Asimov Estate Authorizes New I, Robot Books

daria42 writes "In a move guaranteed to annoy long-term science fiction fans, the estate of legendary science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who passed away in 1992, has authorized a trilogy of sequels to his beloved I, Robot short story series, to be written by relatively unknown fantasy author Mickey Zucker Reichert. The move is already garnering opposition online. 'Isaac Asimov died forty years after they were first written. If he had wanted to follow them up, he would have. The author's intentions need to be respected here,' writes sci-fi/fantasy book site Keeping the Door."

Comments

How about we pay the author not to write them?

[cephalien]

Probably too late for that. Sigh :(

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[PapayaSF]

If these are the same idiots who "authorized" that god-awful movie

It's not really their fault. Here's how Hollywood works: when the film rights to a story are bought, the filmmakers almost always have the right to do whatever they want with it. This means they can totally rewrite the story, or even slap the title alone on a different, barely-related story. This is why Graham Greene (IIRC) once said that the best deal authors could get from Hollywood was when the film rights were bought but no movie was ever made. (This frequently happens: the rights to Stranger in a Strange Land, the Foundation Trilogy, and many other works have been bouncing around in Hollywood for many years.)

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[MeatBag PussRocket]

FWIW i choose to use my intelligence when considering an adaptive work of any sort, be it a movie based on a book or a book based on a book.

its like this: if i'm from Brooklyn and go to Pizza Hut i'd be a FOOL for expecting the pizza to taste the way it does at home, if i'm from Texas and go into Taco Bell expecting tex-mex i should be shot for stupidity, so why then would any reasonable person go see a movie adapted from a book and expect it to be faithful to their own imagination or even the original authors storyline? Taco Bell isnt bad food, as long as you take it for what it is neither is Pizza Hut. Personally i enjoyed both the Asimov stories as well as the iRobot movie, but i just know what to expect from each.

also, i dont see anyone roasting Timothy Zahn for his star wars novels. personally i think many of those are better than Return of the Jedi, and definitly better than Lucases last three 'epics' if thats anything to go on, i'm glad Asimov never wrote another robot book, it could haev been worse than Danielle Steele

Re:How about we pay the author not to write them?

[postbigbang]

The sad thing is that when you look on a bookstore's shelf, there's hardly anything left of 'hard' science fiction.

Apparently, to sell a book in the 'sci fi genre', it needs to have a touch of orc death, or perhaps an alternate universe where there's a some sort of hierarchical plot involving robes, old truths, and perhaps incantations.

I long for Azimov, Heinlein, Dickson, Ellison, Sheckley, etc. Even Pournelle and Niven have seemingly hung up their stirrups.

Movies from these guys' works? Unlikely to work. The CGI of the mind is not the CGI of the screen.

Cry, Robot...

[kclittle]

... this is just _wrong_!

Elitism

[Djupblue]

What kind of elitist crap is that? I love Asimov's books, I have read most of them and they probably helped shape me in a way. I say that if someone wants to have a go at some sequels the go right a head. I don't think that they will be even comparable but I might enjoy them anyway. The worst thing that can happen is that they are not worth reading.

Re:Elitism

[R2.0]

The delicious irony is the wailing about "author's intent" and bemoaning someone other than the original author covering the same ground coming from a group that would gladly see copyright curtailed so that EVERYONE would be free to butcher an author's vision after a period of time.

Oh, whatever

[Angst Badger]

The author's intentions need to be respected here.

The author no longer exists, and therefore cannot possibly have intentions.

That said, this kind of posthumous sequel is almost always a disaster, but that's only a problem for the people who read them. If the idea bugs you at all, rest assured that you are bothered infinitely more than the original author is.

Re:Sigh

[QuantumG]

No-one knows jack about AI.. most can't even define it.

And if you thought his books were about AI, you completely missed the point.

Bullshit

[aussie_a]

The travesty here isn't that someone is writing sequels to the original series. The travesty is that his heirs still have a monopoly on the series, 57 years later.

People writing sequels to books is the right for society to continue to enrichen our culture. Regardless of the quality of the works that will be produced, society grows by garnering inspiration and aid from past works. I'm sure Shakespeare has inspired and helped many a person in learning the trade of creating stories. The tragedy here is that companies like Disney reap all of the benefits of the public domain, while ensuring very little will ever be added back to it.

Before I get attacked by those who believe you have a right for all time to your ideas, this is a modern construct. Society managed to survive millenia without the damn thing. And as someone who seeks to earn their living in the software industry, I would quite happily place my work in the public domain voluntarily after a period of 25 years.