All Fiction Books are Fanfiction

All around the world, people read news articles, watch television, read advertising that is posted around them, and read funny sayings printed on t-shirts and their ideas and opinions are influenced by them as a result. Books as a result of being written by people are no different in regard to being influenced. Expanding upon this concept one can argue that fiction books that use characters or settings from previous books written by different authors can be considered fanfiction.

The books that I am going to be analyzing as evidence of this idea is the “Percy Jackson and The Olympians” series. This series uses characters and settings from Greek mythology and puts them into a modern world setting. The series is from the perspective of Percy Jackson, a kid in the modern world who discovers that the Greek gods are real and that he is a demigod, before proceeding to go on a series of quests to save the world. During these quests he has run ins with the gods and other characters from Greek mythology who at times provide tools and information to aid him or threaten to kill him. In the first book, “The Lighting Thief”, he is introduced to this world, the camp where the demigods are trained, and sets off on a quest to find the master bolt and return it to Zeus by the summer solstice. In the second book, “The Sea of Monsters”, he and his friends go on a quest to retrieve the golden fleece to save the camp. In the third book, “The Titan’s Curse”, he and his friends go on a quest to save the goddess Artemis by the winter solstice. In the fourth book, “The Battle of the Labyrinth”, he and his friends discover a secret passage into the camp that bypasses its defenses, leading to them going on a quest to find Daedalus in an attempt prevent the Titians and their forces from using the Labyrinth to destroy the camp. In the final book, “The Last Olympian”, he leads his fellow demigods in a final battle to save Olympus from the Titians.

In this essay “fanfiction” will be defined as a work of literature that makes use of characters and settings from previous works of literature and changes them to fit a new story while keeping their essence of them as recognizable. This means that the specific character or setting must be recognizable as that specific one instead of being someone or something that just happens to share a name. For example, in chapter 14 on page 213 of the second book, the cave where the cyclops, Polyphemus lives in, on the island where the golden fleece is located is described as:

I pushed through the crowd of sheep and goats toward the back of the cave.

Even though I’d dreamed about this place, I had a hard time finding my way through the maze. I ran down corri-dors littered with bones, past rooms full of sheepskin rugs and life-size cement sheep that I recognized as the work of Medusa. There were collections of sheep T-shirts; large tubs of lanolin cream; and wooly coats, socks, and hats with ram’s horns.

Whereas in book 9 of the “The Odyssey”, the cave that the cyclops lives in on the island is described as:

“We soon reached his cave, but he was out shepherding, so we went inside and took stock of all that we could see. His cheese-racks were loaded with cheeses, and he had more lambs and kids than his pens could hold. They were kept in separate flocks; first there were the hoggets, then the oldest of the younger lambs and lastly the very young ones^[80] all kept apart from one another; as for his dairy, all the vessels, bowls, and milk pails into which he milked, were swimming with whey. When they saw all this, my men begged me to let them first steal some cheeses, and make off with them to the ship; they would then return, drive down the lambs and kids, put them on board and sail away with them. It would have been indeed better if we had done so but I would not listen to them, for I wanted to see the owner himself, in the hope that he might give me a present. When, however, we saw him my poor men found him ill to deal with.

Both passages describe the cave as being filled with sheep and sheep byproducts. The difference in the kind of sheep byproducts being is probably due to the fact that Odysseus and his men are looking for things of value to them as shown in the part of the quote that comes after the description of what is inside the cave, so that is all that is described for them, whereas Percy is looking in the cave for his imprisoned companions and is just describing the stuff that sticks out to him along the way. These similarities shows that these settings in the books are the same place.

On the other hand, not all works that use the same characters and settings from the works that proceeded them are fanfiction. One example of this is adaptions of previous works. This is due to the fact that they are basically the same story just changed for a different audience. For example, the version of “The Odyssey” that the quote above is from is an adaption of the original version of it because the original is written in ancient Greek whereas the version the quote is from is in English and has had its grammar changed so that it makes sense in English. Also, the translation is not adding new characters or circumstances into the story. Another example of this is sequels that are written by the author of the original work whose story they are continuing and adding additional lore to it. This is by virtue of being written by the same person means it cannot be fanfiction.

References

Homer. (2024, October 1). The Odyssey rendered into English prose for the use of those who cannot read the original. The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Odyssey, by Homer. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1727/pg1727-images.html

Riordan, R. (2005). The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson & the Olympians #1) (1st ed.). Disney/Hyperion.

Riordan, R. (2006). The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson & the Olympians #2) (1st ed.). Disney /Hyperion.

Riordan, R. (2007). The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson & the Olympians #3) (1st ed.). Hyperion Books for Children.

Riordan, R. (2008). The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson & the Olympians #4) (1st ed.). Hyperion Books for Children.

Riordan, R. (2009). The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson & the Olympians #5) (1st ed.). Disney/Hyperion Books.