KilroywasNOTHere
"BEEP!"
Well, the outcome would have not been different if his stuff was public domain.
Then any idiot would have been able to write anything in his universe, but the sheer amount of stuff would cancel itself out.
As a fan of HPL and Dune I can attest, we have literally had C'thulhu porn published.
We have lots of we wuz kangz anti-HPL fanfics published.
We have had a decent amount of politically correct crap, period drama, C'thulhu vs. Sherlock Holmes and the like.
Dune, well, got 3 words for you, Kevin J. Anderson.
And yes, I am a proud Talifan.
The crap sinks and some of the better things drift to the top.
Do like I do and ignore all sequels and adaptations.
Also, IMHO it is better to have a thousand irrelevant fanfics rhan 1 piece of crap like KJA's "official" sequels.
this this a million times this. I'll add the one good thing about a multiverse is that if some bad writer comes along and crashes the narrative you can always make like Rick and Morty and Jump to another one, as a result, you can vote with your feet and support the stories you like while not supporting the stories you don't. you don't get that ability when a single centralized entity controls everything.