling… This 1980 interview with Van Vogt credits him with the term [A.E. van Vogt Interviewed by Robert Weinberg (1980) | Sevagram](http://www.icshi.net/sevagram/interviews/weinberg.php) and notes that the 1979 Encyclopedia of SF uses the term ([SFE: Fixup](http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/fixup)). Brave New Worlds has cites back to 1975 [Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction - Jeff Prucher - Google Books](https://books.google.com/books?id=lJCS0reqmFUC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=%22fix-up+novel%22&source=bl&ots=KCbwGR2hgY&sig=mRHzCDzbp9cfl8cDsZise7T0kpU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi9pPqTxZ_TAhWrhlQKHSz8Av8Q6AEIWTAJ#v=onepage&q=%22fix-up%20novel%22&f=false) ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/73 "2017-04-12T18:37:42Z")
Larry Niven has noted in several “author notes” that the first edition of _Ringworld_ features Earth turning backward, so I guess he fixed that in subsequent printings. ---
**Author:** ![Enright3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/enright3/32/2897_2.png) [@Enright3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enright3)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/74 "2017-04-12T20:40:19Z")
The first thing I thought of was Robin Hood. There have been multiple retelling of that story hasn’t there? Also what about King Arthur? To quote from Wikipedia about King Arthur: “…there is no one canonical version, Geoffrey’s version of events often served as the starting point for later stories.” ---
**Author:** ![Meurglys](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/258eb7/32.png) [@Meurglys](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meurglys)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2017, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253/75 "2017-04-13T10:48:10Z")
**Kim Stanley Robinson** wrote a trilogy usually called Science in the Capitol (Forty Signs of Rain, Fifty Degrees Below & Sixty Days and Counting) some years ago. More recently, he re-wrote it, shedding several hundred pages and publishing it as a single 1000+ page novel under the title Green Earth. He was inspired to do this by the example of **Peter Mathiessen** , author of Shadow Country. This had originally appeared as a trilogy consisting of Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River & Bone by Bone before he decided to shorten it down to a single volume! Not copyright as such but, before **KSR** wrote his Mars trilogy, he wrote a novella set on Mars called Green Mars. This was partly so he would have first use of the title and he presumed that when he finally wrote Green Mars the novel (2nd volume of the trilogy) nobody would be able to complain too much about his ‘stealing’ his own title! Green Mars the novella isn’t quite consistent with the trilogy and the events in it don’t appear in the longer work, but it did reappear in Martians, a collection of poems, scenes, documents, etc. which didn’t make the final cut of the trilogy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-novels-ever-remade/784253.md?page=3)