sharecropping n.

Perhaps the most ominous of these was the dramatic upsurge of novels by newer writers set in fictional worlds created by famous SF writers, or novels using thematic material created by established writers. This practice of hiring lesser-known authors to create new adventures set ‘in the world of’ some famous SF novel (for instance, a novel set in the world of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, or in the world of Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle ) has been referred to as ‘share-cropping’ and strikes me as a very dangerous trend.

David Garnett’s passionate introduction, in which he talks about the state of publishing and such bastardized forms of it as franchising and sharecropping, can’t have endeared him to Gollancz’s marketing department, but what he says needed saying.

CAS wrote no more than three dozen tales himself. So popular did they prove, however, and so great was the public’s appetite for more, that other writers were hired to continue the franchise. This early version of sharecropping was so successful that the series has continued to this very day.