Why can't they say it in one book?
alanb
>GRIPE WARNING
From talking to editors and authors I got the impression that
publishing houses encourage authors to write trilogies.
The idea is they can sell more books with a single effort.
I suspect that Lord of the Rings set the precedent, and
it's been copied ever since.
Alan
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
al...@zul.wimsey.com | "It's natural to feel apprehensive in
Alan Barclay | the face of change -- even if that
Vancouver BC Canada | change is for the better."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
L-J Baker
GRIPE WARNING
This bleat has probably been done to death many times, but the
thread on paperback prices has stirred the embers of my discontent
again. Why is SF and fantasy (especially) at the stage where practically
every story takes at least three books to tell?
Now I only buy book in series if I'm already entrenched, waiting
patiently for the next annual installment. Anyone writing a gargantuan
saga will have to forgo my partonage: anything that says "First book of
a series" goes straight back onto the shelf. To compound the problem
further we have the phenonmenon of open-ended series.
This wouldn't be nearly so bad if the stories actually warranted
such protacted telling. Most don't. How many people can honestly say
that they needed each and every barely relevant sub-plot, huge swath of
interior monologue, or description of scenery from the last
trilogy/tetralogy etc they read?
So instead of one $NZ17 or $US8 paperback per satsfying, complete
story, we are actually paying three times that much. I heard a rumour
that it was easier for new SF/Fantasy authors to get published if they
presented a trilogy, rather than a stand-alone. I, for one, sincerely
hope that is not the case. I don't mind paying for a book, and I believe
authors should be encouraged and amply recompensed, but I don't think
that spreading a single tale over three books is very fair.
Here endeth the moan.
L-J
P.S. And does anyone know why Duologies are so uncommon? I can only
think of Stephen Donaldson's _Mordant's Need_ as an example of a story
in two parts.
Bill Jennings
: I've just remembered another book which is split into three. I've got
: the hardback of _The Ascent of Wonder_, editors' names escape me. This
: is a single book here in the UK, but has three forewords and the
: contents list clearly shows three parts, so it's obviously published
: as a trilogy somewhere, presumably the US. Can anyone confirm this?
David Hartwell. His two horror anthologies (FOUNDATIONS OF FEAR and
something) were each published as one hardcover, but three paperbacks.
Also, Orson Scott Card's MAPS IN A MIRROR compilation was published as
four paperbacks, and that didn't even reprint everything in the hardcover!
On the other hand, I've seen Clive Barker's first three BOOKS OF BLOOD
collected as one hardcover, as well as countless other sets.
--
Bill Jennings zen...@uclink2.berkeley.edu
**/**
>
>GRIPE WARNING
>
> This bleat has probably been done to death many times, but the
>thread on paperback prices has stirred the embers of my discontent
>again. Why is SF and fantasy (especially) at the stage where practically
>every story takes at least three books to tell?
> Now I only buy book in series if I'm already entrenched, waiting
>patiently for the next annual installment. Anyone writing a gargantuan
>saga will have to forgo my partonage: anything that says "First book of
>a series" goes straight back onto the shelf. To compound the problem
>further we have the phenonmenon of open-ended series.
> This wouldn't be nearly so bad if the stories actually warranted
>such protacted telling. Most don't. How many people can honestly say
>that they needed each and every barely relevant sub-plot, huge swath of
>interior monologue, or description of scenery from the last
>trilogy/tetralogy etc they read?
> So instead of one $NZ17 or $US8 paperback per satsfying, complete
>story, we are actually paying three times that much. I heard a rumour
>that it was easier for new SF/Fantasy authors to get published if they
>presented a trilogy, rather than a stand-alone. I, for one, sincerely
>hope that is not the case. I don't mind paying for a book, and I believe
>authors should be encouraged and amply recompensed, but I don't think
>that spreading a single tale over three books is very fair.
and fantasy often require the construction of fantastic and unique settings,
and if the setting actually is fantastic and unique, authors, publishers,
and many readers will want the story, or at least the place, continued. This
probably implies a certain degree of laziness, greed, whatever. On the other
hand the aspects of the better scifi fantasy universes often aren't exhausted
after one go-around. What if Tolkein only wrote "The Hobbit", nothing else?
Which brings me to my next point. Series development is nothing new
in the genre, and writers today are only continuing a pattern used by
many of the better writers of this century. Asimov, Smith, Burroughs, all wrote
serialized fiction, and in fact reflected their times in doing so. Sci-fi/
Fantasy holds more than a passing relationship with other serialized mass
media such as comic books and movies. Scifi movies today are often
serialized.
None of which challenges your point that "spreading a single tale over
three books isn't very fair". True. I've felt that way about many things I've
read. But often it is more than a single tale told. Some of my favorite works
are from series, and I anticipate with joy the idea of opening up the newest
Vlad Taltos or Miles Vorkosigan novel. And those authors can count on my
patronage for their work.
>
>Here endeth the moan.
>L-J
>
>P.S. And does anyone know why Duologies are so uncommon? I can only
>think of Stephen Donaldson's _Mordant's Need_ as an example of a story
>in two parts.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Obe...@uwyo.edu |All them rock and roll writers is the worst |
GIS Technician to the Stars |kind of sleaze, selling punk like some new |
Past, Present, and Future |kind of English disease. Is that the wave of |
********************************the future? oh spare me please. Frank Zappa
******************************************
LAL
> and fantasy often require the construction of fantastic and unique settings,
> and if the setting actually is fantastic and unique, authors, publishers,
> and many readers will want the story, or at least the place, continued.
<<<<<<<<<<<<<SNIP
> Series development is nothing new
> in the genre, and writers today are only continuing a pattern used by
> many of the better writers of this century. Asimov, Smith, Burroughs,
all wrote
> serialized fiction, and in fact reflected their times
If by serialized fiction you mean books first published in magazines in
serial form, yep you're right, but in thread context I assume you infer
something else, and I disagree. These guys and others (RAH's future
histroy, Known Space, etc) wrote multiple more or less independent storys
set in the same universe, with some exceptions. They didn't take umpteen
dozen separate books to tell one story. I don't mind the former sort of
"series." I reject the "continuation" series, the multiple book novel, the
"oh my I didn't get it finished so we need another volume" series, and the
"let's expand the introductory chapter to a full volume and sell it
seperately - the suckers will buy anything" book (see _Lovelock_ for an
example of the latter).
My take. The authors and publishers are greedy for consistent cash flow -
nothing unknown there. But "we the reading public" are so crushed by the
stupifying inane qualities of modern life that we can't deal with novelty
anymore. It's us who watch repetitious episodes of Seinfield, Star Trek,
and the NFL sunday afternoon product. We're the ones continually demanding
more of the same. We have no interest in originality, no interest in
learning anything new, no interest in checking out what's over the next
hill. We're happy repeating our_WoT_ or Vampire Chronicles or whatever
until we die of terminal boredom.
Authors and publishers are whores pandering to the lowest common reading
denominator, while feeling superior to those those other whores across the
NY street since they deal with the printed word and not lowly TV.
It's up to us - if enough of us refuse to buy series and sequels they'll
stop. They won't stop writing and they won't stop publishing since they
all want to continue eating, but they will stop series and sequels, and
we'll all be better off. Do your part.
--
Standard disclaimers apply. Nobody here ever agrees with me on anything.
alanb
>In article <41gnq1$g...@net.auckland.ac.nz>, ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz (L-J Baker) writes:
>>
>>GRIPE WARNING
>>
>> This bleat has probably been done to death many times, but the
>>thread on paperback prices has stirred the embers of my discontent
>>again. Why is SF and fantasy (especially) at the stage where practically
>>every story takes at least three books to tell?
>read. But often it is more than a single tale told. Some of my favorite works
>are from series, and I anticipate with joy the idea of opening up the newest
>Vlad Taltos or Miles Vorkosigan novel. And those authors can count on my
>patronage for their work.
I haven't read Taltos, but in the case of Ms. Bujold's Barrayar
books, every one is self contained -- even if they are part of
a larger tapestry.
LAZ...@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
>such protacted telling. Most don't. How many people can honestly say
>that they needed each and every barely relevant sub-plot, huge swath of
>interior monologue, or description of scenery from the last
>trilogy/tetralogy etc they read?
>
trilogies written recently, but there have also been some that are very
much too long. I think this is what happened to Maggie Furey's (sp?)
Aurien series. It really started good, but about 2/3 through the first
book I ran into a lot of what I call filler. It was too much nothing and
the book lost me. I have not bought the next one because I'm leary of
running into the same problem.
>P.S. And does anyone know why Duologies are so uncommon? I can only
>think of Stephen Donaldson's _Mordant's Need_ as an example of a story
>in two parts.
Have a good one - Carol
Chad R Orzel
LAL <let...@llnl.gov> wrote:
>My take. The authors and publishers are greedy for consistent cash flow -
>nothing unknown there. But "we the reading public" are so crushed by the
>stupifying inane qualities of modern life that we can't deal with novelty
>anymore. It's us who watch repetitious episodes of Seinfield, Star Trek,
>and the NFL sunday afternoon product. We're the ones continually demanding
>more of the same. We have no interest in originality, no interest in
>learning anything new, no interest in checking out what's over the next
>hill. We're happy repeating our_WoT_ or Vampire Chronicles or whatever
>until we die of terminal boredom.
{minor deletia}
>It's up to us - if enough of us refuse to buy series and sequels they'll
>stop. They won't stop writing and they won't stop publishing since they
>all want to continue eating, but they will stop series and sequels, and
>we'll all be better off. Do your part.
My objection to this argument is that I see no reason to believe that the
continued existence of multi-volume series in fact reduces the number of
worthwhile and original books. I seriously doubt it has any effect at all
on the Sturgeon Distribution- does it really matter _what_ form the 90%
takes? Is it somehow better to have nine bad standalone books instead of
three lousy trilogies? You're still in it for the one Good Book in every
ten, and those books are still being published in about the same relative
numbers as ever.
The problem is not series per se- the problem is that there are very few
writers capable of producing new and original stories that are worth
reading. This is hardly a recent development...
If series stopped selling, the only change would be a sudden increase in
the number of one-volume generic SF books. You'd _still_ have a bare
handful of writers capable of brilliance- putting Terry Brooks out of a
job is not going to get you another Gene Wolfe.
This is a straw man. A popular one, to be sure, but hay and old clothes
nonetheless.
Later,
OilCan
Jacob C Kesinger
:In article <41gnq1$g...@net.auckland.ac.nz: ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz
:(L-J Baker) writes:
:: This bleat has probably been done to death many times, but the
:: thread on paperback prices has stirred the embers of my discontent
:: again. Why is SF and fantasy (especially) at the stage where practically
:: every story takes at least three books to tell?
:Is NZ like the US? Reading this group it appears that many stories
:which are written as one book and published that way here in the UK
:get fairly arbitrarily hacked into three books in the US. (_Cyteen_
:being the obvious one that springs to mind, but I've seen others
:mentioned.) Do US publishers believe their readers can't read long
:books, or can't lift the weight or something? Or is it a side effect
:of the US' beserk tax laws on stocks of books? (As in one thick book
:at ~2.5N$ will produce less profit than 3 slim "trilogy" ones at N$
:each within the period between printing and shredding.)
Hugh Cook is another good example. His <cite>The Wordsmiths and the
Warguild</cite> (I'm pretty sure that was the title) got split
into <cite>The Questing Hero</cite> and <cite>The Hero's Return</cite>
(nevermind the difficulty of calling the protagonist a hero). But
the worst injustice was publishing the first third of <cite>The Walrus
and the Warwolf</cite> as <cite>Lords of the Sword</cite> (another awful
title) and then never publishing any of the rest! Not to mention
publishing <cite>The Women and the Warlords</cite> as <cite>The Oracle</cite>
out of order...
If I had the rest of the books I'd make a Hugh Cook Web Page...
--Jake--
Jake Kesinger n9146070@.cc.wwu.edu http://rowlf.cc.wwu.edu:8080/~n9146070/
"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ/ Moves on: nor all thy Piety
nor Wit/ Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line/ Nor all thy Tears
wash out a Word of it" --Omar Khayyam, _Rubaiyat_
Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew
> Authors and publishers are whores pandering to the lowest common reading
> denominator, while feeling superior to those those other whores across the
Sigh. I am *sure* [said Ahasuerus with difficulty] that you meant no harm
and that you were talking about *hack* writers and editors only, but
please, let's try and watch our language here. Please?
--
Ahasuerus http://www.clark.net/pub/ahasuer/, including:
FAQs: rec.arts.sf.written, alt.fan.heinlein, alt.pulp, the Liaden Universe
Biblios: how to write SF, the Wandering Jew, miscellaneous SF
Please consider posting (as opposed to e-mailing) ID requests
Betty Ragan
L-J Baker <ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>
>GRIPE WARNING
>
> This bleat has probably been done to death many times, but the
>thread on paperback prices has stirred the embers of my discontent
>again. Why is SF and fantasy (especially) at the stage where practically
>every story takes at least three books to tell?
>patiently for the next annual installment. Anyone writing a gargantuan
>saga will have to forgo my partonage: anything that says "First book of
>a series" goes straight back onto the shelf. To compound the problem
>further we have the phenonmenon of open-ended series.
Well, it's not too hard to imagine the reasoning behind this:
Publishers expect (with some justification) that readers will tend to
buy things that are familiar. When a reader walks into a store
looking for a new novel, there's an incredibly large amount of stuff
to choose from. But if said reader has started on a certain series,
the next book in the series is automatically going to suggest itself.
It sounds prety simple, really, but I'm not sure to what extent it
actuall *works* these days, as more and more readers seem to become
discontent with this sort of thing. For instance, I generally avoid
trilogies (or, God forbid, series with even more books than three)
these days. There are two main reasons for this, and I can't see that
I'd be the only one who thinks this way. First of all, I'm an
impatient person. I don't want to pick up Volume One of something
(*especially* if I like it!), have just enough time to get into the
story, and then have to wait a year or so for Volume Two (by which
time I've probably fogotten most of what happened in Volume One). So
I won't pick up a trilogy unless I can get the whole thing at once.
And this, of course, is where problem number two comes in: I don't
usually want to spend that much money at once. Three paperbacks at $6
each (if I'm lucky) comes to $18 (plus tax!), and that seems like rather an
investment, especially if I'm not even sure I'm going to like the
thing! So I generally avoid such series altogether unless they've
either a) from an author I really, really like or b) to be found very
cheap at a used bookstore... Meaning that marketing strategy doesn't
work very well with me.
> This wouldn't be nearly so bad if the stories actually warranted
>such protacted telling. Most don't. How many people can honestly say
>that they needed each and every barely relevant sub-plot, huge swath of
>interior monologue, or description of scenery from the last
>trilogy/tetralogy etc they read?
Come to think of it, the last trilogy I read could've done very well
without the whole first book... :)
>P.S. And does anyone know why Duologies are so uncommon? I can only
>think of Stephen Donaldson's _Mordant's Need_ as an example of a story
>in two parts.
Barbara Hambly's 'Darkmage' books were originally a duology, though
I believe she's got a sequel of sorts out now.
--
B. Ragan (bra...@nrao.edu)
"Did I do anything wrong today, or has the world always been like this and
I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?" -- Arthur Dent
L-J Baker
> I think there are a couple of reasons for this. To begin, scifi
>and fantasy often require the construction of fantastic and unique settings,
>and if the setting actually is fantastic and unique, authors, publishers,
>and many readers will want the story, or at least the place, continued. This
>probably implies a certain degree of laziness, greed, whatever. On the other
>hand the aspects of the better scifi fantasy universes often aren't exhausted
>after one go-around. What if Tolkein only wrote "The Hobbit", nothing else?
[snip]
> None of which challenges your point that "spreading a single tale over
>three books isn't very fair". True. I've felt that way about many things I've
>read. But often it is more than a single tale told. Some of my favorite works
>are from series, and I anticipate with joy the idea of opening up the newest
>Vlad Taltos or Miles Vorkosigan novel. And those authors can count on my
>patronage for their work.
Valid points, Oberon.
I agree that there are some worlds that are vivid and rich enough to
support *more than one story* (note empahsis). Brust's Vlad books are an
example of this. Yes, they constitute a series set in the same
environment, BUT they are all self-contained stories with satisfying
end. (Well, the one's I've read are.) There's not:
"...and just as he was about to kill the evil
necromancer, the time tunnel opened up and whisked him away."
The End.
This gripping saga continues in Book 2 of the Lost Spell of Endless.
I like resolutions -- is that so strange? I'm fairly tolerant (I own three
of Edding's series, for goodness sake!), but come on, 500 - 800 pages
without a high percentage of threads tied off is not acceptable. You
don't have to kill or marry off all the lead characters, but I do like
the story to have gone somewhere and not be a thinly disguised
travelogue and family history which ends *just* as the action gets off
the ground.
Sure serialisation is a tradition, but that doesn't mean that it's a
good idea. Someone else mentioned LoTR. I wonder, though, did Tolkien
write it as three books or did the publishers split it up? (Anyone know
of anyone who had the first two books and had to wait twelve months for
the final installment in hardback?)
Regards,
L-J Baker
(Bugger, my debutante thread is a winge.)
Rick Cook
"Wizard's Bane" was supposed to be a stand-alone. Now "Wiz 4" is at the
typesetters and I'm putting the finishing touches on "Wiz 5".
I've enjoyed it, but I'm ready to go do something else.
The other problem is that a lot of readers like really long books and the
economics of publishing virtually demand these be broken into multiple
volumes.
--RC
Rick Cook
>From talking to editors and authors I got the impression that
>publishing houses encourage authors to write trilogies.
>The idea is they can sell more books with a single effort.
>
There have been a lot of series abandoned in the middle because the
publisher didn't like the numbers from the first book.
--RC
Rick Cook
>Authors and publishers are whores pandering to the lowest common reading
>denominator,
Well, some of us whores like to feel we're aiming a little higher than that.
--RC
Jan Six
> obe...@UWYO.EDU (**/\**) writes:
[snippity snip]
> > None of which challenges your point that "spreading a single tale over
> >three books isn't very fair". True. I've felt that way about many things I've
> >read. But often it is more than a single tale told.
[snip]
> I agree that there are some worlds that are vivid and rich enough to
> support *more than one story* (note empahsis).
[snip]
> Sure serialisation is a tradition, but that doesn't mean that it's a
> good idea. Someone else mentioned LoTR. I wonder, though, did Tolkien
> write it as three books or did the publishers split it up?
Dead on. For the record, Carpenter's Tolkien Biography devotes
several pages to the long gestation of the Lord of the Rings. It is
repeatedly mentioned that not only did Tolkien prefer the LotR to be
published in one volume, but *he specifically wanted the Silmarillion
also to be published in the same volume*. Not surprisingly, Unwin
wasn't overly keen on the idea of publishing such a "biblical" work!
Only when it became clear that the rewriting of the Silmarillion
(which was in a largely finished state before Tolkien ever started on
LotR) to iron out the inconsistencies that had developed during the
writing of LotR, would take years, Tolkien reluctantly agreed to the
separate publication of LotR... and then debated for another year on
the inadvisability of splitting up LotR itself! Though he eventually
accepted the arrangement, he was never happy with it and always
regarded LotR as a single work.
My view is more or less the same. I don't mind series set in the same
universe as long as each book by itself is more or less a complete
whole that can be read by itself, as in the Foundation trilogy (but
not its later se- and prequels). I _hate_ series where you have to buy
three, five or even more books just to get to a single really
satisfactory resolution. It's one of the reasons why I buy much less
fantasy than I used to (and one of the reasons I like Kay, while
Eddings has earned my undying hatred). Fantasy seems to have much more
than its fair share of this phenomenon - SF series tend to be more of
the "same universe, different story" type. Banks' Culture springs to
mind. And I used to be glad to say that Brin's Uplift works sprang to
mind, but it seems that comforting thought may be history soon. Sigh.
Jan Six |"It is a hypothesis that the sun will rise in the
| morning. This means we don't _know_ it will rise"
Jan...@uku.fi | - Ludwig Wittgenstein
|
It's my real name.|"Actually, now that you come to mention it..."
Honest. | - Nikolaus Copernicus
Jan Six
> LAL (let...@llnl.gov) wrote: [snip]
> > Authors and publishers are whores pandering to the lowest common reading
> > NY street since they deal with the printed word and not lowly TV.[snip]
>
> Sigh. I am *sure* [said Ahasuerus with difficulty] that you meant no harm
> and that you were talking about *hack* writers and editors only, but
> please, let's try and watch our language here. Please?
Language, what language? What have you got against whores? They
fulfill a useful social function and they inconvenience nobody but
those sad folks that can't do without something or somebody to object
to because they need to be able to feel self-righteously superior.
There's no reason to disparage whores any more than to disparage
garbage men. I didn't read anything offensive into LAL's comment.
We need our literary whores. Without these hack writers, how would we
make up Sturgeon's 90%? Though I don't think it's the pinnacle of
literary achievement in SF, I like the occasional dose of hack writing
like, say, Jack Chalker (now why did I think of _him_ first? :-)
whilst relaxing between, say, Banks and Delany. The fact that
afterwards I can indulge in a nice bout of carping how godawful it
really was :-) makes it all the more unprepossessing fun.
Peter H. Granzeau
it is appropriate to the subject of this thread.
----- Long quotation follows -----
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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 20:15:43 GMT
From: Philip Johnson <P...@badger.demon.co.uk>
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Subject: Kipling: The Three-Decker
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THE THREE-DECKER
1894
'The three-volume novel is extinct'
Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail,
It tok a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail;
But, spite all modern notiions, I've found her first and best -
The only certain packet for the Islands of ther Blest
Fair held the breeze behind us - 'twas warmed with lovers' prayers.
We'd stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.
They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed,
And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest.
By ways no eye could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook,
Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took,
With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed,
And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest.
We asked no social questions - we pumped no hidden shame -
We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came:
We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell,
We weren't exactly Yussufs, but - Zuleika didn't tell.
No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared,
The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered.
'Twas fiddle in the foc'sle - 'twas garlands on the mast,
For everone got married, and I went ashore at last.
I left 'em all in couples a-kissing on the decks,
I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques.
In endless English comfort, by county-folk caressed,
I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! . . .
The route is barrred to steamers: you'll never lift again
Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain.
They're just beyond your skyline, howe'er so far you cruise
In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws.
Swing round your aching searchlight - 'twill show no haven's peace.
Ay, blow your shrieking sirens at the deaf, grey-bbearded seas!
Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep's unrest -
And you aren't one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest.
But when you're threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail,
At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale,
Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed,
You'll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest.
You'll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread;
You'll hear the long-drawn thunder 'neath her leaping figurehead;
While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine
Unvexed by wind ot weather like the candles round a shrine!
Hull down -hull down and under - she dwindles to a speck,
With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck.
All's well - all's well aboard her - sh'e left you far behind,
With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind.
Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make?
You're manned by Truth and Science, and you steam fro steaming's sake?
Well, tinker up your engines - you know you business best -
_She's_ taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!
Rudyard Kipling
--
Philip Johnson
'Never do for yourself what you can con an expert into doing for you'
Naismith: 'On War'
'A rational government wouldn't allow him possession of a pocket-knife,
let alone a space fleet.' Cordelia, Countess Vorkosigan: 'On Naismith'
--
Regards, PHG
ICBM address: 37ø27'48"N, 76ø25'38"W
Nighthunter
> We need our literary whores. Without these hack writers, how would we
> make up Sturgeon's 90%? Though I don't think it's the pinnacle of
> literary achievement in SF, I like the occasional dose of hack writing
> like, say, Jack Chalker (now why did I think of _him_ first? :-)
> whilst relaxing between, say, Banks and Delany. The fact that
> afterwards I can indulge in a nice bout of carping how godawful it
> really was :-) makes it all the more unprepossessing fun.
I agree. Hack writers are great for the times when I need a little mind
candy. One of the primary reasons I read Trashy Romance Novels (tm). Not
as exciting as space opera (usually) but just as entertaining.
Peter H. Granzeau
>
>Probably because readers like sequels to books they enjoy.
>
>"Wizard's Bane" was supposed to be a stand-alone. Now "Wiz 4" is at
the
>typesetters and I'm putting the finishing touches on "Wiz 5".
>
>I've enjoyed it, but I'm ready to go do something else.
You didn't write a three-novel series. You wrote three novels about
the same people. Not the same thing. Each of them ended.
**/**
>In article <1995Aug24.1...@roper.uwyo.edu>, obe...@UWYO.EDU wrote:
>
>> and if the setting actually is fantastic and unique, authors, publishers,
>> and many readers will want the story, or at least the place, continued.
>> Series development is nothing new
>> in the genre, and writers today are only continuing a pattern used by
>> many of the better writers of this century. Asimov, Smith, Burroughs,
>all wrote
>> serialized fiction, and in fact reflected their times
>
>If by serialized fiction you mean books first published in magazines in
>serial form, yep you're right, but in thread context I assume you infer
>something else, and I disagree. These guys and others (RAH's future
>histroy, Known Space, etc) wrote multiple more or less independent storys
>set in the same universe, with some exceptions. They didn't take umpteen
>dozen separate books to tell one story. I don't mind the former sort of
>"series." I reject the "continuation" series, the multiple book novel, the
>"oh my I didn't get it finished so we need another volume" series, and the
>"let's expand the introductory chapter to a full volume and sell it
>seperately - the suckers will buy anything" book (see _Lovelock_ for an
>example of the latter).
>
>nothing unknown there. But "we the reading public" are so crushed by the
>stupifying inane qualities of modern life that we can't deal with novelty
>anymore. It's us who watch repetitious episodes of Seinfield, Star Trek,
>and the NFL sunday afternoon product. We're the ones continually demanding
>more of the same. We have no interest in originality, no interest in
>learning anything new, no interest in checking out what's over the next
>hill. We're happy repeating our_WoT_ or Vampire Chronicles or whatever
>until we die of terminal boredom.
>
>denominator, while feeling superior to those those other whores across the
>NY street since they deal with the printed word and not lowly TV.
This is a bit ridiculous, and insulting. (although I am neither
author nor publisher). I was appreciating your argument until I read this.
At the very least authors and publishers writing the endless series fill
a market demand. Do they truly deserve this sort of attack?
>
>It's up to us - if enough of us refuse to buy series and sequels they'll
>stop. They won't stop writing and they won't stop publishing since they
>all want to continue eating, but they will stop series and sequels, and
>we'll all be better off. Do your part.
>--
>Standard disclaimers apply. Nobody here ever agrees with me on anything.
E. Hildaur Neilsen
[big snip]
>I've just remembered another book which is split into three. I've got
>the hardback of _The Ascent of Wonder_, editors' names escape me. This
>is a single book here in the UK, but has three forewords and the
>contents list clearly shows three parts, so it's obviously published
>as a trilogy somewhere, presumably the US. Can anyone confirm this?
too. It just happened to have three introductions and three sections.
(Personally, I don't really care how many volumes books are published
in, provided the content is good, and it is made clear on the covers
that "this is book x out of y".)
-Hil
---
*******************************************************************************
* E. Hildaur Neilsen, Jr. | nei...@pha.jhu.edu *
* http://www.pha.jhu.edu/~neilsen/ *
*******************************************************************************
Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew
> I don't mind series set in the same
> universe as long as each book by itself is more or less a complete
> I _hate_ series where you have to buy
> three, five or even more books just to get to a single really
> satisfactory resolution. It's one of the reasons why I buy much less
> fantasy than I used to (and one of the reasons I like Kay, while
> Eddings has earned my undying hatred). Fantasy seems to have much more
> than its fair share of this phenomenon - SF series tend to be more of
> the "same universe, different story" type. Banks' Culture springs to
Lawrence Watt-Evans' _Ethshar_ books are like that, although they are
fantasy. They also provide an interesting mix of "magic as science" and
"magic as non-science" of different types.
Nelson Dewey
I have enjoyed many such.
What ANNOYS me is getting into a multi-volume series without
realizing it!
I just finished reading what turned out to be the SECOND book
in a Stephen R. Donaldson "Gap" series/trilogy/epic. Seems I
overlooked the "fine print" inside the dust-jacket...
I guess I shoulda' realized it, when there were so many
references to earlier events.
I'll no doubt continue reading the series -- don't see a point
in going back to volume one -- unless I find it remaindered
somewhere... but don't appreciate having to wait to continue
the story.
Also would have appreciated more of a sense of completion, so
that even if I read just the one book, it would have had the
traditional "beginning-middle-ending" that's so satisfying. AS
it was, as I got near to those final pages, I got the feeling
I was going to be cheated out of an ending; I was.
It just serves to remind me to CHECK THE BLURBS for any kind
of clue that a potential book-purchase is or is not part of a
series!!!
Nelson Dewey / Sanctuary Woods Multimedia.
Cartoonist \ Victoria, BC, Canada
Writer / (604) 472-8800 loc 5250
Animator \ Nelso...@vic.sanctuary.com
...runner/biker/hiker/pedestrian/driver
(not in order of preference)
Nelson Dewey
David E Romm
> GRIPE WARNING
>
> This bleat has probably been done to death many times, but the
> thread on paperback prices has stirred the embers of my discontent
> again. Why is SF and fantasy (especially) at the stage where practically
> every story takes at least three books to tell?
As others in this thread have done, I can answer that in one character: $.
However, I've got an additional theory. You see, authors have to go on
book tours and do promotions. But only after the book is published, which
can be a year or more from completion of the book. Imagine you've been
spending a year immersed writing a new book, when all of a sudden you're
pulled into the past and have to answer detailed questions about a world
and characters you haven't though about for a long time. On the other
hand, if you're writing a trilogy -- or, better, a series -- the world and
characters are still with you as you're on tour, and you can always answer
sticky questions, "oh, I'm dealing with that in my lastest book".
So, I posit, the impetus toward multi-book stories is driven not only by
money, but by the hype necessary for marketing.
--
Shockwave radio: Science Fiction/Science Fact
http://www.winternet.com/~romm
FAQ, Distribution Tapes, Top 11 Lists, scripts, sound files, more
Ruth Bygrave
I, for example, may quite happily read Terry ("... early November...")
Pratchett's Diskworld novels every year as they come out, requesting
them from the library long before they are published, and collapsing
in helpless laughter in W.H. Smith's when they *are* published.
On the other hand, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Tripe series sends me to
sleep: I thought the first one was fine (not my favourite book, but a
decent piece of work). However, as each 700-page novel comes out I
tiredly skim-read the copies at the library, waiting for something
that will make me smile, shudder or raise my eyebrows. These are the
most hopelessly-unresolved books I've ever read - less seems to happen
in each individual book the more he writes. (Eddings are also fairly
bad at doing plots (the fans keep saying everything is repeated over
and over again), but the sense of humour is a saving grace).
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to reverse the
positionings I've stated above. I'm sure most of us on this newsgroup
can easily think of an author we wish would write more, and an author
we wish would write less. At least one example iin each category.
Ruth ("...de gustibus non est wossname, whatever...") Bygrave
Jacob Proffitt
>publishing houses encourage authors to write trilogies.
>The idea is they can sell more books with a single effort.
According to the authors I've spoken to (admittedly not many, but they
were all SF so that counts for something) publishing houses put so
much into marketing and printing that it's more worth their effort to
publish an author with whom they can build a long-term relationship.
Not that this means they want their authors to stretch one book into
three necessarily, but they want someone who has ideas for several
books or series. Wouldn't you rather publish Anne McCaffrey than,
say, Robin McKinley--simply from the sheer volume of the former's
work? (Never mind quality, but I won't get into that because my
opinions get me in trouble with other SF fans....)
Melissa Proffitt
Jacob Proffitt
>>P.S. And does anyone know why Duologies are so uncommon? I can only
>>think of Stephen Donaldson's _Mordant's Need_ as an example of a story
>>in two parts.
>
>Have a good one - Carol
Or Sean Russell's "Initiate Brother" and "Gatherer of Clouds." Come
to think of it, his new book is the first of a duology. Maybe it's
just marketing.
Melissa Proffitt
Jacob Proffitt
>of Edding's series, for goodness sake!), but come on, 500 - 800 pages
You are indeed truly tolerant!
>without a high percentage of threads tied off is not acceptable. You
>don't have to kill or marry off all the lead characters, but I do like
>the story to have gone somewhere and not be a thinly disguised
>travelogue and family history which ends *just* as the action gets off
>the ground.
Or where it becomes obvious that the author really didn't have a goal
in mind, but was just spinning straw until she fulfilled her contract.
Louise Cooper hooked me with her Time Master trilogy so I was willing
to read the Indigo series--all eight books of it--and I was furious
that her ending was basically "sorry folks, everything I said in the
first seven books was just a lie, I changed my mind." If I'm going to
invest my time in a long series, I want it to be a worthwhile
investment.
>Sure serialisation is a tradition, but that doesn't mean that it's a
>good idea. Someone else mentioned LoTR. I wonder, though, did Tolkien
>write it as three books or did the publishers split it up? (Anyone know
>of anyone who had the first two books and had to wait twelve months for
>the final installment in hardback?)
I wonder about this whole tradition. Originally novels (and here I
mean back when they were first written in the eighteenth century) were
ALL published as three-volume sets. Modern readers don't notice
because all the current reprints are in a single volume and hardly
ever bother with mentioning the original structure. It's possible
Tolkien was back far enough that his books were published with this
tradition in mind, and now F&SF authors just take it for granted.
Melissa Proffitt
Gary Farber
: According to the authors I've spoken to (admittedly not many, but they
: were all SF so that counts for something) publishing houses put so
: much into marketing and printing that it's more worth their effort to
: publish an author with whom they can build a long-term relationship.
: Not that this means they want their authors to stretch one book into
: three necessarily, but they want someone who has ideas for several
: books or series.
This simply applies to all mass market fiction. Almost all writers begin
in the midlist, and almost no first novel, by definition by an unknown,
makes money. A readership (and a career) are only built over time, and
several books. Which is why improving numbers (sales figures) are
crucial. If a writer's books aren't heading upwards, they are in trouble.
It would be rare for a fifth novel, say, to be published without a major
upward swing in sales since the first couple -- it would be rare for a
fifth novel even to be published by the same publisher.
Of course, since companies try to keep sales figures, rates of movement,
etc., proprietary, it's then easier for an agent to go to another company
with published books in hand and say "look how promising young Jane Author
is."
Series are desired for the built-in (if successful) readership. It's
worse in mysteries, than in sf, by far. It's almost impossible to sell a
mystery novel without a series hero, if you hadn't noticed.
--
-- Gary Farber Brooklyn, New York City
gfa...@panix.com I is another, and I am that other. -- Rimbaud
Terry Miles
>Hugh Cook is another good example. His <cite>The Wordsmiths and the
>Warguild</cite> (I'm pretty sure that was the title) got split
>into <cite>The Questing Hero</cite> and <cite>The Hero's Return</cite>
>(nevermind the difficulty of calling the protagonist a hero). But
>the worst injustice was publishing the first third of <cite>The Walrus
>and the Warwolf</cite> as <cite>Lords of the Sword</cite> (another awful
>title) and then never publishing any of the rest! Not to mention
>publishing <cite>The Women and the Warlords</cite> as <cite>The Oracle</cite>
>out of order...
Was "Lords of the Sword" the book in which some apprentice is hounded
by his former master who has gone insane and become the prophet of a
new religion in which the apprentice is the Devil? I liked that book
but never saw any followup. I suspected that they weren't published
but hoped that I was wrong.
BTW, Hugh Cook is one of those writers whose work I either love or
hate.
____________________________________________________________
Terry Miles jtm...@erinet.com
"He strains to hear a whisper who refuses to hear a shout."
Terry Miles
>In article <1995Aug24.1...@roper.uwyo.edu>, obe...@UWYO.EDU wrote:
>My take. The authors and publishers are greedy for consistent cash flow -
>nothing unknown there. But "we the reading public" are so crushed by the
>stupifying inane qualities of modern life that we can't deal with novelty
>anymore. It's us who watch repetitious episodes of Seinfield, Star Trek,
>and the NFL sunday afternoon product. We're the ones continually demanding
>more of the same. We have no interest in originality, no interest in
>learning anything new, no interest in checking out what's over the next
>hill. We're happy repeating our_WoT_ or Vampire Chronicles or whatever
>until we die of terminal boredom.
I disagree about the WoT series. Love it or hate it, it is a single
story with a large number of characters over a period of several
years. There is no repetion of stories because all of the books are
really one humongous novel. You definitely cannot read one book and
enjoy on its own. The first book might be the exception but some of
the later books do not even make an attempt to tie off threads at the
end.
This is very different from your other examples which are different
(but often similar) stories with the same characters. BTW, why
complain about repetitious NFL games? Do you want to change rules
every week?
Jacob C Kesinger
>n914...@janice.cc.wwu.edu (Jacob C Kesinger) wrote:
>Was "Lords of the Sword" the book in which some apprentice is hounded
>by his former master who has gone insane and become the prophet of a
>new religion in which the apprentice is the Devil? I liked that book
>but never saw any followup. I suspected that they weren't published
>but hoped that I was wrong.
Yeah, that's the one. There's rather a bit more to the book
after that; it's roughly equivalent to Questar/Roc publishing the
first part of <cite>Wizard War</cite> (<cite>The Wizards and
the Warriors</cite> for you Elizabethaners) and ending right
after Phyphor gets it. There's still a lot of plot that
has barely begun to show (Hearst / Alish, for starters)
and the first major subplot (the pursuit of Heenmor)
hasn't been resolved.
--Jake
--
Jake Kesinger n914...@cc.wwu.edu
http://rowlf.cc.wwu.edu:8080/~n9146070/ SF, Pratchett, Deverry
"While in federal prison they all found the Lord, who was serving a six-year
sentence for failing to file tax returns." --Dave Barry
L-J Baker
>I've nothing against trilogies -- if they're well-written.
Big `if' - but I agree. There's nothing inherently wrong wiht a very
long tale. Hell, some of them are great for a long term total immersion,
but...
[snip]
>Also would have appreciated more of a sense of completion, so
>that even if I read just the one book, it would have had the
>traditional "beginning-middle-ending" that's so satisfying. AS
>it was, as I got near to those final pages, I got the feeling
>I was going to be cheated out of an ending; I was.
Bingo! Give this person a chocolate fish. You hit the problem on the
head. A book is a book and should be a book. We expect certain things
from it. You don't like paying up your hard earned cash for a totally
unsatisfactory bit of a story wrapped up to look like a real, whole,
satisfying book. Even if it is only part of a tale -- even a middle one
-- I contend that the author should endeavour to make it to a certain extent
self-contained. Yes, there will be referneces to previous happenings, we
can live with that. But don't make us have to buy a whole book that we
have to read first to make any sense of the one we already have.
>It just serves to remind me to CHECK THE BLURBS for any kind
>of clue that a potential book-purchase is or is not part of a
>series!!!
Have you noticed that blurbs are undergoing a strange metamorphosis? On
a recent browse I picked up a Katherine Kerr book and instead of telling
me anyhting about the book I had in my hand, the back cover was devoted
to praise for another book entirely! Strangely enough, I was not
convinced to buy either.
L-J Baker
[snip]
>>Sure serialisation is a tradition, but that doesn't mean that it's a
>>good idea. Someone else mentioned LoTR. I wonder, though, did Tolkien
>>write it as three books or did the publishers split it up? (Anyone know
>>of anyone who had the first two books and had to wait twelve months for
>>the final installment in hardback?)
>I wonder about this whole tradition. Originally novels (and here I
>mean back when they were first written in the eighteenth century) were
>ALL published as three-volume sets. Modern readers don't notice
>because all the current reprints are in a single volume and hardly
>ever bother with mentioning the original structure. It's possible
>Tolkien was back far enough that his books were published with this
>tradition in mind, and now F&SF authors just take it for granted.
>Melissa Proffitt
Apparently the publisher did it -- to LoTR, not JRRT.
Sure, not so long ago in world history, before tv and the five minute
ad-break helped humanity shrug off a long concentration span, novels
used to be huge, unwieldy things in many volumes.
But tell me, do you have any idea why all the other genres
developed away from such monstrosity, but SF&F didn't ?
L-J Baker
L-J Baker
[huge snip]
>The problem is not series per se- the problem is that there are very few
>writers capable of producing new and original stories that are worth
>reading. This is hardly a recent development...
>If series stopped selling, the only change would be a sudden increase in
>the number of one-volume generic SF books. You'd _still_ have a bare
>handful of writers capable of brilliance- putting Terry Brooks out of a
>job is not going to get you another Gene Wolfe.
>This is a straw man. A popular one, to be sure, but hay and old clothes
>nonetheless.
>Later,
>OilCan
My point was not about the quality of the series, which is a whole world
of debate on its own. Rather, I object to the structure of series. The
book which cannot be read as a self-contained entity must be either a
very cynical sales strategy or the result of poor craftsmanship on the
author's part. I shall concede, sadly, that there are probably some
published writers unequal to the task of crafting a trilogy so that each
part contains an enjoyable subsection of the whole.
L-J Baker
L-J Baker
> Well, it's not too hard to imagine the reasoning behind this:
>Publishers expect (with some justification) that readers will tend to
>buy things that are familiar. When a reader walks into a store
>looking for a new novel, there's an incredibly large amount of stuff
>to choose from. But if said reader has started on a certain series,
>the next book in the series is automatically going to suggest itself.
Yes, but why is it that you don't hit the same phenomenon over int he
minastream or romance fiction sections? How many people are eagerly
nearing the end of their twelve month wait for book four in Danielle
Steele's latest quintology? Or Stephen King's crashing finale to his trilogy?
>I won't pick up a trilogy unless I can get the whole thing at once.
Me neither.
>And this, of course, is where problem number two comes in: I don't
>usually want to spend that much money at once. Three paperbacks at $6
>each (if I'm lucky) comes to $18 (plus tax!), and that seems like rather an
>investment, especially if I'm not even sure I'm going to like the
>thing!
How about $NZ45 for the three modestly sized paperbacks of Guy Kay Gavriel's
_Fionavar Tapestry_ ? (I don't know the exchange rate.)
> So I generally avoid such series altogether unless they've
>either a) from an author I really, really like or b) to be found very
>cheap at a used bookstore... Meaning that marketing strategy doesn't
Alas, I sort of bring some misery on myself since I don't like to buy
second hand -- I have this naive feeling that I would like to make a
donation to the author.
> Come to think of it, the last trilogy I read could've done very well
>without the whole first book... :)
Unfortunately, I know the feeling well.
> Barbara Hambly's 'Darkmage' books were originally a duology, though
>I believe she's got a sequel of sorts out now.
By hook or by crook they'll squeeze out the magical three.
Regards,
L-J Baker
lj.b...@auckland.ac.nz
John Novak
>My point was not about the quality of the series, which is a whole world
>of debate on its own. Rather, I object to the structure of series. The
>book which cannot be read as a self-contained entity must be either a
>very cynical sales strategy or the result of poor craftsmanship on the
>author's part. I shall concede, sadly, that there are probably some
>published writers unequal to the task of crafting a trilogy so that each
>part contains an enjoyable subsection of the whole.
Well what do you do, then, when you just get a really _long_
book, that can't properly be bound in one volume? Tad Williams'
_To Green Angel Tower_ leaps to mind-- a book so long, it had to
be broken in two parts for paperback publication.
(This may not be the best example, since I considered it to have
been written with far too many words, but Williams apparently
disagrees.)
I have no objection to multi-volume books, so long as they are
labelled as such.
--
John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
http://cegt201.bradley.edu/~jsn/index.html
The Humblest Man on the Net
Robert Shorten
: I wonder about this whole tradition. Originally novels (and here I
: mean back when they were first written in the eighteenth century) were
: ALL published as three-volume sets. Modern readers don't notice
: because all the current reprints are in a single volume and hardly
: ever bother with mentioning the original structure. It's possible
: Tolkien was back far enough that his books were published with this
: tradition in mind, and now F&SF authors just take it for granted.
Samuel Richardson's _Pamela_ was originally two volumes, but then he
wrote a sequel, _Pamela Part II_ in two more. _Clarissa_ was seven volumes,
and in its most recent reprinting, in Penguin Classics, it is a huge and
extremely thick trade paperback. I think _Sir Charles Grandison_ may have
been seven volumes too. And all these were published circa 1730-1750.
So yes, three volume (and more) books are nothing new.
Jay Shorten
sho...@nic.wat.hookup.net
Jason John Seaver
Terry Miles <jtm...@erinet.com> wrote:
>let...@llnl.gov (LAL) wrote:
>
>>In article <1995Aug24.1...@roper.uwyo.edu>, obe...@UWYO.EDU wrote:
>
>>My take. The authors and publishers are greedy for consistent cash flow -
>>nothing unknown there. But "we the reading public" are so crushed by the
>>stupifying inane qualities of modern life that we can't deal with novelty
>>anymore. It's us who watch repetitious episodes of Seinfield, Star Trek,
>>and the NFL sunday afternoon product. We're the ones continually demanding
>>more of the same. We have no interest in originality, no interest in
>>learning anything new, no interest in checking out what's over the next
>>hill. We're happy repeating our_WoT_ or Vampire Chronicles or whatever
>>until we die of terminal boredom.
>
>I disagree about the WoT series. Love it or hate it, it is a single
>story with a large number of characters over a period of several
>years. There is no repetion of stories because all of the books are
>really one humongous novel. You definitely cannot read one book and
>enjoy on its own. The first book might be the exception but some of
>the later books do not even make an attempt to tie off threads at the
>end.
Then publish them *as one book*, or at least all at once. Maybe it's
a little bit old-fashioned, but many people like a book to have a resolution,
even if it's not complete. Just to make that volume self-contained, you know?
>This is very different from your other examples which are different
>(but often similar) stories with the same characters. BTW, why
>complain about repetitious NFL games? Do you want to change rules
>every week?
Now, that would be neat (and don't they do that with baseball? :-).
"Penalty! Not allowed to throw the ball forward this week..."
Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew
> I wonder about this whole tradition. Originally novels (and here I
> mean back when they were first written in the eighteenth century) were
> ALL published as three-volume sets.
Not all of them, by any means, but yes, multi-volume sets were common.
> Modern readers don't notice
> because all the current reprints are in a single volume and hardly
> ever bother with mentioning the original structure.
Keep in mind that the "original structure" was different for different
classes of novels. An instant classic of "popular literature" like _Le
Juif Errant_ (_The Wandering Jew_) by Eugene Sue was published almost
simultaneously in one volume, two volumes, three volumes and as 78 [sic!!]
chapbooks, only to be reprinted later in 4 volumes, 5 volumes and 20 [sic]
volumes.
> It's possible
> Tolkien was back far enough that his books were published with this
> tradition in mind
Not really. Tolkien wanted the book to be published in one volume, but it
just wasn't practical.
> and now F&SF authors just take it for granted.
Science fiction - or what passed for science fiction - was published in
book form in the 1880's-1920's. Reasonably fat one-volume SF books were
not unheard of at the time. Jules Verne's _L'ile Mysterieuse_ (_The
Mysterious Island_), which BTW was originally butchered in 1875-76, was
published in 1893 in one volume (493 pages).
However, science fiction - not all of it, but for the most part - moved
from the world of books to the world of pulp magazines in the mid-20's.
For example, John Taine's first SF novels were published as books, but
most of the rest were published in the pulps. And pulps encouraged
brevity, unless you were a surefire bestseller like Doc Smith. If you
wanted to explore a particular milieu in depth, then a series - sometimes
a *very* long series - of short stories was recommended.
When science fiction began to appear in book form again in the 40's from
fan and semipro houses (I'll skip the 30's for our purposes), it was
mostly confined to pulp reprints. Hardcovers were occasionally quite
impressive (_Adventures in Space and Time_ immediately comes to mind for
*some reason :), but paperbacks were thin, in the 140-240 page range. When
professionals took over in the 50's, novels were still expected to be
short, e.g. the infamous 40,000 word limit at Ace and whatsitname in the
UK. As late as the early 70's, Lin Carter was forced to split one of
William Morris' books in two because otherwise it would have been like 500
pages or something equally unimaginable :)
Finally, word counts went up - all the way up - in the late 70's/early
80's with "epic fantasies" leading the way and we all know where we are
now. Anything else you would like to know? :)
Matt Hickman
preface she thanked he publisher for cutting up what was essentially
a single novel into three. This irritated me, why should I buy three books to read
one novel? And why should I have to wait up to a year or more between
installments? I read the first of the books, but lost interest by the time the
second came out.
Then _Cyteen_ came out in paperback as three books and I gave up on C.J. Cherryl
completely.
Matt Hickman bh...@chevron.com TANSTAAFL!
OS/2 Systems Specialist, Chevron Information Technologies Co.
...it is a filthy, dirty habit that ruins my wind and may eventually
kill me off with lung cancer, but I just happen to _like_ filthy dirty
habits. (Zeb)
Robert A. Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
"If This Goes On--" ASF c.1940
Betty Ragan
L-J Baker <ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>bra...@newshost.aoc.nrao.edu (Betty Ragan) writes:
>
>> Well, it's not too hard to imagine the reasoning behind this:
>>Publishers expect (with some justification) that readers will tend to
>>buy things that are familiar. When a reader walks into a store
>>looking for a new novel, there's an incredibly large amount of stuff
>>to choose from. But if said reader has started on a certain series,
>>the next book in the series is automatically going to suggest itself.
>Yes, but why is it that you don't hit the same phenomenon over int he
>minastream or romance fiction sections? How many people are eagerly
>nearing the end of their twelve month wait for book four in Danielle
>Steele's latest quintology? Or Stephen King's crashing finale to his trilogy?
This is a good question. Is it that publishers feel that SF needs a
sneakier marketing strategy for some reason? (Along the lines, perhaps,
of "Well, we know Steele and King'll sell themselves, but we've really
got to push the SF marketing.") That doesn't make too much sense to
me, since SF has a pretty well-established readership (even if it is
smaller than the mainstream readership)... But then, who knows the mind
of a publisher? It may be that there already tends to be a sameness among
Steele's and King's novels so that a reader has a good idea what he's going
to get even if the books aren't actually related in terms of plot or
characters. It may be that SF writers are more willing to do multi-part
series because they enjoy developing thier alien environments at great
length...
In other words, I can think of several possiblities, but none of them
leaps out at being wholly convincing.
>Alas, I sort of bring some misery on myself since I don't like to buy
>second hand -- I have this naive feeling that I would like to make a
>donation to the author.
I feel a small twinge about this myself, but the way I look at it, I'm
not likely to buy this series at *all* if I have to pay full price for it,
so I'm not cheating the author out of anything he would've gotten from me.
(Of course, I think the whol used-book issue has been discussed to death
elsewhere, so I won't get too far into it now.)
>> Barbara Hambly's 'Darkmage' books were originally a duology, though
>>I believe she's got a sequel of sorts out now.
>By hook or by crook they'll squeeze out the magical three.
True enough. Though, IMHO Hambly is one of the few authors who can
remain consistently interesting for the duration of a trilogy.
--
B. Ragan (bra...@nrao.edu)
"Did I do anything wrong today, or has the world always been like this and
I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?" -- Arthur Dent
Kendra Lee Hillman
: Some years ago the first of C.J Cherryl's Kif novels came out. In the
: preface she thanked he publisher for cutting up what was essentially
: a single novel into three. This irritated me, why should I buy three books to read
: one novel? And why should I have to wait up to a year or more between
: installments? I read the first of the books, but lost interest by the time the
: second came out.
First, I agree wholeheartedly with you about the inconvenience of paying
and waiting for three volumes of what should be a single book. I have
_The Kif Strike Back_ in front of me, however, and feel the need to pick
a small but important nit. Cheryh did not thank her publisher for
splitting the novel. She very explicitly thanked the publisher for not
forcing her to pretend to be writing three separate books by writing what
she called "artificially contrived tie-off points." The splitting was
apparently inevitable, but she thanked her publishers for letting her
handle the situation as she saw fit.
: Then _Cyteen_ came out in paperback as three books and I gave up on C.J. Cherryl
: completely.
Your loss! :) Seriously, if nothing else, at least try a couple of her
stand-alone books. She's an excellent author.
Toodles,
Kendra
------
Kendra Hillman -- klhi...@artsci.wustl.edu
Department of Anthropology, Washington University
"Could you destroy the Earth?"
"Egad - I hope not! That's where I keep all my stuff!" - The Tick
Chad R Orzel
L-J Baker <ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>oil...@wam.umd.edu (Chad R Orzel) writes:
>[huge snip]
>>The problem is not series per se- the problem is that there are very few
>>writers capable of producing new and original stories that are worth
>>reading. This is hardly a recent development...
>
>of debate on its own. Rather, I object to the structure of series. The
>book which cannot be read as a self-contained entity must be either a
>very cynical sales strategy or the result of poor craftsmanship on the
>author's part.
Yeah, _The Two Towers_ really bites...
(This may fall under "cynical sales strategy," based upon some of the
other comments here, but it had to be said...)
The obvious argument against this would be that some stories end up
being too long to publish as a single volume- indeed, someone has beaten
me to that one. I will grant though, that books which just sort of...
stop, (as opposed to reaching some sort of natural breaking point, and
then stopping) are annoying.
The question then becomes one of degree- to stick with my earlier
comment, it is more or less impossible to read _The Two Towers_ as a
self-contained entity. But it _does_ end at a natural stopping-place-
Sam and Frodo are left hanging, and in Dire Peril, true, but there is
a resolution to most of the other major plot-threads, and there is a
climactic battle scene near the end.
To my mind, this is not a problem- there's a continuing thread left
hanging to keep my interest up for the next volume, but there's also a
definite sense that this is a good place to take a break. In effect,
we're between problems- Sauruman is toast, next week we storm Mordor.
(The litmus test for this sort of thing is "If I were reading this to
someone's kids, would this be a fair place to stop and say 'Now go to
sleep. I'll read the rest tomorrow?") It's not "self-contained" in the
strictest sense, but there is a definite beginning, middle, and end to
the book- a problem is introduced, and solved by the end of the volume.
What's your opinion on that sort of thing?
Later,
OilCan
Gary Farber
: >Yes, but why is it that you don't hit the same phenomenon over int he
: >minastream or romance fiction sections?
: This is a good question. Is it that publishers feel that SF needs a
: sneakier marketing strategy for some reason?
No. To repeat, it is almost impossible to publish a mystery that is not
in a series with a continuing protagonist. Romances tend to feature
different protagonists (as they still continue to tend to sell monagomy),
but are also published in series. Thrillers are also often published in
series (Len Deighton, say.)
Whether you slap a number on the books, in any genre, is a trivial
point. Sf has fewer series than the mystery genre.
Robert G. Buice, Jr
example of robbing the consummer by publishing in multiple volumes is the
L.R. Hubbard's Mission Earth Series. It is 10 books that sell for $5 to
$6 bucks apiece, but the entire series has only twice as many words as
Battlefield Earth which sold as one book for $5. Please don't get the idea
that I think this is great literature.
--
Robert G. Buice, Jr email:supe...@pop.uky.edu
Analytical Spectroscopy Group phone: (606) 257-2570
College of Pharmacy
University of Kentucky
PGP Key:http://kerouac.pharm.uky.edu/pgpkeys.html
http://kerouac.pharm.uky.edu/rgbuice.html
L-J Baker
>>oil...@wam.umd.edu (Chad R Orzel) made a point I have completely
snipped, to which I (L-J) replied:
>>My point was not about the quality of the series, which is a whole world
>>of debate on its own. Rather, I object to the structure of series. The
>>book which cannot be read as a self-contained entity must be either a
>>very cynical sales strategy or the result of poor craftsmanship on the
>>author's part.
>Yeah, _The Two Towers_ really bites...
Not the best example, I don't think. See below...
>(This may fall under "cynical sales strategy," based upon some of the
>other comments here, but it had to be said...)
>The obvious argument against this would be that some stories end up
>being too long to publish as a single volume- indeed, someone has beaten
>me to that one. I will grant though, that books which just sort of...
>stop, (as opposed to reaching some sort of natural breaking point, and
>then stopping) are annoying.
Someone has mentioned Tad Williams' final installment of Thorn, Memory &
Sorrow (or whichever way around they go). First I must admit that I
think I cited this series in a thread a while back on `where have all
the editors gone?' I enjoyed it (and bought all 4 books!) but it
seriously needed trimming. And the first two books were definitely of
the `abrupt ending, buy the next installment' category. Boo, hiss. (But
then, my money at the end of Dragonbone Chair was on the snow/ice dragon
thing. <insert smiley>)
But as to the so-called third book too big that it has to be split into two, I
would ask, in this case, how does it differ from the first two in the series?
I might contend that this was all one story in four books, not one story
in three books, but the last one too big so they split it into two.
Back to Oilcan...
>The question then becomes one of degree- to stick with my earlier
>comment, it is more or less impossible to read _The Two Towers_ as a
>self-contained entity. But it _does_ end at a natural stopping-place-
>Sam and Frodo are left hanging, and in Dire Peril, true, but there is
>a resolution to most of the other major plot-threads, and there is a
>climactic battle scene near the end.
>To my mind, this is not a problem- there's a continuing thread left
>hanging to keep my interest up for the next volume, but there's also a
>definite sense that this is a good place to take a break. In effect,
>we're between problems- Sauruman is toast, next week we storm Mordor.
>(The litmus test for this sort of thing is "If I were reading this to
>someone's kids, would this be a fair place to stop and say 'Now go to
>sleep. I'll read the rest tomorrow?") It's not "self-contained" in the
>strictest sense, but there is a definite beginning, middle, and end to
>the book- a problem is introduced, and solved by the end of the volume.
>What's your opinion on that sort of thing?
>Later,
>OilCan
LotR is not a great example. Tolkien wrote it as one book. The
publishers split it up. It can be purchased as a single volume, and it
has been in print long enough that even if you buy it in three pieces you
don't have to wait twelve months between them.
I see your point, and I will concede that someone has shown a modicum of
sensibility in the decision of where to split it. (I dread the day when
I read the first book of a series and find that it ends mid-sentence.)
Would we find common ground if I said that series would be much more
palatable to this book-buyer on the condition that either: each book
contained a complete story; or that each part of the story was able to
be read in isolation; or should it be unavoidable that a story be split
into more than one volume, all the volumes of the story be available
within a short time (not a three year trilogy) ?
L-J Baker
L-J Baker
>Well what do you do, then, when you just get a really _long_
>book, that can't properly be bound in one volume? Tad Williams'
>_To Green Angel Tower_ leaps to mind-- a book so long, it had to
>be broken in two parts for paperback publication.
>(This may not be the best example, since I considered it to have
>been written with far too many words, but Williams apparently
>disagrees.)
I agree with you wholeheartedly. (I have read and own all 4.)
Tell me, though, do you then regard Memory, Thorn & Sorrow as a trilogy
with the third book in two parts or a tetralogy ? and what's the
difference ?
This series is a good example of my gripe. Not one of the 4 books
contains a complete, satisfying story on its own. You couldn't slog
through _Stone of Farewell_ and feel that you had enjoyed a good tale.
And that from a very big book! So you ended uphaving to wade through an
enormous number of pages -- often out of shear bloodymindedness -- for a
single ending. And we won't mention how much this cost. <rant mode off>
>I have no objection to multi-volume books, so long as they are
>labelled as such.
Personally, I think I'd like them more if they were only as large as
they had to be and all available at the same time.
L-J
>--
>John S. Novak, III j...@cegt201.bradley.edu
>http://cegt201.bradley.edu/~jsn/index.html
>The Humblest Man on the Net
You could do a lot worse than humble.
Janewaay
(L-J Baker) writes:
>>series!!!
>Have you noticed that blurbs are undergoing a strange metamorphosis? On
>a recent browse I picked up a Katherine Kerr book and instead of telling
>me anyhting about the book I had in my hand, the back cover was devoted
>to praise for another book entirely! Strangely enough, I was not
>convinced to buy either.
>
>
I've noticed this phenomenon, too, and it always makes me nervous. Are
the publishers rehashing praise for the author's previous book because the
couldn't find anyone to say something nice about the current one?? Given
the fact that no matter how awful a book is, someone somewhere will write
a favorable blurb, mentioning only a previous work on the back cover is
really ominous.....
Chad R Orzel
L-J Baker <ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>oil...@wam.umd.edu (Chad R Orzel) writes:
>
>But as to the so-called third book too big that it has to be split into two, I
>would ask, in this case, how does it differ from the first two in the series?
>I might contend that this was all one story in four books, not one story
>in three books, but the last one too big so they split it into two.
>
Semantics...
I can't really comment on the splitting of _To Green Angel Tower,_ as
I bought the hardcover, and thus have no idea where or how the split
was made. It _is_ all one story, though- I can't argue with that. But as
to that particular splitting, I can't comment one way or the other,
which is why I didn't use that as my example below...
>>The question then becomes one of degree- to stick with my earlier
>>comment, it is more or less impossible to read _The Two Towers_ as a
>>self-contained entity. But it _does_ end at a natural stopping-place-
>>Sam and Frodo are left hanging, and in Dire Peril, true, but there is
>>a resolution to most of the other major plot-threads, and there is a
>>climactic battle scene near the end.
{deletia}
>>What's your opinion on that sort of thing?
>
>LotR is not a great example. Tolkien wrote it as one book. The
>publishers split it up. It can be purchased as a single volume, and it
>has been in print long enough that even if you buy it in three pieces you
>don't have to wait twelve months between them.
>
So the problem is not that you question the artistic merit of writing
trilogies, but that you don't want to have to wait to see how the story
ends? Gargantuan books published in multiple parts are fine, so long as
all the parts are released at the same time?
>I see your point, and I will concede that someone has shown a modicum of
>sensibility in the decision of where to split it. (I dread the day when
>I read the first book of a series and find that it ends mid-sentence.)
>
Heh.
I've read a few that come close...
>Would we find common ground if I said that series would be much more
>palatable to this book-buyer on the condition that either: each book
>contained a complete story; or that each part of the story was able to
>be read in isolation; or should it be unavoidable that a story be split
>into more than one volume, all the volumes of the story be available
>within a short time (not a three year trilogy) ?
>
Not much common ground, no. I'll agree with the condition that each
book should be able to be read somewhat independently- that is, there
should be a definite beginning, middle, and end, with some sort of
problem introduced and solved within the single volume, even if the main
story continues beyond the scope of that book. (Note that "solved" does
not necessarily mean "resolved in the Good Guys' favor"- to jump genres
for a moment, _The Empire Strikes Back_ counts- things look bad for Our
Intrepid Heroes, but at least we aren't left hanging as to who won the
lightsaber fight...)
But I don't object to waiting for the next installment. It's a bit
annoying, true, but that doesn't stop me from buying series fiction- if
anything, it allows me to at least _pretend_ to have a Life (tm) in the
time between volumes. Cushions the blow to the VISA card, as well...
This is a question of personal tastes, though.
Later,
OilCan
Chad R Orzel
Betty Ragan <bra...@newshost.aoc.nrao.edu> wrote:
>In article <41qtvg$p...@net.auckland.ac.nz>,
>L-J Baker <ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>>Yes, but why is it that you don't hit the same phenomenon over int he
>>nearing the end of their twelve month wait for book four in Danielle
>>Steele's latest quintology? Or Stephen King's crashing finale to his trilogy?
>
>of "Well, we know Steele and King'll sell themselves, but we've really
>got to push the SF marketing.") That doesn't make too much sense to
>me, since SF has a pretty well-established readership (even if it is
>smaller than the mainstream readership)... But then, who knows the mind
>of a publisher? It may be that there already tends to be a sameness among
>Steele's and King's novels so that a reader has a good idea what he's going
>to get even if the books aren't actually related in terms of plot or
>characters.
Well, I can't comment on Steele, never having read any of her stuff
(shocking, no?). With only a few exceptions (_The Stand_ leaps to mind...)
King's stuff does have a certain "sameness" to it.
Looking at a different "mainstream" genre, mystery writers tend to
recycle characters at and even greater rate than SF writers. They tend not
to spread a single story over more than one book, but most of their work
is definitely in some kind of series. Likewise writers of thrillers- how
many Jack Ryan books has Tom Clancy cranked out, anyway?
It may be that SF writers are more willing to do multi-part
>series because they enjoy developing thier alien environments at great
>length...
This is a lot of it, I think. Unlike most "mainstream" writers, SF authors
have to spend a bit more time setting the scene, and coming up with a
plausible world that's not just the Real World (tm). Many "series"
(Brust's Dragaeran books, Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Brin's Uplift) are
simply a matter of authors deciding to re-use the setting and characters
they spent all that time working out to tell another, more-or-less
self-contained story.
Again, this is distinct from the "one story in many volumes" type of
series. (In which a great deal of space is often devoted to explaining
the setting, which inflates the size of the series...). For the purposes
of this particular argument, this is an important distinction.
Later,
OilCan
**/**
>I missed the first part of this thread, but I think the most strike
>example of robbing the consummer by publishing in multiple volumes is the
>L.R. Hubbard's Mission Earth Series. It is 10 books that sell for $5 to
>$6 bucks apiece, but the entire series has only twice as many words as
>Battlefield Earth which sold as one book for $5. Please don't get the idea
>that I think this is great literature.
probably this has been discussed to death, but i heard that the
Mission Earth series wasn't even written by Hubbard, but was instead the
product of some vast scientologist conspiracy. Who has the truth?
>
>--
>Robert G. Buice, Jr email:supe...@pop.uky.edu
>Analytical Spectroscopy Group phone: (606) 257-2570
>College of Pharmacy
>University of Kentucky
> PGP Key:http://kerouac.pharm.uky.edu/pgpkeys.html
> http://kerouac.pharm.uky.edu/rgbuice.html
_______________________________________________________________________________
Obe...@uwyo.edu |All them rock and roll writers is the worst |
GIS Technician to the Stars |kind of sleaze, selling punk like some new |
Past, Present, and Future |kind of English disease. Is that the wave of |
********************************the future? oh spare me please. Frank Zappa
******************************************
Betty Ragan
Chad R Orzel <oil...@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>This is a lot of it, I think. Unlike most "mainstream" writers, SF authors
>have to spend a bit more time setting the scene, and coming up with a
>plausible world that's not just the Real World (tm). Many "series"
>(Brust's Dragaeran books, Bujold's Vorkosigan series, Brin's Uplift) are
>simply a matter of authors deciding to re-use the setting and characters
>they spent all that time working out to tell another, more-or-less
>self-contained story.
>
>Again, this is distinct from the "one story in many volumes" type of
>series. (In which a great deal of space is often devoted to explaining
>the setting, which inflates the size of the series...). For the purposes
>of this particular argument, this is an important distinction.
I think it's the main distinction, really. From reading this
thread, it's obvious that some people object to the "one story in many
volumes" approach, but have no problem at all with many self-contained
books set in the same world, or using some of the same characters.
Others dislike both, for a variety of reasons.
I was mostly referring to the one story/many volumes thing when I was
talking about the phenomenon seeming to be largely unique to SF.
Trying to hook in readers with familiarity is, obviously, NOT unique
to SF, since, as you and others have pointed out, this sort of
"multiple books, same characters" device is used in other genres a
well. This may be part of a common trend not limited only to SF, or
even to books. Ever notice how there are so many fewer
"anthology"-type TV shows these days than in the early days of
television? Almost all TV series feature recurring characters and a
consistent setting. And then, of course, there's the endless streams
of sequels at the movie theaters...
It may just be that people LIKE familiarity. Familiarity sells.
Soh Kam Hung
> [ ... ] It's possible
> Tolkien was back far enough that his books were published with this
LOTR was split by Tolkien's publisher (Allen and Unwin, I think) because
it was too long to be printed in one book.
--
Soh Kam Hung phone: +61 3 9253-6467 h....@trl.oz.au
Network Analysis Research, Telstra Research Laboratories
PO Box 249 Rosebank MDC, Clayton, Victoria 3169, Australia
David G. Homerick
: In article <41tv3v$n...@net.auckland.ac.nz>,
: L-J Baker <ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
: >But as to the so-called third book too big that it has to be split
: >into two, I would ask, in this case, how does it differ from the first
: >two in the series? I might contend that this was all one story in four
: >books, not one story in three books, but the last one too big so they
: >split it into two.
: I can't really comment on the splitting of _To Green Angel Tower,_ as
: I bought the hardcover, and thus have no idea where or how the split
: was made. It _is_ all one story, though- I can't argue with that. But as
: to that particular splitting, I can't comment one way or the other,
: which is why I didn't use that as my example below...
:
Each book is divided into several subvolumes, three for the first two,
four for the last. The split occurs, logically enough, between the
second and third subvolume in _To Green Angel Tower_.
As to WHY there are vols. 1, 2, 3.1, and 3.2, I believe Williams had
contracted for three volumes, but found he had miscalculated where to
split up the story. Contrary to popular belief, MS&T isn't
word-heavy, but plot-heavy -- there are lots and lots of things
happening, and happening at the same time, which tends to slow the book
down. Every time one plot or character has been followed for a while,
Williams has to switch to another one to keep from getting ahead of himself.
Book 3 got too big because there was too much that was happening. All
those plot threads had to be finished and tied off. They couldn't be
edited out, because the other two volumes had already been published.
IMHO, THIS is the real problem with publishing one volume at a time --
the inability to go back and change things.
--David Homerick
L-J Baker
Most ominous indeed.
And even the extremely unlikely situation that they couldn't
pay someone to say something nice, they could've resorted to the
expedient of cluttering the back with a few sentences about the
book contents, preferrably with a little teaser to try to make you buy
it! Since they omitted even that time-honoured tactic, one could not but
assume the very worst.
L-J
Janewaay
writes:
>No. To repeat, it is almost impossible to publish a mystery that is not
>in a series with a continuing protagonist. Romances tend to feature
>different protagonists (as they still continue to tend to sell monagomy),
>but are also published in series.
Now, that would be interesting...a romance series with ONE protagonist.
Especially considering the different cultural responses to a man with many
romantic conquests vs a woman with the same. :-)
Lori Coulson
: In article <41tija$d...@panix2.panix.com>, gfa...@panix.com (Gary Farber)
: writes:
There is one romance series with one protagonist--
It is by Bertrice Small, the protagonist is Skye O'Malley. I believe
the first of the series is called Skye O'Malley.
The way you create a series in romance fiction is to have your main
character found their own dynasty.
Roberta Gellis did it with "The Roselyn Chronicles"
Bertrice Small did it with "The Kadin" and "Love Wild and Fair"
and the "Skye O'Malley" sequence. (In fact, a grandson from "The
Kadin" marries a granddaughter of Skye's in "Wild Jasmine")
It can get *very* convoluted, very quickly.
Lori Coulson
--
*****************************************************
...Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver...
Just around the riverbend? Pocahontas
*****************************************************
Yet Another Steve
wrote:
>Gary Farber writes:
> >No. To repeat, it is almost impossible to publish a mystery that is not
> >in a series with a continuing protagonist. Romances tend to feature
> >different protagonists (as they still continue to tend to sell monagomy),
> >but are also published in series.
>
> Now, that would be interesting...a romance series with ONE protagonist.
> Especially considering the different cultural responses to a man with many
> romantic conquests vs a woman with the same. :-)
Ooh, ooh, remember the "Angelique" series back in the '60s? Written by a
French couple under the name of Sergeanne Golon. There were about 5 or 6
books in the series as Angelique goes from shepherdess or something to
countess in 17th-century France and ends up in America, having amours along
the way.
I know it's not SF (nor "romance" in the Harlequin sense) but I think it fits
the criterion you state...
Steve, who will NEVER admit having read them all, although they really were
pretty good, or so I've heard anyway
Ahasuerus the Wandering Jew
> Ooh, ooh, remember the "Angelique" series back in the '60s?
Sure, sure, the series has been around since the late 50's.
> Written by a French couple under the name of Sergeanne Golon.
Easy! "Sergeanne" = "Serge" + "Anne" :) The last few were by Anne alone,
though.
> There were about 5 or 6
> books in the series as Angelique goes from shepherdess or something to
> countess in 17th-century France and ends up in America, having amours along
> the way.
Oh, there is more than that:
Marquise des anges 1958 (Angelique 1958) aka:
1. Angelique (Angelique: the marquise of the angels)
2. Le chemin de Versailles (Angelique, the road to Versailles)
Angelique et le Roy 1959 (Angelique and the King 1960)
Indomptable Angelique 1960 (US: Angelique in Barbary 1961
UK: Angelique and the Sultan)
Angelique et son amour 1961 (Angelique in love 1963)
Angelique se revolte 1962 (Angelique in revolt 1962)
Angelique et le nouveau monde 1967 (The Countess Angelique 1967)
La Tentation d'Angelique 1969 (The temptation of Angelique 1969)
Angelique et la demone 1972 (Angelique and the demon 1973)
Angelique et le complot des ombres 1976 (Angelique and the ghosts 1978)
Angelique a Quebec 1980
Angelique, la route de l'espoir 1984
La victoire d'Angelique 1985
> I know it's not SF (nor "romance" in the Harlequin sense) but I think it
> fits the criterion you state...
There is *some* speculative fiction content in the series, e.g. a bit of
Amerindian mysticism in _The Countess_, IIRC.
> Steve, who will NEVER admit having read them all, although they really were
> pretty good, or so I've heard anyway
I read a few at one point. Pseudohistorical romance, only moderately
overwritten. Probably not bad as such thing go, but I am not an expert.
Terry Miles
>In article <41ofsr$2...@eri2.erinet.com>,
>Terry Miles <jtm...@erinet.com> wrote:
>>let...@llnl.gov (LAL) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <1995Aug24.1...@roper.uwyo.edu>, obe...@UWYO.EDU wrote:
[stuff about no originality deleted]
>>> We have no interest in originality, no interest in
>>>learning anything new, no interest in checking out what's over the next
>>>hill. We're happy repeating our_WoT_ or Vampire Chronicles or whatever
>>>until we die of terminal boredom.
>>
>>I disagree about the WoT series. Love it or hate it, it is a single
>>story with a large number of characters over a period of several
>>years. There is no repetion of stories because all of the books are
>>really one humongous novel. You definitely cannot read one book and
>>enjoy on its own. The first book might be the exception but some of
>>the later books do not even make an attempt to tie off threads at the
>>end.
> Then publish them *as one book*, or at least all at once. Maybe it's
>a little bit old-fashioned, but many people like a book to have a resolution,
>even if it's not complete. Just to make that volume self-contained, you know?
Obviously, series like the WoT could not physically be published in
one hardcover volume. The same is true of many smaller series. So
I'll respond to your second suggestion about publishing them
simultaneously.
How is such a writer to make a living? In the extreme case of Robert
Jordan, you're asking him to take about ten years to write and edit a
ten (maybe) book series and try to get it published. No one but
Tolkien would ever try that. Probably JRRT took so long on "The Lord
of the Rings" because he wasn't working full-time on them. I assume
few unpaid writers could work full-time on writing.
Personally, I love long series. I just hate waiting for years for a
series to finish. But I rather have them written and published over
several years than not have them at all.
____________________________________________________________
Terry Miles jtm...@erinet.com
"He strains to hear a whisper who refuses to hear a shout."
LAZ...@ubvm.cc.buffalo.edu
>Yet Another Steve (steve_h...@qmail4.trw.sp.com) wrote: [snip]
>> Ooh, ooh, remember the "Angelique" series back in the '60s?
>> countess in 17th-century France and ends up in America, having amours along
>> the way.
>> fits the criterion you state...
>
>There is *some* speculative fiction content in the series, e.g. a bit of
>Amerindian mysticism in _The Countess_, IIRC.
>
>> Steve, who will NEVER admit having read them all, although they really were
>> pretty good, or so I've heard anyway
>
>I read a few at one point. Pseudohistorical romance, only moderately
>overwritten. Probably not bad as such thing go, but I am not an expert.
then, but they were definately good for the type. I didn't read them all,
but I know I read a couple of them more then once.
Wow - I haven't thought of those books in years. I'll have to see if I still
have "Angelique in Love" in my attic somewhere.
Carol - still mourning Zelazny.
Yet Another Steve
the Wandering Jew) wrote:
[regarding the French "Angelique" series]
> Yet Another Steve wrote: [snip]
> > Steve, who will NEVER admit having read them all, although they really were
> > pretty good, or so I've heard anyway
> [snip]
> I read a few at one point. Pseudohistorical romance, only moderately
> overwritten. Probably not bad as such things go, but I am not an expert.
Aha! If *you* got sucked into reading "a few" of these big fat books, I
stand vindicated! (or, rather, I would if I'd actually read them, ahem.)
I hadn't realized there were so many of them. Wonder if the later ones
would be worth checking out, all these years later. Probably not, for me
anyway, sigh.
Steve
Christian Weisgerber
> Is NZ like the US? Reading this group it appears that many stories
> which are written as one book and published that way here in the UK
> get fairly arbitrarily hacked into three books in the US. (_Cyteen_
> being the obvious one that springs to mind, but I've seen others
> mentioned.) Do US publishers believe their readers can't read long
> books,
I assume one reason is that people are reluctant to buy one expensive
book but can be more easily convinced to buy three cheaper books (which
in total are of course more expensive than a single volume would have
been). There may also be a reluctance on part of the readers to get into
what is obviously a huge book. "You actually read Umberto Eco's THE NAME
OF THE ROSE? I *never* read any books longer than 400 pages." If it's a
series, well, you can stop anytime, can't you...? Or so the thinking
goes.
> or can't lift the weight or something?
Currently this isn't as funny to me as it should be. I'm reading the
"complete and uncut" version of Stephen King's THE STAND, and at 1400+
pages even the paperback is heavy. The is the first book to actually
cause me physical pain, I get cramps from holding it up for so long.
The root of all this evil is the invention of the word processor. I have
the impression books have become larger ever since. Do you remember back
when DUNE was considered an obscenely huge book? Nowadays 600 pages is
perfectly acceptable and you have to approach 1000 pages before people
start talking about unusual size. (Authors and publishers probably think
in terms of word count rather than pages, but the reader doesn't have
that information available.)
--
Christian 'naddy' Weisgerber na...@mips.pfalz.de
currently reading: Stephen King, The Stand
See another pointless homepage at <URL:http://www.pfalz.de/~mips/>.
Elizabeth Willey
[...]
The root of all this evil is the invention of the word processor. I have
the impression books have become larger ever since. Do you remember back
when DUNE was considered an obscenely huge book? Nowadays 600 pages is
perfectly acceptable and you have to approach 1000 pages before people
start talking about unusual size. (Authors and publishers probably think
in terms of word count rather than pages, but the reader doesn't have
that information available.)
People keep claiming that the word processor is the root of all
long-winded literary evil, forgetting authors like Samuel Richardson
(the winnah and still champeen!, _Pamela_ and _Clarissa_); Charles
Dickens; Anthony Trollope (try _He Knew He Was Right_); Boswell (the
_abridged_ _Life of Johnson_ I have is ~1400 pages, plus index).
These authors handwrote their works with quills and ink; they didn't
have typewriters, let alone much-maligned word-processing software or
machines. Long books and short books have always coexisted happily.
Some readers cannot read long books, for whatever reasons. They are
not to be shamed for this limitation, but they are not allowed to
sneer at the long books, either.
There are good and bad books, both short and long, both new and old.
Size is no indication of quality of performance, in this as in so many
other things.
Elizabeth Willey
Steve Taylor
(Elizabeth Willey) wrote:
> People keep claiming that the word processor is the root of all
> long-winded literary evil, forgetting authors like Samuel Richardson
> (the winnah and still champeen!, _Pamela_ and _Clarissa_); Charles
> Dickens; Anthony Trollope (try _He Knew He Was Right_); Boswell (the
> _abridged_ _Life of Johnson_ I have is ~1400 pages, plus index).
> These authors handwrote their works with quills and ink; they didn't
> have typewriters, let alone much-maligned word-processing software or
> machines. Long books and short books have always coexisted happily.
> Some readers cannot read long books, for whatever reasons. They are
> not to be shamed for this limitation, but they are not allowed to
> sneer at the long books, either.
I can't really dispute a single word of that, and yet nothing Stephen King
has written has scared me quite as much as his statement that now he had a
word processor he could write ever so much more.
> Elizabeth Willey
Steve
Nancy Lebovitz
>> This is a good question. Is it that publishers feel that SF needs a
>>sneakier marketing strategy for some reason? (Along the lines, perhaps,
>>of "Well, we know Steele and King'll sell themselves, but we've really
>>got to push the SF marketing.") That doesn't make too much sense to
>>me, since SF has a pretty well-established readership (even if it is
>>smaller than the mainstream readership)... But then, who knows the mind
>>of a publisher? It may be that there already tends to be a sameness among
>>Steele's and King's novels so that a reader has a good idea what he's going
>>to get even if the books aren't actually related in terms of plot or
>>characters.
>
>Well, I can't comment on Steele, never having read any of her stuff
>(shocking, no?). With only a few exceptions (_The Stand_ leaps to mind...)
>King's stuff does have a certain "sameness" to it.
Interesting--I'm impressed by Stephen King precisely because he repeats
himself *less* than most authors. DOLORES CLAIBORNE and GERALD'S GAME
were experiments that no one was forcing him to try, INSOMNIA is much
more like suspense-fantasy than horror, etc.
Nancy Lebovitz (nan...@universe.digex.net)
NEW EDITION of the calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Emmet O'Brien
>Interesting--I'm impressed by Stephen King precisely because he repeats
>himself *less* than most authors. DOLORES CLAIBORNE and GERALD'S GAME
>were experiments that no one was forcing him to try, INSOMNIA is much
>more like suspense-fantasy than horror, etc.
Haven't read either _Dolores Claiborne_ or _Gerald's Game_, but I've
always felt King was better the further he got from straight horror.. I
liked _The Dead Zone_, loved _The Stand_, and _The Talisman_ is one of my
favourite books. _Insomnia_ was rather clever, in that I had already read
a fair chunk of it before it dawned on me that this was to some extent a
Dark Tower book in sheep's clothing.. I really like the Dark Tower books,
but I can see how the first one in particular might be off-putting to
someone expecting another horror novel. And it has the most irritating
climax I've ever read..
** Spoiler for _The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger_**
.. at the end, we find out that the person the hero is chasing is not who
he thought it was, but someone called Walter. Walter turns out to have
been very significant in the hero's past, but this is the first time the
reader hears of him. The immediate response is "Who the hell is this, and
why should we care ?"
It is worth persevering, though.. the second book is better and the third
is better again.
Emmet
--
O, what a _goofy_ work is Man !
Scott Jeter
> >Three paperbacks at $6
> >each (if I'm lucky) comes to $18 (plus tax!), and that seems like rather an
> >investment, especially if I'm not even sure I'm going to like the
> >thing!
So, check them out of the library, or trade/buy used. Then, if you like
them, buy the hardback. (That way the author is supported.) :)
I know if I didn't put that bit in, lots of writers would be angry with
me. I am a student after all, and don't have the money to purchase many
books. So I follow the strategy above when it comes to authors I am not
familiar with.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Scott Jeter ::
:: sje...@odin.cbu.edu ::
:::::::::::::::::::::::::
Scott Jeter
> [snip]
> >>Sure serialisation is a tradition, but that doesn't mean that it's a
> >>good idea. Someone else mentioned LoTR. I wonder, though, did Tolkien
> >>write it as three books or did the publishers split it up? (Anyone know
> >>of anyone who had the first two books and had to wait twelve months for
> >>the final installment in hardback?)
Actually, if you LOOK at the sections in the Lord of the Rings, you will
see that it is written in SIX books. It was published as three.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Scott Jeter ::
:: sje...@odin.cbu.edu ::
:::::::::::::::::::::::::
L-J Baker
interesingly before he wrote:
>On 27 Aug 1995, L-J Baker wrote:
>> >Three paperbacks at $6
>> >each (if I'm lucky) comes to $18 (plus tax!), and that seems like rather an
>> >investment, especially if I'm not even sure I'm going to like the
>> >thing!
>So, check them out of the library, or trade/buy used. Then, if you like
>them, buy the hardback. (That way the author is supported.) :)
>I know if I didn't put that bit in, lots of writers would be angry with
>me. I am a student after all, and don't have the money to purchase many
>books. So I follow the strategy above when it comes to authors I am not
>familiar with.
Shareware for books.
Actually, though, I'm responding to ask you to be a little more careful
with your attributions. I didn't write any of the above (if I did, the
prices I cite would be something like $NZ17). However, I did write the
comment you replied to in your other post in this thread which you have
quoted as belonging to someone else.
L-J Baker
(Or was it my evil twin who wrote that?)
Betty Ragan
L-J Baker <ljb...@ccu1.auckland.ac.nz> wrote:
>Scott Jeter <sje...@odin.cbu.edu> managed to misattribute quite
>interesingly before he wrote:
>
>>On 27 Aug 1995, L-J Baker wrote:
>
>>> >Three paperbacks at $6
>>> >each (if I'm lucky) comes to $18 (plus tax!), and that seems like rather an
>>> >investment, especially if I'm not even sure I'm going to like the
>>> >thing!
>
>>So, check them out of the library, or trade/buy used. Then, if you like
>>them, buy the hardback. (That way the author is supported.) :)
>Actually, though, I'm responding to ask you to be a little more careful
>with your attributions. I didn't write any of the above
[snip]
>L-J Baker
>(Or was it my evil twin who wrote that?)
Um... Actually I think *I* wrote that. (I definitely remember writing
something similar). And, actually, I believe the context was a discussion
of whether the current trend toward multi-volume extravaganzas exists
as a marketing ploy and, if so, whether it was an effective one. My point
was that I didn't think it *was* a successful marketing ploy, based on
personal experience, precisely because I'm more likely to buy trilogies,
etc. used (as the poster suggested), or not buy them at all. I'm much
more likely to take a chance and buy new a single, self-contained novel
by an unfamiliar author.