No, I mean the version with the gasoline pill.
I suspect any long series these days does this - the Baby Sitter Club books after the first bunch were not written by Anne Martin (daughter of cartoonist Henry Martin.)
And there seemed to be only a few authors for the early Statemeyer Syndicate books. Howard Garris, the author of the Uncle Wiggly books, wrote almost all the early Tom Swift books. There have been a number of books on the real authors of the Nancy Drew books.
If you swallowed the gasoline pill, would you fart fire like a flamethrower?
…
Hmmm, I think I have an idea for a story…
Issac Asimov managed to coauthor a number of novels after he was dead. I also think some James Bond novels were written after Ian Fleming was dead.
So thaaaath’s why they’re called ghost writers.
Name one.
So? Lots of series are continued by other authors, usually after an author is dead, although in some cases the authors’ name is used, which I already cited as sharecropping. No collaboration is implied. Fleming didn’t leave any manuscripts that I’m aware of. All the many authors writing James Bond use original ideas. Just as the many thousands of Sherlock Holmes novels and stories written after Doyle’s death were not collaborations.
I don’t know of any posthumous Asimov collaborations, but wasn’t For Us, the Living listed as co-authored by Heinlein and Robinson?
Amazon will list the author of an introduction as (author), which may be what you’re thinking of. The Heinlein Society page says otherwise:
Issac Asimov died in 1992.
*Foundation’s Fear (Second Foundation Trilogy) by Gregory Benford and Isaac Asimov (Mar 1997)
It’s Been a Good Life by Isaac Asimov and Janet Jeppson Asimov (Mar 2002)
Conversations with Isaac Asimov (Literary Conversations Series) by Isaac Asimov (May 10, 2005)
100 Malicious Little Mysteries (100 Stories) by Martin H. Greenberg, Isaac Asimov and Joseph D. Olander (May 28, 2004)
The Return of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov, Charles Ardai and Harlan Ellison (Nov 2003)
Timechart Discovery and Invention the Grow by Isaac Asimov (Oct 1, 1999)
Norby and the Court Jester by Janet Asimov and Isaac Asimov (Apr 1999)*
I kind of gave up at this point. Amazon lists 1269 titles under his name just in hardback and another 3,655 in paper. I tried to exclude stuff that was obvious reprints of his older work.
BTW, favorite title. The Spanish of I, Robot titled Yo, Robot.
Too bad you didn’t exclude stuff that weren’t novels, and stuff that Asimov didn’t actually co-author. Of the titles you listed, that leaves the Norby book, which was from 1991, according to my Wikipedia link.
Shall we discuss V.C. Andrews? Was that her name?
Pournelle talks about his collaborations with Niven a lot in his blog and it seems to me a lot more equal than you think. Niven created the Moties, but the society, physics and engineering came straight out of a “A Spaceship for the King”. Pournelle is on record as saying he doesn’t find the social systems of “known space” plausible. I notice that didn’t keep him from writing some good stories for the Man-Kzin war series. They seem to spend enough working together, that Pournelle has a computer exclusively for Niven set up at his house.
There is nothing I love more than a good Cloneasaurus story! Hang on… let me settle back on the couch, make a movie frame with my fingers… OK… GO!
Do you not understand the clear meaning of the term “co-author”? Slapping an author’s name on a book does not imply any creative input, especially after his death.
To clear up any confusion, the Second Foundation Trilogy was written by Gergory Benford, Greg Bear, and David Brin after Asimov’s death. They are continuations of his work, homages, but independent otherwise.
All the Norby titles were written by Janet Asimov, although Isaac may have done a bit of polishing. The one you mention was written before his death, as noted above. Janet did write one more on her own after his death.
The Return of the Black Widowers
The others are not even fiction by Asimov from any time period.
You seem to be the perfect audience for this scam. I’m going to put you on all my spam lists and make my fortune.
You appear to be humor impaired. The question I was responding to was how much input would an author have to have to get a co-author credit. My response implies that since Issac Asimov was being listed as a co-author on new books after he died, that the input requirement is pretty close to zero.
I was amazed at how many Asimov books are available on Amazon. I wonder how many living authors get as much income as his estate?
Being listed as a (co-)author on Amazon’s listings and being listed as (co-)author on the book itself are two very different things. The Amazon listings for books often fail to distinguish between authors, editors, contributors, translators, introduction writers, narrators, etc. And their DVD listings are even worse.
I checked and some of the books also listed Asimov as an author or editor on the cover. I also discovered Amazon isn’t great about identifying which books are actually new and which ones are new editions of old books. I had to do some digging to figure out that **100 Malicious Little Mysteries ** was originally published in 1992 and Norby and the Court Jester in 1991. I was able to filter out most cases, because I’d read the book or even had it in my library.
I was in the library today and noticed that Towers at Midnight lists Robert Jordan as the author on the cover with a copyright of 2010 when he died in 2007.
If you click on look inside and go to page 3 it has Robert Jordan’s signature on it.
Based on the Wikipedia article it looks like they are generating over 900,000 words based on an outline Jordan wrote for one book.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time#Author.27s_death_and_final_book.28s.29