Okay i'll also be brave and ask this because this is a fascinating idea. Had a conversation with a mate of mine and i told him i was into the Star wars novels, and he retorted "aaaah the expanded universe, the greatest body of fan fiction ever" So i thought i would throw this out and get a feel for peoples take on this.
All media related tie in novels are fanfiction. However, Star Wars and a handful of other fandoms maybe unique in that they have a continuity. With the Sale of Lucasarts to Disney however, I don't know if said continuity will continue.
Just for the sake of reference: it's Literature forum policy that we observe Lucas Licensing's official canon policy, which states that the EU is, in fact, canon. I don't know whether or not the Lit mods will keep this thread open or not, but in terms of the likely opinions you get: most people here are generally going to be pro-EU. Now for the sake of participating myself: my view of the EU is that it is of course canon, though I wish certain works (particularly TOR and TFU) were branded as Infinities. That doesn't mean I think all video games should be: just ones that don't fit well.
Is The Snowman and the Snowdog canon? Raymond Briggs didn't write it and didn't like the happy ending. People are now probably rolling their eyes at me and thinking "What the hell does it matter?" Exactly.
Considering three of the gospels are technically fanfiction, I'd say the EU is in pretty good company.
In my view the EU is cannon along with the movies. One big continuity. They have become too intertwined for me to just throw parts of them out. Though if I could throw TFU 1 and 2, TCW 08 series and DNT/LOTF/FOTJ out I wouldn't complain.
I wouldn't consider any officially licensed and published tie-ins to be fanfiction, even if they're not considered part of the franchise's canon (which the Star Wars EU nominally is). The Star Trek novels aren't canon, but they were commissioned and published by the official Star Trek license-holders; are they fanfiction? I don't think so, but maybe it's an issue of semantics.
Only in western fandom. In Japanese fandom, doujinshis bring in notable money as a whole. They're, like, illegal, technically, because of copyright and all, but no one's stopping all of the creators.
Yeah, they are not FANfiction because they are official, not fanworks. The Lord of the Rings movies, in the whole Tolkien Legendarium universe franchise thing, are official but not canon. The books are.
Is, or at least now, was Lucas making money directly from the publishing of the works? Yes? Not fan-fiction.
It's just that some people are ridiculous enough to assume that EU isn't canon because George Lucas didn't make every aspect of it himself.
I thought this was going to be popcorn-worthy but I underestimated you all. Yeah, there is an established hierarchy of canon, and if it were fan fiction, it would be like Melrose Place in that every character would have had sex with every other character at some point.
LOL, from him I've only read Tatooine Ghost and I enjoyed it, can't speak as to the rest of his work. If I had to choose, I'd say it would probably all be as soap-opera-ish and mind-bogglingly awful as Courtship of Princess Leia.
