"The kind of classic fifties-era first-contact story that Jonathan Swift
might have written, if Jonathan Swift had had a background in game
theory."
-- (Hugo nominee) Peter Watts, "In Praise of Baby-Eating"
Three Worlds Collide is a story I wrote to illustrate some points on naturalistic metaethics and diverse other issues of rational conduct. It grew, as such things do, into a small novella. On publication, it proved widely popular and widely criticized. Be warned that the story, as it wrote itself, ended up containing some profanity and PG-13 content.
- The Baby-Eating Aliens
- War and/or Peace
- The Super Happy People
- Interlude with the Confessor
- Three Worlds Decide
- Normal Ending
- True Ending
- Atonement
PDF version here.
I would be surprised if fanfiction for a popular piece of media didn't get far more eyes looking at it than equally-good (or equally-poor) original work, even taking into account the larger number of eyes drawn to published work.
So if my goal is to maximize number of eyes looking at my words, the constraints of fanfiction might hurt it less (in terms of what I value) than the constraints of original work.
I think I'd expect an S-shaped curve for fanfic, with a term for the popularity of the original work, and a more exponential-looking curve for original fiction. People who read fanfic tend to read a lot of fanfic, and that gets a certain number of eyes on your work that wouldn't be there if you were publishing original fiction, but it's exceptionally rare for a fanfic to attract readers that aren't either part of the (still relatively small) fanfic community or fans of the original work and usually both.
HPMoR is unusual in that it has managed to attract a... (read more)