Other Authors

How often should authors write other authors' characters? I have just been reading John Gardner's and Anthony Horowitz's Holmesian narratives. (Both also wrote Bond, with markedly different results.)

Poul Anderson made good contributions to several other authors' series. He would have been capable of exactly reproducing Conan Doyle's style in a Sherlock Holmes story. He would also have been capable of vastly improving on ERB's Martian series or EE Smith's Lensman series. (Kimball Kinnison cameos in the Old Phoenix.) Some series cry out for improved versions.

I would not welcome continuations of any of Anderson's series by other authors. Multiverse was enough to show that most other authors are not going to get it right. I do wish that Anderson himself had given us more of Dominic Flandry, Diana Crowfeather, Aycharaych and Manse Everard and other Time Patrol agents even at the expense of some later works. But what he did give us was immense.