Franchise Zombies in Literature.
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Real Life
- Ian Fleming first intended to conclude the James Bond series with Bond's death in From Russia with Love. He backed out and made Dr. No (which declares the poisoning was non-fatal). Then there was Bond's amnesia at the end of You Only Live Twice, but the publishers' pressures led to the writing of one final novel before Fleming's death, The Man with the Golden Gun — which wound up published eight months after his death. According to certain rumors, Fleming didn't even write the whole book, and Kingsley Amis (who later wrote Colonel Sun) completed it.
- Rev. W. Awdry originally intended for book 12, The Eight Famous Engines, in his famous Railway Series books to be the final volume. The publishers insisted that he keep going. Considering how popular the books were and are, it's understandable.
- Michael Crichton intended for his novel Jurassic Park (1990) to be a standalone work. After its film adaptation, which he helped write the screenplay for, became a huge financial success, its creators pressured him to write a follow-up book so they could make a sequel film. Crichton reluctantly agreed and published The Lost World in 1995, which retconned a lot of the plot points from the original novel to match the ways in which the first film's plot had departed from it (including bringing back a character from the dead). After The Lost World was published, Crichton had no involvement in the Jurassic Park film franchise, which carried on despite his death in 2008. This is further elaborated on in the Jurassic Park example at the Live-Action Films subpage.
- The success of Goosebumps led publisher Scholastic to bet everything they had on it and tell author R.L. Stine to keep going. He did, and the quality suffered. The books ended up Strictly Formula and became shorter. Their popularity dropped as a result. It's been rumored that Stine became so fed up with this that many of the later books were ghostwritten.note After the Darker and Edgier Series 2000 reboot underperformed in sales, and Stine had a bitter falling out with Scholastic, the series was finally discontinued in 2000, only to be uncancelled in 2008. Notably however, Stine no longer publishes the books monthly, and the revival has maintained a relatively stable level of popularity.
- Sherlock Holmes died because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had grown tired of writing him and wanted to devote more time to his historical novels. Public and editorial pressure forced him to bring Holmes back. In stories written years later, Holmes reappeared, having survived (although the first story published after Conan Doyle's eight-year hiatus, "The Hound of the Baskervilles", was set before "The Final Problem"). This is thus also an example of a (metaphorical) character zombie. (Though Doyle's fatigue doesn't show in the writing quality until after, in 1917, Holmes was given a proper Grand Finale and it still wasn't enough to keep the fanbase from howling for more.)
- Maurice Leblanc tried to kill his hero Arsène Lupin but had to resurrect him for several new books due to popularity.
- Another French writer, Pierre Ponson du Terrail, pulled a "Doyle" when he killed off his pulp hero Rocambole, then eventually brought him back from the dead due to public pressure.
- L. Frank Baum of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz fame never really intended for the original book to spawn a series, and by the third sequel he was growing tired of writing about the Land of Oz. Unfortunately, none of his other books sold. He even tried creating something of a Backdoor Pilot by writing an Oz novel in which Dorothy and company take a backseat to a new set of characters who later showed up in an unrelated book. But it didn't work, and financial troubles forced Baum to keep writing Oz books for the rest of his life. In the introduction to one book, the narrator actually tells the reader that he knows many stories not related to Oz, and wishes he had a chance to tell them. Even Baum's death could not stop the series the author himself didn't want to continue. A sequence of different authors were hired by Baum's publisher to serve as his "heirs", and for the next six decades, many sequels (24 or so of these were considered 'canon') were churned out, of greatly varying quality.
- Alan Garner acheived literary fame on the basis of two fantasy novels aimed at older children/young adults, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath. He went on to write a long list of books he considered had far more literary merit and worth, and if he didn't actually hate his first two published works, he certainly disdained them. He was certainly annoyed with fans of the first two books who demanded and asked and pleaded for more involving the characters of Colin and Susan (the child protagonists). He made his deep dislike of the books, their premise, and their characters, very clear indeed by taking fifty years to write Boneland, the very long-awaited successor to Brisingamen and Gomrath. In this book Colin has grown up into an over-educated depressive and borderline sociopath with mental health issues, and Susan apparently drowned herself one night when chasing after elves in the starlight. Boneland is pessimistic, chilly, dark and noir and bleak - with none of the magic or optimism of the books it succeeds. Colin may die on a hospital operating table after ECT for his mental health problems (the book is ambiguous on this). Garner very emphatically answered the fans' request for more by providing exactly the opposite to what they wanted, and by killing off the beloved lead characters. And a lot of the supporting cast.
- Thomas Harris only wrote Hannibal Rising because Dino De Laurentiis threatened to make a Hannibal origins story without his involvement. Given both the book and movie were poorly received, it's hard to see him being forced to do this again. Then there's the television Hannibal, which adds original material but mostly tries to stay in the few years prior to and including Red Dragon.
- R.A. Salvatore has been said to have wished that he had killed Drizzt Do'Urden off years ago. In fact, he had once withdrawn from the franchise only to have Wizards of the Coast go so far as to solicit a manuscript by another author for a new Drizzt novel, Shores of Dusk. The novel even appeared in catalogs for an August 1997 release. Salvatore caved and the solicited novel disappeared. That was ten novels ago.
- Even dying hasn't stopped V. C. Andrews, who's still publishing in 2020 despite having died in 1986. It's like the Stratemeyer Syndicate, but with an author's real name.
- Winnie the Pooh. Supposedly, A. A. Milne wanted to kill Pooh off, but that failed. He hated the series because it made people ignore his adult works. It was even harder when it was picked up by Disney.
- Trojan Odyssey shows every sign of being the last book of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt Adventures series. Dirk, Gunn, and Giordino are promoted to desk jobs while Sandecker becomes VP, and a number of long-running subplots are finally resolved, such as Dirk marrying Loren and recognizing the strange man named Clive Cussler he meets at the wedding as the stranger that helped him in every adventure, and being introduced to his adult children he never knew about. This was six books away from the series' proper finale.
- Dorothy L. Sayers is an interesting case in that she zombie'd her own franchise with no help from publishers whatsoever (though they were undoubtedly grateful that she did). She originally wrote Strong Poison, introducing the character of novelist Harriet Vane, because she was tired of Lord Peter Wimsey and wanted to get rid of him by marrying him off — at the time it was held that a detective-series hero could not be married without breaking the 'rules' of the genre. However, when Sayers finished drafting the novel she realized that in Harriet she had created a character with more integrity and interior reality than her series hero had, so she had to go back and write almost as many novels again featuring Lord Peter before he reached a point of psychological complexity and reality enough that she could feel comfortable letting Harriet marry him. She then wrote a novel about their honeymoon and had plans to continue the series further, but moved onto other projects and never completed the next manuscript. Said manuscript was completed much later, in true Franchise Zombie fashion, by Jill Paton Walsh, who then proceeded to add three novels of her own to the series.
- David Morrell's novel First Blood featured a former Vietnam veteran John Rambo, who is shot in the back of his head with a shotgun at the end of the novel. Rambo dies, period. Then they changed the ending in the Stallone movie and Rambo survived. David Morrell then went on and wrote the second and third Rambo novels that were based on the movies. He even stated in the beginning of his second Rambo novel that in his original book Rambo died, but the new book is based on a movie and now Rambo lives (a change for which, in the DVD commentary for the first movie, Morrell gives his approval). A sort of disappointing moment to the author to write novelizations based on a movie based on his own original book.
- The end of the film adaptation of Jack Ketchum's Offspring was changed specifically so that the breakout character would survive and be able to appear in the sequel, The Woman, co-written by Ketchum and director (of The Woman, not Offspring) Lucky McKee.
- Something similar happened with the House Of Cards novels. Both of the first two books end with Urquhart defeated (in the first he jumps to his death on being exposed, on the second he is left facing an election defeat), only for the TV adaptations to end with him triumphant (throwing the journalist who would have exposed him to his death and easily winning an election). The books then carry on from the TV version instead of the earlier books.
- It's easy to notice the numerous times John D. Fitzgerald tried to end The Great Brain books. The first and longest book ends with Tom suddenly reforming out of nowhere, but the second book reveals this was just a ruse to get a new bicycle for Christmas. That book ends with Tom being Put on a Bus to the Academy in Salt Lake City, and the third book focuses on John getting a new adopted brother and saving him from an outlaw, while the fourth focuses on Tom's adventures at the Academy, and the fifth focuses on Tom's adventures upon returning home after his first year. That book ends with Tom being put on "trial" and told all the kids in the town will give him the silent treatment if he swindles anyone again. But then came a sixth and seventh book, which placed an academy right there in Adenville (avoiding rehashing the fourth book) and having Tom get sneakier at his plots so as to avoid invoking his suspended sentence. The seventh book ends with Tom turning thirteen and... um... "discovering girls", losing interest in his old plots, and even that book seems to leave the door open for yet more sequels at the very end (though Fitzgerald died before he could finish them).
- Anne McCaffrey said that Pern began as a short story and took on a life of its own. "One million words later, I'm not allowed to stop!"
- Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy lasted five books. Life, the Universe and Everything and So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish were actually meant to be the end of the series. The latter had mixed reviews and was more noted for the absence of Zaphod and Trillian than it was for the introduction of a new character, Fenchurch. The following book, Mostly Harmless, actually was the end, but more complained about the introduction of unlikeable character Random (Arthur and Trillian's daughter) than complained about the Downer Ending. Many wonder if this was Adams' way of getting back at fans who couldn't let go of the series. Adams also noted that the hard part of creating Hitchhiker's sequels was contriving a way to bring all the characters back together due to their tendency to go separate ways after each story. Many hardcore fans feel that he either lost interest in the series or said all that there was to say in the first two or three books. Eoin Colfer (of Artemis Fowl fame) wrote a sixth book, And Another Thing... that undid the ending of the fifth. Many hardcore Adams fans simply chose not to read this book.
- The formula of the Anne of Green Gables series was already getting thin as early as Anne of Avonlea, with the introduction of new adoptees Davy and Dora, and L. M. Montgomery firmly intended to end the series with Rilla of Ingleside in 1921, following a dispute with her publisher. Instead, the success of a 1934 movie adaptation of the original book persuaded her to write two Interquels - Anne of Windy Poplars (1936), Anne of Ingleside (1939) - over a decade after their predecessors, and three decades after the first book.
- Warrior Cats was originally only going to be one book, Into the Wild, but was turned into a six-book series when they determined it'd be too long. These books did so well that the publisher requested a sequel trilogy, which was later expanded into a full six-book arc with intentional loose ends since they already knew they were going to be doing a third arc at that point. Then they were going to end it after the fourth arc, which wrapped everything up fairly neatly, but fan demand resulted in the publisher having them continue - not only a Super Edition epilogue to that arc, not only a prequel arc, but actually continuing the main series afterward, even after the main editor who'd been writing the storylines retired from the series (she'd first stepped back due to health, and then because she'd "written all the Warriors stories she had in her"). As of 2023 there were over 100 works in the series, between main books, Super Editions, Field Guides, graphic novels, novellas, and short stories.
- Agatha Christie continued writing novels and stories featuring Hercule Poirot well into the 1970s, by which point the quality of the works and Christie's interest in the character had waned - and by which point the character was well over a hundred years old. Christie's death in 1976 followed Poirot's death a year earlier in Curtain, but then in 2014, the first of a series of authorized novels by Sophie Hannah was published.
- Gregory Mcdonald had intended to end the Fletch series at 1986's Fletch, Too which is even described as the final installment in the inside cover. However, he would relent and write two further novels in the 90's co-starring Fletch's illegitimate son, after which the series would end for real. When asked about his feelings about this trope in a 2002 interview, Mcdonald would state the following:I’ve told my family and so forth that if, after I kick the bucket, somebody takes over writing Fletches and Flynns under my name or in conjunction with my name or as a franchise, I will come back from the grave and twist their heads off.
- The Monogatari Series has been accused of this, what with the light novels seemingly releasing their conclusion in the aptly-named Owarimonogatari (End Story) and its epilogue Zoku-Owarimonogatari, only for more books to continue releasing, which have been criticized for reducing Koyomi and Hitagi's previously well-characterized relationship into a plot device, rehashing plots from earlier volumes, and flanderizing its returning characters. The fact that none of the light novels post-Owarimonogatari have been animated certainly doesn't help with this perception.
- My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! has been accused of this—the original web novel ended at two volumes with Nicol's graduation and the end of the year party where the characters promise to stay friends forever, and the anime follows suit by only adapting up to that point. However, the web novel proved so popular that when it was published in print, the series continued after that point. The later light novel volumes have been criticized for all relying on the same plot where Catarina meets a new character and inadvertently fixes their personal problems and causes them to fall in love with her, and for Ship Tease of Catarina and Geordo at the expense of every other pairing, when the earlier volumes were even-handed about teasing Catarina with all her possible love interests equally. When, due to the success of the anime adaptation, another season was made covering the light novel-original material, even professional reviewers who didn't have knowledge of the source material noted the step down in quality and how much it felt like a Postscript Season.
In-Universe
- Isaac Asimov wrote a short story, "Author! Author! (1964)", about a mystery writer forced by his publisher to write endless novels about his famous detective, Reginald de Meister, despite his desire to write a serious novel. Unfortunately for him, De Meister seems so real to fans that he actually becomes real and demands not only that more "Reginald de Meister" stories be written, but that the quality be improved.
- In Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun, author Appin Dungannon is enslaved to writing sequels to a series of Conan-wannabe novels despite wanting recognition as a serious author because the first few were so popular. As a result, the author is cantankerous and rude to sci-fi fans in general, and violent towards fans of his own books. He comes to hate his barbarian hero so much that he writes several humiliating death scenes for the character.
- In Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, Martin Silenus could have ended The Dying Earth more or less immediately after the first installment, a long poem. He keeps going for the money. Eventually, it leads to him "losing his muse", and spending the next several decades looking for it.
- The main character of Stephen King's Misery is so fed up of the trashy Victorian-esque novels he writes, he conclusively kills off the protagonist of the books he writes. Then he crashes his car and gets taken in by a huge fan of his... who ties him to a bed and forces him to write another sequel, making him have to resurrect the extremely dead character. It actually turns out to be the best book in the series. He takes it with him and publishes it after he escapes.
