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.

Douglas Adams, Bram Stoker and A.A. Milne have been long dead. But in the 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.

Michael Brown, the chairman of the Pooh Properties Trust for the past three decades, said he never would have greenlighted a new Pooh book when he joined the trust, which oversees the Milne literary estate. “But there’s been a change in the attitudes of society,” he said. “There’s a sense that nostalgia is fine, but you can bring these things out of the cupboard.”

The Pooh trust decided to hire someone to create new adventures for the little bear with the honey habit and methodically went about a selection process. They eventually turned to David Benedictus, 71, who had produced all-star audio adaptations of the original Pooh stories and who had submitted a couple of new story ideas for Pooh and Tigger several years ago. Brown said they did not want any updates to the sensibility of the story. Benedictus, in turn, immersed himself in the 1920s world of Milne and visited Ashdown Forest, the actual setting for Hundred Acre Wood. The trustees, he said, were very much involved in the editing process and also in the creation of a new inhabitant of the Wood, Lottie the Otter.

... contd.