overripe fruit

[psocoptera]

So apparently Gaiman is writing a new Sandman story. Is this actually good news? I feel like creators going back to their most well-known early universes rarely produces anything up to the quality of their early works - in fact, I can't offhand think of an exception to this. Anyone?

Here are some of the cases I've already thought about:
Orson Scott Card's "Shadow" books revisiting the Ender universe
Asimov's later Foundation books vs the original trilogy
Vinge's recent Tines book
David Brin's later Uplift trilogy vs Startide Rising and Uplift War
George Lucas's Star Wars prequels
Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

The only counterexample I've come up with so far, after more thinking, is Jo's Boys, which was published fifteen years after Little Men. And I guess one could count the Lord of the Rings vs the Hobbit, although honestly, though it borders on blasphemy, I think a certain amount of Tolkien's later History of Middle-Earth work fits the pattern of "bloated and unnecessary".

Comments

[antimony.livejournal.com]

Personally, I go back and reread the first two occasionally; I have reread Robots of Dawn maybe once? It always felt like a retread plus continuity hack to me (less so than Robots and Empire, but Robots and Empire is sort of about the continuity merge and thus it doesn't feel shoehorned in. Clunky, in places, but it has the same charm IMHO as a lot of crossover fanfic. Whereas Robots of Dawn feels like it should just be part of the original series but it doesn't quite fit.)