Hugh Howey

Bestselling author of Wool and other books. Currently sailing around the world.

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New Wool Fan-Fic!

Two new stories in the Wooliverse are available today. The first is by Patrice Fitzgerald entitled The Sky Used to be Blue. It’s only 99 cents and tells the story of Karma, who readers of SHIFT should be familiar with.

The other is The Last Prayer by Lyn Perry, which is free for a limited time. Lyn delves into the religion at the heart of the silo, which is often all that holds the tenuous world together.

I have only sampled both of these works, but I was blown away by what I read of both. Like The Runner, these may be better than the source material. Both Lyn and Patrice are serious writers with other works to their credit. For a dollar, you’d be crazy not to grab both!

31 replies to “New Wool Fan-Fic!”

Again, you show how classy you are by sharing your world and promoting others work. You rock Hugh!

Humbled and grateful for the mention. Thanks, Hugh. I know one result already is that my story has introduced new fans to the original, friends of mine who had never heard of Wool and are now interested in this silo phenomena.

Hugh,

While I appreciate fan-fiction writers enthusiasm and earnest efforts to present a story, it’s not really “their-story”, is it? Can you help shed some light on this for me? Perhaps in a post, not necessarily in comment here. It’s kinda like they’re eating your lunch. Can’t they get their own? (I think I’m borrowing and poorly rephrasing Stephen King here, actually. I’ll try to buy my own damned lunch while I’m at it, for integrity’s sake.)

Not that these people aren’t talented writers and such, or that I shouldn’t buy their work…but…why do they have to use *your* backdrop and world-elements to tell their stories? Anyway, loved your WOOL omnibus, and consider myself a new-ish fan of your work–most sincerely.

Because they want to, and if the creator has no problem with them doing it, then there really isn’t a problem, is there? You can do what you want when you write, and these writers wanted to write in the Wool world. It’s not different from a computer company letting independent programmers create mods and add-ons to their products.

I love the idea of fan fiction. And honestly, world-building is the easiest part of writing. Coming up with a story, with characters, with dialog, with a satisfying conclusion … that’s the hard part.

Writers borrow from historical events and settings all the time. And people who write non-genre fiction borrow the world we live in. There’s nothing lazy about fan fiction. All writing is difficult. If it was easy, everyone would be churning out awesome Star Wars stories. Very few people do.

I appreciate your concerns, but I think these stories are both flattering to me, the author, and awesome for those out there who enjoy reading them.

By Post Author

Okay, that is all fair and wise. I will adjust my opinion on the matter as I take in everyone’s perspective. Thank you, Hugh. I’m touched that you would take any time at all to share your own take here in the comments. Thanks also to everyone else who is commenting and shedding light on this for me.

Much appreciated! :)

No problem. This is uncharted territory for everyone. We need as many voices as possible in order to sort out what’s fair and what makes sense. My attitude is to place the reader first and foremost. With this as a guide, most publishing decisions become quite easy.

By Post Author

Scott I had the same reaction as you did when the first FanFic came out. I personally thought that it discredited the WOOL story because it contained so many spoilers, and a hidden agenda. I didn’t make very many friends when in a furious rage I reviewed it on Zon. At first I thought that Hugh was just to nice of a guy to tell the author STOP! But since I have come to the reasoning that it really is a fantastic marketing ploy, and Hugh is a genius at that I now see. Haven’t read the latest story’s, but I did download them because I am a addict to the WOOL story line. I promise that unless I have something positive to say that I just will not review them.

You are a amazing person Hugh, ant I am fascinated to understand you more. Maybe some day, huh?

greg

Greg: That’s an awesome avatar, peaking out of the paper like that. How did you do it?

I’m thrilled that you bought my short story, and I hope you like it. I remember your review of “The Runner” on Zon, and I don’t blame you for jumping to Hugh’s defense… since you probably thought Wes was just stealing an author’s hard work! But everything is new in this industry, and Hugh is at the forefront. It will be cool to see how this looks in a few years… maybe lots of brave authors will be sharing their characters and environments.

Patrice

Greg,

We never truly understand anyone, as long as we live with them nor as long as we live. Primarily we do not even really understand or ever bother to get to know ourselves. It’s a really nice thought though. Anyway, I guess it’s because I respect an author’s right to maintain a grip on the worlds they create. There’s a strange argument that we “use our world” all the time. But I don’t think that’s an argument. Planet Earth is creative commons because we all share it here. How someone sees it, though, is a completely different ball-game. Everyone has a unique and entirely different perspective of the same planet we all share. Another reason, perhaps, why we can never really get to know someone else–because we all live in our own version of this world…hell, in our own universe for that matter.

@Hugh
I would never tell amber. :) Really don’t take the comment I made seriously. We are kinda alike we joke about most of the things that life deals us, but have serious opinions about also.
@Scott, I’ve been around this universe long enough to know that no one ever truly understands anyone. It was a off the cuff remark. Text writing on the net never communicates well.
@Patrice.
I stole it! Yeah I really did. I can not recall where.

Hi Hugh, Scott, I agree, it’s awesome that you not only approve of fan fiction based on your work (great marketing add-on, too), but you’re also actively promoting it. I’ve been saying for years that various entertainment franchises should do this. Bravo to you!

Of course, there are some big issues such as creative ‘control’ of the both the vision and brand, quality control, what your partners/publishers think, etc. etc.

That being said, I’m really interested in how you plan on managing those aspects of building/managing the ‘Wool’ brand. After all, not only will these writers make money off your effort, but it may impact how readers who may read these derivative works before the core Wool will react to the broader story.

Lyn’s story is a great one, with a similar feel to Wool 1, but with his own twist. I’m excited for people to open up all the story possibilities in Hugh’s world, and don’t feel at all that they will ruin what Hugh could do. Lyn’s story, for example, is on a different timeline than Hugh’s, so he can go anywhere with it.

Scott, Hugh wrote a blog post earlier about his thoughts on the topic : https://hughhowey.com/a-new-wool-book-and-it-isnt-mine/. There are sure to be those who don’t like it, but I think it’s fun to see other authors’ twist on a richly unique story world. Hugh recently said in an interview that he’d be fine with people even pirating his book because it increases his reach to more readers. Even poorly written fanfic will spread the word about his series to new readers.

Hugh — an immense THANK YOU for allowing me to share your Wooliverse for a bit, and for mentioning “The Sky Used to be Blue” here. Like the commenter above, I was amazed and a little wary that Hugh encouraged fans to publish and charge for stories written in a world of his creation. But I agree that we use the real world as a backdrop all the time, and in some ways the challenge of writing a Silo story was greater because I had to stay within rules already created, I was at pains to write something worthy of Hugh’s body of work, and I tried my darnedest not to include anything that would ruin the WOOL and SHIFT books for readers — and I urge them to read all his stuff first, of course!

I had a great time writing this story, and I’m at work on a second one, with plans to combine perhaps five short stories into the Karma Collection. What’s particularly fun is to explore that generation of Silo residents who lived in the time before as well as below the earth. Can you imagine how they straddled both worlds? Or didn’t care to…?

Here’s the link, if you’re moved to drop 99¢ on finding out what it was like for Karma: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C0G25AA

Patrice,
I was blown away by “The Sky Used To Be Blue”! What an amazing story to add to the Wooliverse. This story really builds on the findings in Second Shift to see the other side of the lost relationship.
Big props for Hugh encouraging people like you to write these stories and giving his blessing to put them out there for us fans to enjoy.
Can’t wait for the next in the Karma series!

I am so glad Hugh is OK with all this. Such a cool idea. The writing is incredible and it’s nice seeing different ideas with different authors on the same subject. These will keep me going until Dust comes out.

Patrice, I eagerly await May for Part 2 of Karma! Keep up the great work!

Thank you so much! I’m more than 6,000 words into Cleaning Up, the next part. That’s about halfway.

Encouragement is welcome in the form of posting reviews and telling your friends about the books!

Patrice

Kinda like playing “sim city”, “farmville” or the game of Life….everybody’s got their spin and perspective. Extremely flattering that Woolites are so immersed in the silos that their creativity comes out in different ways. Things aren’t always black & white, are they?

I bought it, I liked it – very much. As you read the poetry, you get sucked right back in the silo…back into the characters. The poetry is not extremely complex, is more simply written and (perhaps this is just my perception) heartfelt.

I read it and liked it too–as Susan says, the poetry is fairly simple, but that worked for me in terms of life in the Silo. It follows a real arc, too, as the “poet” character goes through different phases. Very short book–it reads in about 5 minutes!

The biggest form of flattery for me, if I ever get any where near Hugh’s level of success, would be fan-fiction. How awesome is it that the original work can inspire others to create their own based on it. I don’t see it as stealing. I see it as pure awesomeness.

I have written on my blog about my near inappropriate love for Wool and how Hugh inspired me to finally write my own book. I think it is awesome that we can come to his site and actually converse with him. Take care!

Hugh,
When will we see LEGO™-Silo ?
Merchandising is where the money’s at. Just ask George Lucas ! ;>)

[…] If you write it anyway, maybe it is okay for you. But in all honesty I like Hugh Howey’s idea of fan-fic better. He encourages it, and lets you sell. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t even care what kind of fan-fic it is because it’s your work. He even advertises it on his website! […]

Hey Hugh, does every fan fiction book on Wool get listed on your website? I am pretty close to submitting my first one and think it would be cool if it was mentioned somewhere. I think you will like the story, it is unlike anything I have seen yet, and I have read all your stuff and all the wool fan fiction.
I am working hard to get it ready but keep getting distracted by my other book, a collection of shorter Wool fan fiction stories, my head is exploding with ideas, lol.
Hope you get a chance to read it…..

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