30 Published Fanfictions

[shadowkat]

Here's a list of published fanfiction...books and or musicals/plays that either started out as fanfiction or are clearly fanfiction and got published, because they fall under a legal loop-hole. (ie. the original work is in the public domain or, it's vaguely based on the original work but in reality bares little resemblance to it. Everybody's Human fic for Spike and Buffy and other genres probably fits here.)

1. Fifty Shades of Grey - based on a Twilight fanfic (oddly Twilight feels more like it was based on a fanfic than this does, also this reminds me of a Harlequinn that I read in 2002 that was written by an acquaintance and based on a Spuffy fanfic. I'm reading it - the writer seems more interested in Thomas Hardy and Tess of D'Urbevilles - I have the oddest desire to watch that film now or read the book. Twilight - I found unreadable and gave up - in the book store. I'm not saying it's great, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's no worse than a lot of Regency or Harlequinn novels I've read, and/or half a dozen other books. It is interesting how insane people are about it. Oh? It is better written than The Story of O (which I tried to read and gave up, I don't know it was the translation - but that is a badly written book) and Anne Rice's Beauty...which I also attempted to read, and is also a poorly written book and fanfiction - an erotic retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story but seems to be mostly about the porn. It's Porn without Plot in capital letters, so too was The Story of O. At least Fifty Shades has a plot. And some witty lines, the other two don't.)
2. Pride & Prejudice and Zombies (god this one was bad, I picked it up in book store, unreadable tripe. And a blatant attempt to use someone else's work to make money. If Austen was alive? She should sue for plagirism.)
3. Sense and Sensability and Sea Monsters (stop the madness please)
4. Ahab's Wife - won an award
5. The Wide Sargasso Sea - about Mr. Rochester's first wife in Jane Eyre
6. Death Comes to Pemberly by PD James - I hear it is deathly dull
7. Scarlett - the sequel to Gone with the Wind (not very good I hear)
8. Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres (a modern version of King Lear)
9. Alice Hoffman's Here on Earth - a modern version of Wuthering Heights
10. Geraldine Brooks - March - a parallel re-telling of Little Women
11. JM Corteze's novel - Foe based on Robinson Crusoe
12. Stephen Moffat's Sherlock and Jekyll - fanfic series based on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
13. My Fair Lady - a rip-off musical version of George Bernard Shaw's Pgymallion
14. West Side Story - a rip off of Romeo and Juliet
15. Bridget Jones Diary - a modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice

Go here for an extensive list :
I'm done explaining about fanfic This is really a brilliant post, everyone who reads my journal should go read it now. If it doesn't change your views about fanfic's legitmacy than nothing will.

16. Mr. Darcy's Obsession by Abigail Reynolds
17.Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy - the Last Man in the World - by Abigail Reynolds
18. A Wife for Mr. Darcy by Mary Simonsen
19. Mr. Darcy and the Secret of Becoming a Gentleman by Maria Hamilton
20. Serenity: Float Out by Patton Oswalt (Serenity - Firefly fanfic)
21. Arche Enemy : The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

Another extensive list of published fanfiction - which was originally shelved at least once as "published fanfiction" - by the author: http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/published-fanfiction

22. Mistress Masham's Repose by TH White
23. Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance by George RR Martin
24. The Beekeepers Apprentice by Laurie King
25. Maskerade (Discworld 18) by Terry Prachett
26. It's Superman! by Tom De Haven
27. The Billionaire Bum by Samatha Blair
28. The Spainish Bride by Georgette Heyer - is a Real Person Fanfic based on the autobiography of Harry Smith.
29. Blonde - a novel by Joyce Carol Oats - a Real Person Fanfic on Marilyn Monroe
30. Neil Gaiman's Sandman - a retelling of the original Sandman comics.

Comments

[spikewriter]

How about the various "pastisches" of Sherlock Holmes over the year?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Not really. Every published work is based on something else. Twilight was based on Buffy (she saw a couple of episodes and got the idea).

And look at the number of books that have been written with approval that are based on living authors works?

I'm reading Fifty Shades? And I can tell you the only way you'd know it was based on a living writer's work is the author said so. But what did she base it on? A guy with a dark past who falls in love with a woman who is inexperienced sexually and drawn to him? That's not an original idea. Rosemary Rodgers and Kathleen Woodwiss were writing that in the 1970s.
Hell, Thomas Hardy wrote about it in the 1800s. It's really old. The characters aren't even the same age. The protagonist just graduated from "college" and is "21". Bella was in high school and was 16.

If you could tell? It would be illegal.

So what pray tell me is churlish about this? Being inspired by someone else's work? Who isn't? Whedon based Buffy the Vampire Slayer on all the
horror movies he saw. Cabin in the Woods is a blatant rip-off of several horror films. Sarah Connor Chronicles is fanfic based on James Cameron's Terminator. Moonlight was a blatant rip-off of Angel.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the clarification. ;-) I should have asked, sorry about that.

Not sure about your second sentence?

To my knowledge? There are no fanfic writers making money of a living author's original work without the copyright holder's permission or as "scholarly work". That's a clear violation of copyright law.

Note? Fifty Shades wouldn't fall under "fanfic writer making money of a living author's original work" - since she's not using anything original from Meyer's work. Not one single thing.

Say you wrote a sequel to the Hunger Games Triology and self-published it, and it took off? That would be a clear violation of copyright law and you would be fined and forced to remove your work.

See the difference?? Plots aren't copyrightable, there's no such thing as an original plot. Archetypes aren't copyrightable. Titles aren't copyrightable unless you can prove that they are clearly original - ie. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But the title "Twilight" isn't.

[Probably should be noted that I worked in copyright and trademark law for a publishing company regarding online publishing and content licensing for 7 years as the Manager of Rights and Permissions.]

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh, re-reading this...I hope I didn't come across as too cranky or patronizing.
If so, apologies. Cranky today. And the nasty lawyer in me comes out to play.

[spikesjojo.livejournal.com]

Plus the fact that so many writers started in fan writing. It's a perfect apprenticeship. I can't count how many women published in SF started by writing Star Trek fanfic. It changed the field and opened the door in what had been a very male dominated filed up til then.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

So true. About 50% of the Buffy writers - started out as fanfic writers. They actually get their jobs writing spec scripts for other shows. Drew Goddard got the Buffy job for a fanfic teleplay that he wrote for Six Feet Under. And Jane Espenson got her Star Trek gig, because she'd been writing Star Trek fanfic.

There's also all the published fanfics of Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy, Angel,
etc...which are permitted by the studio copyright owners of the original work as derivative works. Splinter in the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster is Star Wars fanfic.

[petzipellepingo.livejournal.com]

Death Comes to Pemberly by PD James - I hear it is deathly dull
Scarlett - the sequel to Gone with the Wind (not very good I hear)

Pemberly is better than Scarlett, but still dull.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

Neither is particularly good but scarlet is straight-up ridiculous.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I did try to watch the television adaptation of Scarlett...which, sigh, was horrifically silly. Can only imagine what the book was like.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

What about Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead?

Oates' Blonde is a great book, but just out of curiosity - what makes it more fanfic than any other fiction involving real historical characters?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee - I just limited the list to 30, hunting books people may not have heard of. Tom Stoppard's book is on the list of books I linked to.

Oates' Blonde is a great book, but just out of curiosity - what makes it more fanfic than any other fiction involving real historical characters?

Nothing that I can think of. I'd say all historical fiction with real people is probably Real Person Fanfic. The only reason people don't think of it as fanfic is it was written after the person died.

People tend to avoid writing about living famous people - due to slander issues. Although Primary Colors - was a fictional novel based on the Clinton campaign and would clearly fall under fanfic. And may be a better choice.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't know what else to call 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'. Especially the scene I swear comes off as old Abe seeing Anne Rice's Lestat in New Orleans. Lestat's name isn't given... Just a Vampire matching Lestat's description and dress on Lestat's hunting ground in the time period where Lestat hunted there and who only appears in one scene, and who Lincoln inexplicably chooses not to hunt...

Worse than being turned into a vampire hunter however is that Abe is turned into a daddy-issue laden asshole.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Worse than being turned into a vampire hunter however is that Abe is turned into a daddy-issue laden asshole.

LOL!

I saw the trailer to it before either The Hunger Games or Cabin in the Woods, and I thought...wait, they've turned the entire Confederate Army into vampires? Okay...that is going to go over well.

Especially the scene I swear comes off as old Abe seeing Anne Rice's Lestat in New Orleans. Lestat's name isn't given... Just a Vampire matching Lestat's description and dress on Lestat's hunting ground in the time period where Lestat hunted there and who only appears in one scene, and who Lincoln inexplicably chooses not to hunt

LOL! Maybe because he's French and pretty? Or not a member of the Confederate Army? Is Robert E Lee a vampire in this book by any chance?

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call Gaiman's "Sandman" published fanfiction. Or at least, if it's fanfiction, it's not fanfiction of the original "Sandman" (who barely appears) but fanfiction of all kinds of sources, including quite a bit of classic mythology. And of course, to an extent all superhero comics are fanfiction, working with established characters in an established universe. Most of these elements in Sandman are in the first volume, when they wanted him to incorporate as much DC canon as possible and he went hunting through all the old comics for characters and ideas.

But for me the hallmark of fanfiction is that the majority of the characters/world is not your own. I don't think Sandman qualifies there. The first volume, yes, Gaiman was mostly reworking obscure or older characters into a new myth. But the main characters of the series and much of the later volumes are all Gaiman. It's kind of a weird mix, an adaptation that became an original story a little ways in.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Neither does Fifty Shades under your definition, or for that matter
several other works on the list. Actually Sandman is closer to fanfic than Fifty Shades or any of the Everybody's Human fanfic - whose only resemblance to the original is they use the character's names.

It really does depend on how broad the definition is. Did it start as fanfiction then changed over time to become something else entirely?
(example Fifty Shades, where the writer was inspired by an original work, than gradually pulled away from it and created an original story that bares little resemblance to the original.) Did it start as a fanfic that merely used the names and descriptions of the characters in the original work or their archetypes? Fifty Shades (this isn't really fanfic, since all you have to do is change the names and it's original...and honestly, I often wonder why a lot of these writers don't.) Or is it a continuation or sequel? Scarlett is an example, as are the Pride and Prejudice novels (Death comes to Pemberly - is an example), and the Looking Glass Wars. Is it an adaptation - were the story is loosely based on the original? West Side Story and My Fair Lady. Is it a modernization? A Thousand Acres, James Joyce's Ulysees, and Here on Earth. Or is it a story from another character, possibly a supporting or minor character's pov? The Wide Sargasso Sea, Ahab's Wife, Rosencrantz & Guilderstern are Dead, and March.

Then there's the one's that are basically taking the original story and plopping it into a different genre. - Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I think that to call any work that is even partly based on anything else "fanfiction" blurs the term into such vagueness that it's pretty much useless. Much like "Mary Sue" has become a term that is too broad and vague and hard to apply. Every story is going to be based partly on or inspired by some other story, that's just how stories and ideas work. "Fanfiction" in its internet context is a story that is using the characters and world of another story, that the author of the fanfic did not create. That's why people mention when they're introducing Original Characters-- because fanfic readers are expecting to get only or mostly the characters from the source story, not ones the fanfic author is making up.

But once you start making up more and more original characters, or new setting details, or even removing the story to an entirely different setting from the source story... you've really ceased to write fanfiction, because there's little of the source left that can be recognized.

As for adaptations... when it comes to archetypal stories, I feel like they are more a framework. A trellis, if you will. But even with the framework, the author still has to make up the characters, the worlds, the individual motivations and conflicts. When the story is done, if the author has done their job well, you can only see glimpses of the framework under all the new pieces that have been fit in-- like a trellis that's buried under flowers, leaves, and vines. And of course the author can always change or subvert the typical story and twist it from the usual shape. A story that is based on a framework but doesn't have enough original detail falls flat, just like a trellis by itself, or with only one or two flowers, is really boring to look at, and the story falls flat.

Fanfiction is a balancing act. If you're going to play in someone else's sandbox, with their world and characters, you have to get enough of the setting right so that it resonates as THAT setting in the readers' minds. But you have to bring enough new conflict that it doesn't just become the same story twice. The best fanfic I have read kept everyone in character, but answered or explored areas of the story that were off screen or weren't addressed for some reason. The worst fanfic has characters who share the same name and maybe the same vague appearance as the original characters, but who act nothing like them and who are in a world that has almost no resemblance to the canon. Like everything else, there's way more godawful crap fanfic than good stuff.

Wandering back to specific published examples... I think you can't just blithely say everything is "fanfiction," it's more like a sliding scale of Fanfiction -- Reimagining -- Adaptation -- Mostly Original. I would say works like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Mr.Darcy's Wife and such are pretty much fanfiction-- they're set in an existing world with characters that are recognizable to readers of the original. Things like Romeo & Juliet vs. West Side Story or Wizard of Oz vs. Wicked are adaptations-- the plot is easy to recognize, but the characters and setting are different OR the story is approached from a different point of view. I would throw out something like Treasure Island as Mostly Original? It was unique enough that everything in it became its own trope and was mimicked over and over. Maybe the 'Mostly Original' category is really just stuff that mixes up other influences in a unique enough blend to become its own mythology. I can't comment too much farther on that point because it veers into Literature and Classic Works territory which I honestly am not all that familiar with.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Again, I think it is basically a question of semantics. But generally speaking, I agree with you - as does copyright law. Copyright law defines illegal fanfiction as you describe fanfiction:

""Fanfiction" in its internet context is a story that is using the characters and world of another story, that the author of the fanfic did not create."

From a copyright perspective - if you publish a story that fits this definition without permission, you are in direct violation of copyright law. That's illegal.

I think..it's a spectrum. Personally, I find the idea that Fifty Shades is fanfic based on Twilight ludicrious, it bears no resemblance to Twilight at all. Whether it did or not in its initial version? Is
irrelevant. The published version - that people are paying for - isn't.

But...Pride and Prejudice with Zombies is definitely fanfic. And I think Sandman was in its initial stages, Gaiman even references the original version - paying homage to it.

The thing of it is? You can't really define fanfic narrowly, you can try, and more power to you - but that's just your view. The internet defines it far more broadly (see fanfic.net and various web sites to see along with both links I provided). Note: The list above that I came up with? I grabbed from GoodReads "Published Fanfiction" listing and "bookshop" published fanfiction listing. I didn't come up with the list on my own. The authors of those works considered them fanfic,
as did various other people.

The media sees Fifty Shades as based on fanfic. The writer states she published it as a fanfic. So...is it one? Whether it is good or bad fanfic is largely subjective and a bit like saying Buffy is better than Firefly. Depends on which you happen to like better and what works for you personally, I suspect. Also what you are comparing it to?
Compared to Twilight? It's better in my opinion but I also find Twilight unreadable, compared to The Story of O (sigh, definitely better, the Story of O is also unreadable in my opinion), compared to Tess of the D'Urbvilles or say Harry Potter, not so much - those are definitely better.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

But once you start making up more and more original characters, or new setting details, or even removing the story to an entirely different setting from the source story... you've really ceased to write fanfiction, because there's little of the source left that can be recognized.

I agree. I know in my own writing...it may start out as fanfic, but over time as I build the story it's not...and there's no resemblance. I was merely inspired is all.

An all stories really can be traced back to another's story as inspiration. That's the nature of stories, they build on others stories.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

Let's not forget the most successful fanfic of all time: the Aeneid is fanfic on the Iliad.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Really? I'd forgotten that. I know Ulysess is a fanfic on the Odysessy.

Hee. Proof they've been writing and publishing fanfic for over 1000 years.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

I almost mentioned the Odyssey, but it's supposedly by the same author so I thought it would be cheating under your definition.

But some of the Greek tragedies qualify too, like Agamemnon.