You borrow Marty McFly’s DeLorean and travel to the past in hopes of catching a glimpse of your all-time favourite novelist in their formative years, about a year before their first book comes out. Due to a miscalculation in the space-time coordinates, the DeLorean materializes in front of a massive boulder and crashes into it.
The good news is that you are miraculously thrown clear of the wreckage, along with your suitcase containing the novelist’s complete collected works.
The bad news is that the DeLorean is completely totalled, burning to a crisp and leaving you forever stranded in the past.
The worse news is that on your trek to find shelter, you accidentally sneeze on a passerby, triggering a butterfly effect that results in your favourite novelist dying within a week of some 21st-century illness.
Now that you’re trapped in the past, what do you do with the literature you’re carrying? Surely nobody will believe you if say you got it from the future.
I submit it for publication in the name of the dead author, making up some story about how they entrusted me with the manuscripts and a schedule for publishing them. I wouldn’t want to deprive the world of these literary masterpieces!
I submit it for publication in my own name. I wouldn’t want to deprive the world of these literary masterpieces, but at the same time I’ll need some source of income here in the past!
I submit it for publication under some pseudonym. I wouldn’t want to deprive the world of these literary masterpieces, and while I’ll need some source of income here in the past, I wouldn’t want to take all the credit for something I didn’t write myself.
I hand it over freely to the dead author’s heir, making up some story about how they entrusted me with the manuscripts before their untimely death.
I keep it under lock and key indefinitely. I’m conflicted as to what to do, so I’ll do nothing.
I destroy it. Clearly the people of this timeline weren’t meant to enjoy these literary masterpieces.
I take some other action which I will describe in the comments.
0voters
(For those options involving submitting or handing over the novels, you can assume that what you provide are your own typed or handwritten copies rather than the professionally printed and bound books you brought with you.)
Publish them under a pseudonym but including enough clues about the true author so as to cause suspicion and a growing conspiracy-kook theory that the author is not really dead, so each successive publication attracts more and more interest.
I haven’t voted yet, because I feel like the obvious and logical choice is some option where you submit these wonderful manuscripts for publication. And yet, I can’t help feeling like “I keep it under lock and key indefinitely” sounds like the most likely answer for me.
It’s already happened once in this author’s fictional world, so why not again. I’d place a metaphorical call out to Roland of Gilead and Jake Chambers to save Stephen King from his fate. Sorry Jake, you gotta take one for the team. Maybe the fourth time is the charm?
Summary
In Stephen King’s Dark Tower series, a fictional version of King is saved by the character Jake Chambers from being killed by the van that in real life nearly did kill him. In doing so Jake died, for the third (and final) time.
My own thoughts: I’d certainly want to see the material published, but handing it over to the author’s heir is risky because there’s no guarantee that they’d believe my story, or that they’d get the material published. Submitting it for publication in the name of the dead author is even more risky, since the publisher would probably want proof of our arrangement (of which there is none), and even if I could convince them that we had an oral agreement, they’d probably still consider the heir to own the copyright, which puts us back in the previous scenario.
I don’t see much difference between submitting the material in my name or under a pseudonym. As far as the people of this timeline are concerned, I’d still be the author, and if you want to see a book (or indeed an entire series of them) succeed, you need to take responsibility for negotiating the publishing contracts, promoting the books (via book signings, media appearances, etc.), and managing requests for reprint, translation, adaptation, and other rights. So I think I’d need to effectively “become” the author, doing all the same things they did in my timeline except for the actual writing. Sure, I’d be taking credit where it isn’t due, but that’s not going to harm anyone above and beyond the harm I already caused by inadvertently killing the original author. If I developed a guilty conscience, I could always use my profits to support the dead author’s family, or favourite causes, or whatnot.
What would the right pseudonym for Gabriel García Márquez be? Questions, questions, questions… And how does an anonymous pseudonym accept a Nobel Prize? Harder questions, harder questions, harder… But I would avoid his lunacy with Castro and would kick Mario Vargas Llosa in the balls before he punches me in the teeth. Win-win-win.
Pity about the DeLorean, though.
Publish, probably under my own name. I agree with @psychonaut’s reservations about trying to use the author’s name. And why use a pseudonym? I’m already a pseudonym in this timeline.
Periodic anonymous donations to the author’s heirs to assuage whatever guilt I was feeling.
That said, I like @Cervaise’ conspiracy-kook plan.
I voted for submitting it in the name of the dead author, but the Internet will probably attribute everything to Abraham Lincoln, Francis Bacon, Mark Twain, and Plato.
“All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upon doomed ships. When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternity with all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhile upon Oblivion’s sea. They will not carry much over those tides, our names and a phrase or two and little else.”
― Lord Dunsany
Men’s words are not eternal.
There were once thousands of Roman Novels–now we have only one.
One day, all we will have left of Shakespeare is a few out-of-context quotes.
And Art & Literature is vast.
Many great works are overshadowed by other, sometimes less-worthy volumes.