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]

I wonder if the fact that she mentored a lot of young authors and did a lot of anthology work (and a lot of co-writing even before she started co-writing stuff that she couldn't finish due to her own illness.) And thus maybe kept seeing what editing could do? Or possibly was just better at editing her own stuff? (Or continued to want to, rather than being happy to churn out novels -- sometimes it's clearly ego, like Anne Rice, but sometimes maybe it's laziness and the knowledge that something will be a commercial success anyway? Either on the author's part or the publishing house. IDK.)