Unofficial Tex Murphy

For obivously maniacal reasons, I've been encouraged by friends, lovers and family to participate in the National Novel Writing Month, and for even worse reasons, I've actually agreed to register for the event. At first, I was completely ignorant of the project. It's an attempt by all those who register to produce a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. Last year, 45,000 people registered and about 6,000 people staggered to the finish line with their completed opus. The idea is to produce quantity and let quality be damned; well, I suppose it doesn't have to be that bad.

I discounted the entire enterprise at first for several reasons. First of all, it occurred to me that such rapid scribbling might produce a lot of copy, but at the same time it might promote bad habits and sloppy writing. My second, and more important, reason is that I've been working hard on a 'real' novel and didn't want to interrupt my progress to engage in, at least what I considered, a far less serious endeavor.

In spite of my reservations, I've agree to contribute to this project; it's coming at the wrong time for me personally, but it could be fun and might even result in something of value.

Now to my question. Several years ago, a few of us began an interactive Tex story on the old message board. Each person participating would post a new installment, thus moving the story forward. It proved difficult to keep things consistent and various plot conflicts eventually condemned the effort, and it was discontinued. I've always been disappointed that some of the ideas I thought interesting weren't further pursued. Consequently, I've decided to pick up the theme once more and try to guide part of the proposed outline to conclusion. I've searched in vain within the archives for the old installments, but I can probably reconstruct enough of them from memory to recast an old story in a new form and provide an appropriate ending. Actually, a new beginning and plot would be necessary given the divergent directions into which the original storyhad wandered.

Although it's improbable that any of this material would see commercial publication, I thought that use of actual characters and locations from the Tex series might involve copyright infringement. Am I correct in this assumption? As an alternative, I'm considering developing a new protagonist, another private detective, I'm afraid, but someone more noirish than the Tex we all know and love. The story would be set in post-nuclear San Francisco, in the mutant section of the city, but names of characters and streets would all be changed. Would this be satisfactory? Of course, I would include a statement that the story and characters were inspired by the Tex Murphy series.

I'm sure you're very busy, but if you can manage a reply, I would appreciate any consideration or advice you could render.

Dragon

1. Well I'll be! A fellow NaNoWrimo! Good luck to you!

2. I plan on writing a Tex fan fiction that will only see the light of day on this forum. So I'm not worried about commercial publication and whatnot. However, if your story is about a detective named "Cal", who visits a regular diner named, "Mix and Batch", wants a girl named "Charlette" and must save the world from a space station called "Sun Father", it might be close enough for copyright infringement, inspiration be damned.

Well, well, well. Is the world coming to an end? Our long time friend and Tex colleague Dragon has emerged from his secret lair once again. Welcome back, old friend! Good to see your posts. I don't know the answers to your questions but I wish you well. If anyone can formulate a story that size in that short time span - it's you! Go for it!

Will Aaron read it here before the event is up though. Perhaps the question could be forwarded on directly?


Maybe this helps, I remember some Questions & ANswers with regard to copyrights in that huge Q&A session Aaron kindly gave us:

Questions about Tex Murphy Legal rights (questions : 4)
Dr.Paul: Since you have the rights to Tex Murphy, then I presume that it is up to you to approve or deny permission to do fan-fiction or fan-game?
I don’t own the rights personally – they belong to Indie Built, Inc., the studio that I work for (which is much better than being owned by Microsoft). Decisions regarding fan fictions and fan games would have to be made by the studio management, not me.

Dr.Paul: In particular, we have recently considered writing a TM fan-fic story with the intention of developing it into an interactive fiction text adventure game. What are the odds that we would have permission to do this and how involved would you expect to be?
To get permission, I would put together a design document that outlines what the game is, how it will work, who it will be accessible to, what the content will be, etc. The more concise – yet thorough – the document is, the better its chances of being read by the right people. And then they would have to give you written permission to go forward with the project.
My role in such a project would depend on the nature of it, what you think I could do to help, and whether or not I had the time to participate. As for Indie Built, I don’t think they would want or need to be directly involved.

Dr.Paul: By involved, I mean things like making sure we don't defame the series or create something so bad that it will be an embarrassment. Also making sure that it is consistent with official Tex history. Basically, are we likely to get sued?
As I said, if you lay everything out clearly and Indie Built gives its permission, there shouldn’t be any possibility of you getting sued.

Thanks for the information, guys. My story is set in post-nuclear San Francisco mostly because I live here--without the radioactivity, of course. My protagonist is a private detective, and he lives and works in a mutant section of Old San Francisco, but that may be the only resemblance to Tex. I thought about moving the location to Brooklyn, New York and dropping the mutant involvement in favor of a different population; it might even result in a more interesting story, but I'd like this effort to be inspired by the Tex series; a small private tribute, I suppose.
Given the few days devoted to planning and the very demanding schedule, I can't be too optimistic about the quality of the results. In the unlikely event that I consider the final product to meet publication standards, I might have to revisit these questions, but for now they're rather academic. I'll be posting my daily output in my Live Journal: dragonlaire.
Another board member and I have been discussing a possbile fan fic using a different approach to Tex and the Chandler Avenue denizens; that would be posted here, presumpably, but any efforts will have to wait until December at the earliest. By the way, I have been around and do visit often, but for some reason it's been difficult to find an appropriate opening to post a comment.
Vracar, good luck on your NaNoWriMo endeavors! I'm looking forward to your results. Sai, nice ta meet ya. I took a look at your web site. Lovely work.

Dragon wrote:Thanks for the information, guys. My story is set in post-nuclear San Francisco mostly because I live here--without the radioactivity, of course.

u mean... san fransisco DOESN'T have excessive radiation?