Visitors from Oz: The Wild Adventures of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman is an unofficial sequel

Sequel

A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...

 to the Oz book series

The Oz books

The Oz books form a book series that begins with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , and that relates the fictional history of the Land of Oz. Oz was created by author L. Frank Baum, who went on to write fourteen full-length Oz books, all of which are in the public domain in the United States...

. Published in 1998, it was written by Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...

 and illustrated by Ted Enik. It follows up after the last Oz book written by L. Frank Baum

L. Frank Baum

Lyman Frank Baum was an American author of children's books, best known for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...

.

Gardner employs a mathematics puzzle (involving a Klein bottle

Klein bottle

In mathematics, the Klein bottle is a non-orientable surface, informally, a surface in which notions of left and right cannot be consistently defined. Other related non-orientable objects include the Möbius strip and the real projective plane. Whereas a Möbius strip is a surface with boundary, a...

) to bring the three Oz characters to Earth in 1998, where Dorothy becomes involved in the machinations of two movie producers. Contemporary references to Rudi Giuliani, the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, and television newscasts are unusual, at the least, in an Oz book. Gardner's whimsy encompasses the ancient Greek gods, characters from Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

, and an ursine detective called Sheerluck Brown.

Gardner's book should not be confused with The Visitors from Oz, an alternative title for Baum's Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz

Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz

Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz was a newspaper comic strip written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by Walt McDougall, a political cartoonist for the Philadelphia North American. Queer Visitors appeared in the North American, the Chicago Record-Herald, and other newspapers from 28...

.

Gardner's attempt at contemporizing Oz might be compared to Dave Hardenbrook's similar attempt in his The Unknown Witches of Oz

The Unknown Witches of Oz

The Unknown Witches of Oz: Locasta and the Three Adepts is a 2000 novel written by Dave Hardenbrook, with illustrations by Kerry Rouleau. As its title indicates, the book is an entry in the long-running series of books about the Land of Oz, written by L...

(2000).