If George R.R. Martin won’t sit down and finish his homework, there are plenty of fans who would be thrilled to do it for him.
Loathe: Nintendo
If you thought Mario and Peach were hooking up, Nintendo says to get your mind out of the gutter. They recently put out a statement clarifying that “Princess Peach and Mario are good friends and help each other out whenever they can.”
Love: Neil Gaiman
Gaiman, as is allegedly his wont, has used his fame to help himself to whatever he desires. Because he’s such a well-known and renowned author, he’s been able to publish non-canon works in Sherlock Holmes, H.P. Lovecraft and C.S. Lewis universes that aspiring writers would technically not be allowed to.
Loathe: George R.R. Martin
He said, “I’m not a fan of fanfiction,” calling it a lazy way for beginner writers to practice their craft — “You have to do your own world-building, you can’t just borrow from Gene Roddenberry or George Lucas or me” — and a legal headache — “My understanding of the law is that if I knew about I would have to try to stop it.”
Love: E.L. James
She’d better support fanfic; it’s the reason she has a career — her novel Fifty Shades of Grey was originally published as fanfiction in the Twilight universe. Screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis wanted Twilight’s Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart cast in the main roles, but James said that would be “weird.”
Loathe: Sharon Lee
The co-author of the Liaden Universe series says that she’s been living with her characters for over 50 years and has dibs on their exploits: “They are our intellectual property; and they are not toys lying about some virtual sandbox for other kids to pick up and modify at their whim.”
Loathe: Diana Gabaldon
The Outlander author has posted a multi-part tome on her website about fanfiction. In a blog post titled “The Final Word,” she concludes very politely that “I’m not comfortable with fanfiction based on any of my work, and request that you do not write it, do not send it to me, and do not publish it, whether in print or on the web.”
Love: Andy Weir
The author of The Martian, which was adapted into the Ridley Scott film of the same name, is such a big fanfic fan, he kept writing it after his own IP took off. He was such a huge fan of Ready Player One that he published a short story about a minor character to his website.
Love: Ernest Cline
Cline, who wrote Ready Player One, loved Weir’s contribution to the canon so much that he made it official. Weir’s story “Lacero” was included in a special edition reprint of the book.
Loathe: Orson Scott Card
The Ender’s Game author has said that the right time to write fanfiction is “never,” and that to write about his characters “is morally identical to moving into my house without invitation and throwing out my family.”
Loathe: Terry Goodkind
The Sword of Truth author said that he was obligated to “go out and hire lawyers to threaten these people to make them stop, and to sue them if they don’t,” and requested that if fans encounter any fanfic, they “please please please ask them to stop it so that I don’t have to go hire lawyers to make them stop and then everyone thinks I’m being a big meanie.”
Love: Lev Grossman
The author of the adult novel The Magicians wrote an article for Time about how a Star Trek fanzine, Spockanalia, reignited the popularity of the show after it was canceled: “Even back then it was apparent that fanfiction was not just an homage to the glory of the original but also a reaction to it. It was about finding the boundaries that the original couldn’t or wouldn’t break, and breaking them.”
Loathe: Anne Rice
She was notoriously litigious with fanfic writers, and is reportedly the reason why so many works online include breathless disclaimers about not claiming ownership of copyright. In an ironic twist, when her series The Vampire Chronicles was turned into the TV show Interview with the Vampire, AMC encouraged fans to “write your own vampire stories” on a mobile app they partnered with.
Loathe: J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien was lucky enough to die before the age of internet fan fiction, but he wasn’t particularly fond of people meddling with his work in his lifetime. The Tolkien estate’s FAQ has had to address it directly, stating that no one can “create materials which refer to the characters, stories, places, events or other elements contained in any of Tolkien’s works.” Can someone write a story set in Middle-earth? “The short answer is most definitely NO!”
It’s Complicated: S.E. Hinton
The author of The Outsiders has been public about her love of writing Supernaturals fanfiction, but stepped out onto a field of rakes when she took to Twitter to explain that, while she’s not homophobic, she doesn’t agree with interpretations that depict her characters as LGBTQ+: “I have a problem with little girls thinking my characters are gay.”