Peter Pan

An award-winning children's book author named Geraldine McCaughrean has written a sequel to Peter Pan, authorized by Great Ormond Street Hospital, which owns the copyright to the original characters.  The new book will include Peter, Wendy and the Darling family, Tinker Bell, and Captain Hook, but details of the plot have not yet been released.  The title will be Peter Pan in Scarlet, according to this article.

Which sort of raises a couple of points  I enjoyed Peter and the Starcatchers, by Dave Barry and Riddley Pearson--a prequel, but apparently one not authorized by the copyright holders.  It was published by Hyperion, so I guess it's possible that Disney owns a copyright to the movie characters and it was those--not the book characters--that Barry and Pearson's book was about.

The other point is, why don't books like these get treated like the tie-in novels that they are?  Or maybe, why aren't tie-ins treated like these.

Books set in the world of Peter Pan, or The Godfather, or Gone With the Wind, are works made for hire, based on characters and settings created by other writers.  The originals are loved by millions.  The new books are approved by the copyright holders of the original material.

Every word of that is true of a Star Trek novel or a Conan novel or a Buffy novel.  And yet, the literary establishment embraces one while frowning on the other.  Readers of what are traditionally considered tie-in novels are made to feel like they're indulging in a lower form of entertainment, on a par with cockfighting or something.

This kind of senseless "ghettoizing" of tie-in fiction--and an appeal for it to always be the best it can be--are two of the factors behind the creation of the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, or IAMTW.  It's a brand new organization, but I hope they (or we, as I'm a member) are successful in changing public attitudes toward tie-in writing and creating recognition that excellent work can be done in that field.