It's all about money, one way or another. There are no Firefly novels because the people with the rights to publish them don't currently think would be profitable, or profitable enough.
Why are there no Firefly novels?
- Thread starter ConRefit79
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I don't think that's it. I think the guy with the final say-so has decided not to say so, but I don't think it's for financial reasons.
I guess you didn't see the post immediately above yours. As Greg explained, Pocket Books tried to license the rights to publish them, because they thought they would be profitable, but Joss Whedon said no.
We're still getting over the deaths of Wash and Book and you're suggesting a novel by the one writer who's even fonder of killing off lead characters than Joss Whedon?!
Killing off lead characters is the least of my worries if GRRM wrote Firefly novels.
Waiting 10 years for 2 half-finished novels is absurd.
Oh? Seems pretty clear to me that Whedon spent a lot more time on the audio/visual style tics of the show than on constructing any kind of coherent universe backstory, and that that could be a major reason why he wouldn't be interested in licensing novels - he'd simply have to spend too much time hashing out the rules of a universe he was never all that interested in sketching out to start with.
Some might call that a "quality" issue concerning the original show, some may not.
Thanks for the replies everyone. I have downloaded a free novel. I'll check it out once I finish LOTR.
I never thought the verse was any more vague than early TOS Star Trek. It just never had a chance to develop further. Either Wheadon doesn't want to deal with it, or is holding out hope to continue the story and doesn't want to work around novels. But that doesn't make sense, because studios may see more of market if novels sell well. You can only repackage the series and movie DVD's so many times. Eventually, that the market dries up. As for working around the novels, ST TV and Movies usually ignore the novels, so there is no reason he couldn't do the same.
I never thought the verse was any more vague than early TOS Star Trek. It just never had a chance to develop further. Either Wheadon doesn't want to deal with it, or is holding out hope to continue the story and doesn't want to work around novels. But that doesn't make sense, because studios may see more of market if novels sell well. You can only repackage the series and movie DVD's so many times. Eventually, that the market dries up. As for working around the novels, ST TV and Movies usually ignore the novels, so there is no reason he couldn't do the same.
Whedon has never been a great worldbuilder, at least not until Dollhouse. His cosmology and theology in the Buffy/Angel universe were slapped together at random and often contradictory, and BTVS couldn't even decide whether Sunnydale was on the coast or in the middle of the desert. And yet there was a long, successful line of Buffy and Angel tie-in novels. So again, it is wrong to say that Firefly/Serenity's ambiguous cosmology is in any way connected to the lack of a novel line. Particularly since those rules have already been hashed out much more thoroughly in Serenity's behind-the-scenes production materials and the QMx publications than they were in the original show, so authors of licensed novels would have plenty to build on.
Bottom line, the only valid answer to this question is "Joss didn't want to for reasons of his own." We don't know what those reasons are, and any attempt to assert a reason is nothing more than a guess.
Bottom line, the only valid answer to this question is "Joss didn't want to for reasons of his own." We don't know what those reasons are, and any attempt to assert a reason is nothing more than a guess.
Indeed, we can speculate until the 'verse goes cold on why the Firefly novels got left on the back burner, but, again, this sort of thing of thing happens sometimes. Development Hell is not just a movie thing. Sometimes the stars just aren't aligned right and certain projects, despite everyone's best efforts, don't get off the ground.
We're still talking about FIREFLY because it has such a dedicated fan following, but I can think of any number of other tie-in projects that fell through for a wide variety of reasons, which were usually boring and contractual in nature. Trust me, tie-in projects don't fall through because of reservations about the world-building or anything fannish like that; it usually involves a dispute over the international territories or royalties or whatever. You know, boring business stuff.
I realize that's not a very exciting or conspiratorial explanation, but that how things really work.
We're still talking about FIREFLY because it has such a dedicated fan following, but I can think of any number of other tie-in projects that fell through for a wide variety of reasons, which were usually boring and contractual in nature. Trust me, tie-in projects don't fall through because of reservations about the world-building or anything fannish like that; it usually involves a dispute over the international territories or royalties or whatever. You know, boring business stuff.
I realize that's not a very exciting or conspiratorial explanation, but that how things really work.
But how things really work is boring!
I'm disappointed that we never got any Firefly novels, too. I just miss those characters a lot, and you can only watch the same episodes so many times. (Or can you?
) It'd be nice to see them happen some day, though I imagine if there were ever going to be any tie-in novels, we would have seen them by now.
I'm disappointed that we never got any Firefly novels, too. I just miss those characters a lot, and you can only watch the same episodes so many times. (Or can you?
) It'd be nice to see them happen some day, though I imagine if there were ever going to be any tie-in novels, we would have seen them by now.
We're still getting over the deaths of Wash and Book and you're suggesting a novel by the one writer who's even fonder of killing off lead characters than Joss Whedon?!
Killing off lead characters is the least of my worries if GRRM wrote Firefly novels.
Waiting 10 years for 2 half-finished novels is absurd.
Good thing you weren't around when Tolkien was writing LOTR.
Good thing you weren't around when Tolkien was writing LOTR.[/QUOTE]
The difference being that LotR wasn't published until it was completed.
Or a fan of Alan Dean Foster's Pip & Flinx stories. They have been going on for 40 years with no resolution, or even a real hint of the impending danger to the Galaxy the main protagonist is supposed to prevent.
With a talented artist, the FF universe would translate well into novels. It sucks that Whedon would chose to not allow them, but understandable in that he obviously doesn't want others messing with the universe without his direct involvement.
^As Greg said, we can't assume there was any such "obvious" personal motive behind it. It could've been simply that some obscure contractual point couldn't be satisfactorily resolved. I mean, Whedon had those proposals on his desk for, I think, months. He was considering them at one point. But it ultimately didn't work out. That strikes me as more likely to be due to some subtle business factors than an "obvious" thing like personal desire for creative control. If it were simply that he didn't want to do novels, why would he have spent so much time considering it?
What, it's not possible he was leaning toward doing them and then just changed his mind later? Real people do that, you know, and there doesn't have to be a logical reason for it.
^"Possible" isn't "proven." We can guess all we want, but guesses are not truth. A lot of people here are making wild, unsupported guesses and asserting them as concrete fact, and that's irrational. I'm saying that there are a lot of possibilities and none of us actually knows what the answer is.
Well, no shit.
Let's go close every thread that isn't based on 100% incontrovertible fact.Someone asked a question to which the only concrete answer is, "Because Joss Whedon said so." Beyond that, we can only speculate, and what's wrong with speculating? It's not as if we're speculating about something important. It's fun to guess. If you don't like that, feel free to post somewhere else.
^ There's nothing wrong with speculating, but when TremblingBluStar said Whedon 'obviously' didn't want people messing in his universe, it went a little beyond speculation, or dressed speculation up as fact. I suspect that's what Christopher was taking umbrage with.
Sorry to single you out Trembling!
Sorry to single you out Trembling!
The problem is that, where the internet is concerned, speculation often slides into spreading rumors that, pretty soon, are being bruited about as fact. Heck, people often skip the intervening stages and just start asserting that "obviously" such-and-such is the case, which can be annoying for those of us who were actually involved . . ..
I still remember reading on a message board one day that I had been "fired" from the ROSWELL series because my first book sucked. This had no relationship to the truth whatsoever (I only did one ROSWELL book because STAR TREK books paid better), but was being asserted as not just "speculation" but a fact.
Enough of this, and you start to get leery of people guessing about what goes on behind the scenes.
I still remember reading on a message board one day that I had been "fired" from the ROSWELL series because my first book sucked. This had no relationship to the truth whatsoever (I only did one ROSWELL book because STAR TREK books paid better), but was being asserted as not just "speculation" but a fact.
Enough of this, and you start to get leery of people guessing about what goes on behind the scenes.
Ah, yes. I should have said "probably", because I was simply guessing.
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