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IN bookstores these days, Arthur Dent is hitchhiking through the galaxy again, Dracula glides through the London fog once more, and Winnie the Pooh is back to toddling around the Hundred Acre Wood. This would not be remarkable were it not for the fact that the authors who created these literary icons—Douglas Adams, Bram Stoker, A.A. Milne—have been dead anywhere from eight years to nearly a century. But in the twilight world of officially sanctioned sequels, death is not an impediment to character development. In three new books—And Another Thing ..., the sixth volume of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series; Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, the new Winnie the Pooh book; and Dracula: The Un-Dead— the estates of the deceased writers (or their descendants) have hired writers to breathe new life into these characters. It’s not a new practice, but this troika of high-profile revivals, all within a 10-day period, brings these after-death sequels to a new level of prominence. Jane Belson, Adams’ widow, was cheerfully blunt when asked if her late husband would have wanted anyone tampering with, say, Marvin the Paranoid Android. "I have no idea," she said, "he’s not here." She paused, then gave a good-natured laugh. "He hated writing books, but he loved having written them. ... I’m not sure how he would have reacted to someone doing it for him. But it seemed like a good idea." The literary creations of authors stopped being sacred territory roughly 20 years ago, when the estates of late authors began leasing out the copyrights to old works. Scarlett O’Hara rose to meet another day years after Margaret Mitchell died; James Bond has had endless adventures since the demise of his creator, Ian Fleming; and Peter Pan flew again a couple of years ago, three-quarters of a century after J.M. Barrie passed away. Michael Brown, the chairman of the Pooh Properties Trust for the past three decades, says he never would have greenlighted a new Pooh book when he joined the trust, which oversees the Milne literary estate. Back then, he says, the mention of a Pooh sequel would have had everyone from publishers to the public recoiling in horror. "But there’s been a change in the attitudes of society," he continued. "There’s a sense that nostalgia is fine, but you can bring these things out of the cupboard. ... Of course, there will still be the purists, or Eeyores, who’ll say it’s a rotten idea before they open the front cover." — By arrangement with La Times-Washington Post
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