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01-31-2012, 12:49 AM | #1 |
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Great Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Who Never Wrote Sequels or Trilogies [io9]
http://io9.com/5880602/great-science...s-or-trilogies
This article seemed relevant to the "series fatigue" discussions that crop up now and then. I'm not sure why they threw in the "and fantasy." A couple of the authors have written fantasy novels, but AFAIK they're all pretty much sci-fi authors. A lot of these people I haven't read, or haven't read much. Ben Elton sounds interesting. |
01-31-2012, 05:36 AM | #2 |
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Adam Roberts is a great author doing "one and done" science fiction novels. unfortunately his work isn't in e format in america.
i've only read one of his books Yellow Blue Tibia but i'd recommend those with series fatigue check out his stuff. Yellow Blue Tibia- "In Russia, the year is 1946 and with the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away—and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together—Stalin orders the writers to compose a massively detailed and highly believable story about an alien race poised to invade the earth. The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working until new orders come from Moscow to immediately halt the project. The scientists obey and live their lives until, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has happened: the story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true." one of his other works, ON, takes place on a massive wall and involves characters clinging to and climbing said wall. really out there but interesting stuff. "Tighe lives on the wall. It towers above his village and falls away below it. It is vast and unforgiving and it is everything he knows. Life is hard on the wall, little more than a clinging on for dear life—and then one day Tighe falls off the wall. On is at once a vertiginous concept novel, a coming of age saga, a picaresque journey across a changed world, and an epic adventure in the very best traditions of science fiction." so there are guys out there who resist the temptation of series but they're getting fewer and further between. Last edited by xg4bx; 01-31-2012 at 05:42 AM. |
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01-31-2012, 12:15 PM | #3 |
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Few on the list are modern writers. A few of my favourite stand-alone writers are:
Guy Gavriel Kay (fantasy), though he's written a trilogy *and* a sequel (sort of) CS Friedman - famous for a fantasy trilogy but I prefer her SF stand-alones. And there is now a sequel to one of them... I confess I *like* series, when done well. A properly designed series should read as stories within a single broader story arc. I also like stand-alones or shorter series within a common universe where past characters can intersect. |
02-01-2012, 11:38 AM | #4 |
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Thanks for mentioning Adam Roberts - I think I would enjoy the books you mentioned. Too bad we can't get them in e-format yet, but at least I went to Amazon and clicked "I want this for the Kindle" on each of them. Even if it's a useless endeavor, I feel like I did something!
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02-01-2012, 01:50 PM | #5 |
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Thanks for the link. Neat collection of authors with a commonality I hadn't thought of.
I wonder if the early greats didn't do sequels because characters were less important back then? No, not zero importance, but characterizations in modern books are more complex in general. It is easy for me to imagine an author wanting to reuse people that they worked so hard on bringing to life. |
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02-01-2012, 02:14 PM | #6 |
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Great list! I think this sort of list is a better approach than trying to compile a list of stand-alone SFF book—where everyone pleads for exemption status for their favorite almost-a-standalone-if-you-look-at-it-from-this-angle non-standalone books.
SFF Authors. No sequels. No revisited characters/universes. No exceptions. Who are they? (authors with only 1 book published don't count). |
02-01-2012, 03:21 PM | #7 |
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What about John Wyndham?
He wrote: The day of the Triffids Trouble with lichen The Midwich cuckoos Chocky The Kraken wakes The Chrysalids The seeds of time (short stories) All of them standalone novels. |
02-01-2012, 03:49 PM | #8 |
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I am pretty sure Alfred Bester never wrote any sequels; at least not to his novels.
I don't know, it seems to me that quite a few authors in the 1950s and 1960s didn't write sequels; yeah, quite a few had future histories they worked in, but that is a little different. -- Bill |
07-15-2012, 06:52 AM | #9 |
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Ballard and Dick may not have written sequels, but it always seemed to me that there was an ambience that linked many of their stories to the extent they might feel like a series.
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07-25-2012, 04:17 AM | #10 |
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Fredric Brown did write at least one series; there are several novels with detectives Ed and Am Hunter as the protagonists. It may be true for his SF writing, though.
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07-25-2012, 11:02 AM | #11 |
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H.G Wells?
Read three of his books so far and been impressed with his visualisation considering when he penned them. |
07-26-2012, 07:58 AM | #12 |
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Robert Silverberg wrote 3 or 4 short series, but by far the great majority of his work (and there's a hell of a lot of it) comprised stand-alone novels and SS collections.
The same is largely true of Ray Bradbury. |
07-27-2012, 06:37 PM | #13 |
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Yay, they mentioned Clifford D. Simak. He's one of my favorite authors.
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