Sequels or series continued by an author's friend or relative

Cafe Society
1

I’ve noticed that many series were carried on, or sequels written, by the close friends or reloatives of an author. It’s not obvious to me that this will result in a good work, or one faithful to the original intent, although it’s clear that such people, having knowledge of the author’s thoughts, philosophy, and style might have a better chance of capturing their essence.

It’s not surprising when someone who worked on a comic strip or other franchise takes over, as when Gould left Dick Tracy and Collins and Fletcher took over, or when Bud Sagendorf took over the comic strip Popeye. But in many cases the person taking over the franchise had no previous role in its execution, and that’s what I find surprising. Especially when they do a good job.
Examples:
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s son, Adrian Conan Doyle, continued the Sherlock Holmes stories in collsboration with mystery author John Dickson Carr, and were collected as The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes. I suspect that Carr had more to do with it than Adrian (Carr wrote half the stories in Exploits himself). Purists call it “Sherlock Holmes Exploited”, but I find these stories to be the most ACDoyle-like of any Holmes stories not written by the Master himself.

– Cay Van Ash, friend of Arthur Sarsfield Ward (Sax Rohmer) wrote two Fu Manchu stories long after Ward’s death (including one Fun Manchu-Meets-Sherlock-Holmes story).

–August Derleth finished some of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories and continued to write “Cthulhu Mythos” stories well after Lovecraft’s death. There’s clearly a big difference in talent and style, but Derleth did a much better job than most others who did pastiches.

–Roald Dahl wrote the screen story and screenplay for You Only Live Twice, based on the book by his friend Ian Fleming. It was the first Bond movie to have production start after Fleming’s death, and they apparently needed a big rewrite because they didn’t seem to like Fleming’s actual story.

–Dean Young has been writing the comic strip Blondie, created and drawn by his father since the 1930s, ever since his father died in 1973 (!) Dean’s stint as writer exceeds the life of many original strips.

– Besides briefly taking over as the voice of Kermit after his father jim Henson’s death, Brian Henson directed two Muppe movies and produced four series (as wel as voicing and performing other muppets)

2

Frank Herbert’s son Brian, along with noted hack Kevin J. Anderson, wrote several prequels and sequels to the Dune novels. They are, without exception, utterly horrible and in no way capture the feel, style, or impressive expanse of the originals. Some of it (like Jessica’s conception) reads like slash fanfiction. If you asked a Dune fan if they’d kill baby Hitler or baby Brian Herbert, I bet most of them would have to think about their answer.

3

Selby Kelly, Walt’s widow, took over** Pogo **after he died. It was a poor replacement; no one could imitate Walt Kelly. The strip folded after two years. She presided over a remake about ten years later that wasn’t too bad (but not even close to the original), though she didn’t write or illustrate it.

4

Christopher Tolkien has made a good living compiling his father’s papers into new works. Not sure if that counts.

Brian Herbert, of course, has Kevin Anderson hold down his father’s rotting corpse while he fucks it…

5

Jerry Pournelle’s daughter has written a sequel in the Mote in God’s Eye universe, which I’ve actually heard some good things about (though not enough to seek it out).

6

Jill Paton Walsh has written three additional Peter Wimsey novels, more than 40 years after the death of Dorothy Sayers. The first was based on five or six chapters that Sayers wrote in around 1936, but all three are excellent.

7

Yes, Jill Paton Walsh is not a friend or relative but she certainly gets the feel of the later books by DLS. Maybe starting out with those existing chapters of Thrones, Dominations gave her a good lead in.

8

I’d not heard that. Do you know what is is called?

Should have added: if anyone is doing sequels to Jerry Pournelle series I wish they would tackle the Janassaries universe. Pournelle himself was meant to be doing another one called Mamalukes but - as far as I know - it has never seen the light of day.

9

Craig Rice, who was a woman BTW (Georgiana Ann Craig), was much beloved by everyone despite being a raging lush. While she was still alive she and Stuart Palmer collaborated on a series of short stories starring their two main characters, John Malone and Miss Hildegarde Withers. She didn’t write any of them, although she may have contributed to plots. Palmer did it as a way of getting her more money when she needed it. The series continued after she died and was collected in People vs. Withers and Malone.

She died of alcoholism and a number of other problems caused by it in 1957. She was partway through a novel in one of her other series, and Ed McBain, then just starting out as a name mystery writer, finished the book, The April Robbins Murders, seamlessly.

The Malone character is a great one, and Larry M. Harris - a prolific genre writer under a number of names - wrote another book about him, The Pickled Poodle Murders. It’s awful and there were no more.

In the best twist, though, Palmer’s last book was also finished by someone else after his death. Fletcher Flora finished the feculent Hildegarde Withers encounters hippies (Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene) in 1969. (No adult writer ever wrote anything readable about hippies in the 60s.)

The mystery world, like the science fiction world, was much smaller in those days. There were maybe 200 people who were regulars and they all knew each other, with lots of lifetime friendships (and lots of lifetime emnity). Many books published under one name were finished, added to, revised, or even completely written by someone else to get them through a rough patch. This was true for even the biggest names.

Ellery Queen was possibly the bigest name in mysteries in the 50s, because of the Ellery Queen books, all bestsellers, nine EQ movies in the 30s, a hugely successful EQ radio series in the 40s, two 50s EQ tv shows, and because Frederick Dannay edited Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the premiere magazine and put out endless anthologies. They retired the book series in 1958 because while Dannay did the plots his writing partner Manfred Lee developed a crippling writer’s block. When the series started up again in 1963 with The Player on the Other Side, it was a huge secret that lasted until after Dannay’s death in the 80s that Theodore Sturgeon had been brought in as a writer. The next three books were also ghosted. *…and on the Eighth Day *and The Fourth Side of The Triangle by Avram Davidson and the novelization of the movie *A Study in Terror *by Paul Fairman, with only the frame at the beginning and end by Lee. Lee managed to come back for five more weak novels before he died, so everyone assumed he had done them all. (He had money problems so the Queen name started being used as a house name for a bunch of non-Ellery paperback thrillers by a dozen writers, but I think that everybody but the most naive knew the scam.)

Bibliographers are still trying to figure out who wrote what paperback originals in the 50s in several genres. It’s like everybody lived in a big room with a typewriter in the center and whoever was awake added pages.

The only thing worse are dime novels and pulps. Horatio Alger didn’t writer all the Horatio Alger books and Nick Carter might had had dozens of writers.

10

Exapno:

This is interesting as heck, and I do not fault your expertise on mysteries, but your entry does seem to be getting away from the theme/point of the OP (as does CK’s).

POlenty od series have been continued by other folks after the original author’s death, especially by those who had been collaborators. I was struck by how many sequels and series had been continued by folks who had not been actively involved in the series before, but seem to have been chosen because they were friends or relatives and knew the author’s style, and maybe because their names added publicity.

Thus, Brian Herbert and Adrian Conan Doyle, who AFAIK hadn’t written anything in the genre before this (and probably aided in no small way by their collaborators). I’m pretty sure Cay van Ash hadn’t written adventure stories before his renewedc Fu Manchu, and Roald Dahl wasn’t known for his spy adventures before they tapped him for James Bond.
Derleth obviously self-selected himself for Lovecraft, but he was definitely a frioend and associate.
But, while the mystery community was a small one, it’s not clear (to me, at any rate) that any of the Ellery Queen continuers were tapped because they were friends of the original authors. It seems likely it’s because they were proven writers. Similarly for Walsh. And, for that matter, Robert Golsborough continuing Nero Wolfe. Or Amis, Gardner, Benson, Faulks, and Deaver* continuing Bond

*and Wood, if you’re feeling generous.

11

Outies by J. R. Pournelle (I believe the “J” is “Jennifer” but I’m not 100% certain).

12

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan was/is being concluded by another writer.

It’s a huge fantasy epic, with 12 books of 500-700 pages each, chronicling the same characters/over-arching storyline written by Jordan prior to his death in 2007.

Apparently he was well underway in writing the 12th (one of the 12 previously mentioned came midway through the series as a ‘stand-alone’ prequel) and final instalment of the series when he died. He was expecting his own demise, and had prepared the plot structure and character notes in anticipation of another writer finishing on his behalf.

This final book was deemed far too grand, and it was decided to release it as 3 separate books, of normal length, 2 of which have been published. I haven’t read any of them yet, as I am waiting for all the books to be available before I read the entirey of the series from the beginning once again (it’s been 20 years since I read the first, and 8 since the last!), but I’ve heard the style/narrative voice is pretty close to Jordan’s.

13

Well, Jean de Brunhoff created the popular “Babar the Elephant” books for children, back in the 1930s, and his son Laurent wrote a number of very popular sequels.

14

I’m not sure if this counts (since these wre unrelated books, not part of a “series”), but Dick Francis’s last 4 or 5 mystery novels were co-written with his son Felix.

15

Again, interesting, but not relevant to this thread unless the person who’s writing the new volumes is a family member or a friend of Jordan’s chosen because he was a friend of Jordan’s.

16

Oh shoot, sorry!

Well, the author was chosen by Jordan’s widow, because she was familiar with his work. But I am not so sure that they were friends, per se.

17

I’ve never wanted a “Like” button on here so much in my life.

I’m a HUGE Dune fan, read all of Frank Herbert’s books in that universe, as well as The Dune Encyclopedia, and after reading House Atreides, I wanted to go hunt Brian Herbert and Kevin Hackerson down and thrash them soundly. Their books in that universe are just absolute shit.

18

You can try to keep a thread to its topic, but that trick never works. I’ve tried, others have tried. Hopeless. It’s the Internet Uncertainty Principle: the more you try to pin a thread down, the larger the drift will be. :slight_smile:

19

Here’s a stretch, but I think technically it counts:

Dacre Stoker, a great-grandson of Bram Stoker’s brother (and born many years after his great-great-uncle’s death), and writing partner Ian Holt (which is kind of like saying Sam Taylor and writing partner Will Shakespeare I’m guessing in division of labor) have written a new Dracula novel. While it’s not surprising that a distant relation would exploit a tangential connection to get a book deal, what is surprising is that even though Stoker’s never written anything he and Holt received a $1 million+ advance.

Less of a stretch:

Jeff Shaara, son of The Killer Angels author Michael Shaara, has written several novels about the Civil War and other wars, some of them revisiting Robert E. Lee and other historical figures from The Killer Angels. While Lee and other generals aren’t fictional characters obviously, the characterizations (which were criticized by many scholars in Shaara senior’s work) are borrowed.

20

I can’t give too much detail on this one because if the person is still alive she’s a known trouble maker, so no names, but…

I used to work for a university that housed the papers of a much venerated southern literary icon. (Some will know from other posts who I’m talking about, but for others I’ll say female, Georgia, died in the last 50 years.) She had a cousin who she barely knew in life (the cousin was maybe a teenager when her Famous Old Cousin, who I’ll abbreviate F O’C, died) but she considered herself at least the equal and over the years she claimed to have “discovered” some typed documents that were written by F O’C, somewhat surprising considering that there was hardly any conceivable way that they’d have come into her possession even if real. (F O’C was survived by her mother and another cousin who had possession of all of her papers.) The manuscripts were written on an ‘obvious to the nakedest eye’ different type style than F O’C ever used, there was no handwritten marginalia of the sort that covered almost every page of F O’C’s drafts, and while the style and themes of the writing were vaguely the same the quality wasn’t even in the same hemisphere.

No press, not even the little bitty university or mom and pop presses, ever published it. Most gave a diplomatic “unproveable provenance”, though at least one said “Even if this is a F O’C manuscript, there’s a reason she wisely chose never to submit it for publication”. Kind of a pity they didn’t, because if they had I’ve no doubt this person would have “discovered” crate loads of “lost” manuscripts.

I’ve always thought there’s a book in this attempted cash-in somewhere.