Odd Lots
- I've installed Lazarus 1.0 without mayhem, and have created a few simple programs with it. So far, no glitches. My recommendation is still cautious. Nonetheless, I'd be interested in hearing other people's experiences with the new release.
- Carmine Gallo wonders why more people aren't doing image-rich PowerPoint presentations. Um...it's because ( Read more... )
It's possible that there was some other odd reason having to do with contracts between Stratemeyer and whoever wrote those two books. They were consecutive in the series, which suggests carelessness at the publisher office in one timeframe.
Tom Swift Jr fanfic exists, though it's almost entirely the work of one man, Scott Dickerson. See his site Tom Swift Lives: http://www.tomswiftlives.com/
There is other Swift fanfic, including a series starring Sandra Swift, Tom's sister. As best I know, the original publisher (or whoever owns it now) has never objected to fanfic. Scott would be the one to ask. He has a mailing list that I get, and it doesn't come often enough to be a nuisance.
My TSJR page is years overdue for a freshen-up, and I have to add pointers to various fan sites and fanfic sources.
Let me know if this answers the question. Copyright can be a weird business.
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Yes, thank you - that was very much what I was looking for!
As a practical matter I doubt that anyone would care (or even notice) if, say, something appeared on Fanfiction.net. I imagine it would only become an issue if money became involved - that's so often true!
It might be interesting to concoct a new version of Stratemeyer fare. I recall it was once attempted, in a consciously archaized setting - call it the pre-1965 Solar System. The two problems it faced were the concept itself - it's no good pretending that Mars is just high-sierra country, and all you need is a parka and an air tank; even today's high schools still teach this much, that kids know better - and the symbol of the series, which was a sunburst… with a cross on it. Oh yah. A built-in limiting factor, what I mean to say. (And there's not even a guaranteed core audience, either.)
But that's not to say that it couldn't be done in a different solar system - say, reached by a colony ship that barely made it, and the colonists started out at 19th-century technology plus artifacts, and only now is their nascent civilization spreading out to other planets in that system, with the valiant Solar Guard keeping peace in the spacelanes, &c., &c.
That way you can have cute alien pets and menacing alien monsters without people going, “Waitaminute, now -”
Ah, the letter I could write to myself thirty years ago, crammed with such ideas!
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