Pastiche…sounds like something you might eat…but the official definition is “an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.” A pastiche can be respectful or can descend to parody.
Over the course of his long career F. Paul Wilson often has been invited to work with the characters and realms created by iconic writers in varied genres. Usually he would decline, but sometimes the temptation to play in a favorite author’s sandbox was too great and he gave in.
As a fan of all the chosen authors, he approached the characters and worlds they created with the greatest respect. So in that sense, his pastiches are also homages.
H. P. Lovecraft, Mary W. Shelley, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, Dashiell Hammett, Arthur Conan Doyle…who could say no to working with their creations?
You’ll find them all and more in Other Stories with Characters and Places Shared with Writers Living and Dead by F. Paul Wilson.
Francis Paul Wilson is an author, born in Jersey City, New Jersey. He writes novels and short stories primarily in the science fiction and horror genres. His debut novel was Healer (1976). Wilson is also a part-time practicing family physician. He made his first sales in 1970 to Analog and continued to write science fiction throughout the seventies. In 1981 he ventured into the horror genre with the international bestseller, The Keep, and helped define the field throughout the rest of the decade. In the 1990s he became a true genre hopper, moving from science fiction to horror to medical thrillers and branching into interactive scripting for Disney Interactive and other multimedia companies. He, along with Matthew J. Costello, created and scripted FTL Newsfeed which ran daily on the Sci-Fi Channel from 1992-1996.