fruit from another angle
Aug. 16th, 2013 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraI want to try to think about the question of authors revisiting their early great works from another angle, namely, is it the revisitation that's the problem, or is it just that late output is *generally* bloated and not so good compared with early creative works?
To go through some of my examples from the previous post:
David Brin wrote Startide Rising in 1983, Uplift War in '87, and the Brightness Reef/Infinity's Shore/Heaven's Reach trilogy in '95, 96, and 98. Brin's original fiction works immediately before and after were Glory Season in 93 and Kiln People in 2002. Glory Season I vaguely recall being kind of dull, Kiln People on the other hand I recall having a much more creative and original premise than the trilogy.
I haven't read any of Orson Scott Card's post-2000 work other than Shadow books, so no clue there. Pastwatch was just 1996, though.
Lucas wasn't doing anything non-Star Wars during the prequel era.
Asimov's late career (80s and 90s) seems to feature a lot of expanding on his earlier works and tying them together, and nothing totally new with which I'm familiar.
Diana Wynne Jones (brought up in the comments) was writing high-quality memorable books in the '90s - Hexwood in 93, Deep Secret in 97. And then in the 2000s she wrote a bunch of sequels - Merlin Conspiracy, Conrad's Fate, Pinhoe Egg, House of Many Ways, none of which I thought were all that great - but nor was I that into her non-sequel works from the same time period, The Game or Enchanted Glass.
To take this back to Gaiman, he wrote Anansi Boys in 06, Graveyard Book in 08, both of which are tight and excellent, I don't at all feel like he *should* be approaching the "bloated rehash" portion of his career yet. So maybe the new Sandman will actually be good?
To go through some of my examples from the previous post:
David Brin wrote Startide Rising in 1983, Uplift War in '87, and the Brightness Reef/Infinity's Shore/Heaven's Reach trilogy in '95, 96, and 98. Brin's original fiction works immediately before and after were Glory Season in 93 and Kiln People in 2002. Glory Season I vaguely recall being kind of dull, Kiln People on the other hand I recall having a much more creative and original premise than the trilogy.
I haven't read any of Orson Scott Card's post-2000 work other than Shadow books, so no clue there. Pastwatch was just 1996, though.
Lucas wasn't doing anything non-Star Wars during the prequel era.
Asimov's late career (80s and 90s) seems to feature a lot of expanding on his earlier works and tying them together, and nothing totally new with which I'm familiar.
Diana Wynne Jones (brought up in the comments) was writing high-quality memorable books in the '90s - Hexwood in 93, Deep Secret in 97. And then in the 2000s she wrote a bunch of sequels - Merlin Conspiracy, Conrad's Fate, Pinhoe Egg, House of Many Ways, none of which I thought were all that great - but nor was I that into her non-sequel works from the same time period, The Game or Enchanted Glass.
To take this back to Gaiman, he wrote Anansi Boys in 06, Graveyard Book in 08, both of which are tight and excellent, I don't at all feel like he *should* be approaching the "bloated rehash" portion of his career yet. So maybe the new Sandman will actually be good?
