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

[q10.livejournal.com]

as for late Ekumen stuff, i thought the short stories The Matter of Segri and Solitude (collected in The Birthday of the World), were both pretty interesting, and some of the other Ekumen stories in the same volume were okay.

i thought that The Telling (the last Ekumen novel, published in 2000), was too preachy and not really competitive with the earlier stuff, although it had its moments.