Ntuple Indemnity

Huh?

Eoin Colfer is a witty, tech-savvy guy, and based on author’s credentials alone, when his continuation of the Hitchhiker’s Guide “trilogy” arrives on shelves I’ll be sure to take a look. I’m guilty of being party to this kind of brand-driven exploitation, and I know it. Setting aside for a minute my serious qualms about the brand-name licensing trend in fiction publishing, two reservations spring to mind:

• Didn’t we already see, with Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony (I have yet to read The Time Paradox), that Eoin Colfer is a cautionary case study in wells drying up?
• Didn’t we already see, with Mostly Harmless (and to a lesser extent, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish), that Douglas Adams is also a cautionary case study in wells drying up?

Hitchhiker’s is finished. Let’s move on.

This is the fifth and final part of “License to Slum: The Novel of the Movie of the Game”, a pentapartite polemic about media tie-in fiction in which I investigate whether my prejudice against them is just a prejudice. I recommend that you start at the beginning.

In this instalment, I turn my attention to the distinction of art from craft, the social responsibility of readers and critics, and why it is appropriate to express concern about the proliferation of tie-in novels irrespective of their success as works of entertainment.

Continued »

This is the fourth part of “License to Slum: The Novel of the Movie of the Game”, a pentapartite polemic about media tie-in fiction in which I investigate whether my prejudice against them is just a prejudice. I recommend that you start at the beginning. For the purposes of this episode, I also recommend an earlier post of mine on the subject of fan fiction, “The hack-and-slash fiction property market” (12 December 2007).

In this instalment, I inquire into the the extent to which the sharing of a mythopoeic universe constrains the freedom of the individual author, viz. whether there is a place for genuine innovation between the oversaturation of “canons” and the anarchic multiverse of fanfic.

Continued »

This is the third part of “License to Slum: The Novel of the Movie of the Game”, a pentapartite polemic about media tie-in fiction in which I investigate whether my prejudice against them is just a prejudice. I recommend that you start at the beginning.

In this instalment, I evaluate tie-in fiction’s conundrum of creative diversity via the world’s most haughtily unqualified analysis of the Forgotten Realms novels.

Continued »

This is the second part of “License to Slum: The Novel of the Movie of the Game”, a pentapartite polemic about media tie-in fiction in which I investigate whether my prejudice against them is just a prejudice. I recommend that you start at the beginning.

In this instalment, I continue to assess some of the arguments that are often raised in defence of the tie-in novel, with a particular focus on movie novelizations and the behaviour of the property licensors.

Continued »