I just ran into a Slashdot post pointing to Orson Scott Card’s commentary on J.K. Rowling’s attempt to ban an unauthorised encyclopaedia of the Harry Potter books.
I won’t summarise either of the articles; you’re capable of reading and evaluating them yourselves. However, it got me thinking about my general opposition to fanfic (and *shudders* slashfic), and how this case differs from that.
My issue with fanfic is that it impinges on a writers creative rights. A writer creates a setting and characters, and writes a plot for those characters to follow. Whether by design or accident, characters do not make particular choices, events are not told or are glossed over. But the choice is entirely in the author’s hands. To write “fiction” that enters this setting and explores choices not made and events untold diminishes the authority of the original creator.
The proverb goes that imitation is flattery, but I believe that progressing from a “what-if” discussion amongst friends to actually fleshing things out is where the problem lies. All of a sudden, choices that the author has made are invalidated — or worse yet, the author now cannot explore such options themself without the possibility of allegations of plagiarism.
I guess my objections stems from the fact that I reject the postmodernist view that audience has just as much ownership as author over a given work. At the end of the day, books (and other forms of art) aren’t a dialogue or a conversation; they are a one-way transmission. I really believe that any claims that an author has “betrayed” her audience (a friend of mine claims that Rowling has done this) with the choices made in her authorship of the books is a load of crap.
Anyway, where does this put me with Rowling’s stupid legal pursuit of the Harry Potter Lexicon?
Works like the Lexicon (such as David Day’s work on Middle Earth) do not perform the same function. Yes, they are derivative work, but they do not seek to build upon or speculate on “what-if”. Instead, they compile information available publicly and (perhaps) make commentary on that material.
Now, as a roleplayer, I perhaps muddy these distinctions a bit when playing in settings based upon non-RPG sources (for instance playing MURPS). The difference there is that these products are authorised by the original author (or executor of his estate) for that purpose, and that I don’t seek to supplant canon events or characters with my own roleplay experience. In my mind, I am not taking it beyond a “what if” exercise.
Thoughts?