(1) AN AMAZING BOOK. So says James Bacon, who gives a rave review to Anthony Hewitt’s Joshua N’Gon – Last Prince of Alkebulahn on Forbidden Planet blog.
We journey forwards and back as we come to know what has occurred to Joshua and the man who wants to get him, Kanu, genius criminal who has found a way to recreate his memories. Kanu has been ostracised to London from Alkebulahn with his mind wiped, but has the help of ‘arachnobots’ and now he controls a huge armaments corporation which is a front for a sinister organisation The Black Axis. He comes across with some considerable strength and charisma, indeed in one moment where he speaks of making people uncomfortable because of ‘My ethnicity, my bearing and my outspokenness’ and although is an absolute villain, his story is nicely interwoven, as it is important to the back story that is Joshua’s heritage.
Its a cracking good read, this one.
It rockets on, the chapters are nice and short, and all the time there are adventures. Joshua is set tasks by his learned school teacher, at a very impressive school, and these end up involving explorations and inventing, taking part in extreme sports, or combative and challenging excitements, and soon we see that our team gets into some tights spots culminating in a wonderfully tense set of scenes.
This book has it all: a sinister, cloaked Black Airship, mechanised Mayhem, ancient elements with science fictional connections, alien technologies and black history, white pulsed energy blasts, portals, a robotic and somewhat intelligent drone called Ballz, super soakers turned into weapons that make water solid like a ball bearing until they strike an adversary, a visit to the British Museum, Notting Hill Carnival and to imaginative places that are portrayed with an element of brilliance. Music, food and language give strong cultural indicators, offering elements that I was not aware of before….
(2) CHOSEN WORDS. Nicholas Eskey of ComicsBeat — “SDCC ’17: Interview: Author Karin Tidbeck Uncovers the Dreamlike Storyline of’ ‘Amatka’”.
Have you always planned on writing for an English-speaking market?
When I was nineteen, I worked in a science-fiction bookshop in Stockholm. There was, and still is, this magazine called “Locus,” which is the SFF industry’s main magazine, and I would read that during lunch break. And I had this revelation that “I wanted to be in here. I want to have my book reviewed in here. I want to have an interview here. And I want to be on the shelves in the book shop… in English.” The thing is, Sweden has a very small readership. It’s very difficult to get books published, it’s very difficult to sell books, it’s extremely difficult to sell speculative fiction. So, I realized that the market was so small that I had to switch languages, but I didn’t switch until I was in my early thirties.
Tell us a little about your book, “Amatka.”
Amatka is about humans colonizing a world where matter, physical matter, responds to language. It’s about what happens to society that tries to survive in such a world. What happens to the people who quite can’t find a place in it. So, it’s about reality, it’s about language, it’s about revolution, and it’s about love.
(3) SPACE SHOWER. Sci-Tech Universe says “Get Ready! The Brightest Meteor Shower in the Recorded Human History Is Happening” – and you’ll be able to see it.
There is going to be a meteor shower on 12th of August, 2017. According to astronomers this will be the brightest shower in the recorded human history. It will light up the night sky and some of these might even be visible during the day. This meteor shower is being considered as once in a lifetime opportunity as the next meteor shower of such kind will be after 96 years.
The Perseid meteor shower, one of the brighter meteor showers of the year, occurs every year between July 17 and August 24. The shower tends to peak around August 9-13.
(4) GO FEST, YOUNG FAN. The Verge reports “Niantic is delaying some of its European events after Chicago’s disastrous Pokémon Go Fest”.
Niantic Labs threw a big event in Chicago last weekend to celebrate the first year of Pokémon Go, only to run into cellular data congestion and server issues that made the game unplayable for many attendees. Now, the company has announced that it’s delaying several planned European events to ensure that trainers will be able to play the game.
In a blog post, Niantic said that its delaying two sets of events planned for Copenhagen and Prague (August 5) and Stockholm and Amsterdam (August 12), until later this fall. Several other planned events for Japan (August 14th), and France, Spain, and Germany (September 16th) are moving forward as scheduled.
The delay comes after Chicago’s Pokémon Go Fest got off to a disastrous start last week. Cellular service was spotty, and server issues prevented players from logging into the game. When Niantic CEO John Hanke took to the stage for his opening remarks, players booed him, and the company ultimately ended up offering refunds and $100 worth of Pokécoins to players. Last week, nearly two dozen attendees launched a class-action lawsuit against Niantic, aiming to recoup travel expenses.
(5) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. The Hugo Award Book Club declares there are “Too Many Sequels” up for the award. They make a colorable argument anyway.
It’s worth noting that the majority of this year’s Best Novel Hugo Award shortlist is comprised of books that are either the first part in a series, or the sequel to another work.
In fact, only one of the six novels on this year’s shortlist (All The Birds In The Sky) is a standalone work.
This is not the first time in recent memory that the shortlist has been dominated by sequels, prequels, or works in a shared universe. But it is part of a larger trend, and it’s one that worries us.
In the 1960s, 88 per cent of the Hugo shortlist was comprised of standalone novels. From 2001 to 2010, 56 per cent of Hugo shortlisted novels were standalone works. In the first seven years of this decade, the statistic has fallen to 27 per cent (ten of the 36 novels shortlisted).
(6) HARRYHAUSEN FILM ANNIVERSARY. Episode 15 of the Ray Harryhausen Podcast is the “20 Million Miles to Earth: 60th Anniversary Special”.
Join us for a celebration of Ray Harryhausen’s 1957 classic, ’20 Million Miles to Earth’. Our 15th episode sees Foundation trustee John Walsh and Collections Manager Connor Heaney discuss the adventures of the Ymir- one of Ray’s most beloved and sympathetic creations.
We then discuss the first exhibition of Ray Harryhausen material in the USA for several years, opening at the Science Museum Oklahoma from July through to December. We describe this incredible display with museum director Scott Henderson, alongside his own lifelong enthusiasm for Harryhausen films.
An exclusive interview follows, recorded on location at the Barbican Centre’s ‘Into the Unknown’ exhibition with Terry Marison. Terry was one of the suited Selenites in the 1964 classic ‘First Men in the Moon’, and discusses his experiences of being one of Ray Harryhausen’s living creatures!
(7) TODAY’S DAY
- Paperback Book Day
How To Celebrate Paperback Book Day
The best way to celebrate Paperback Book Day is to curl up with your favorite paperback book. If it’s been a while since you’ve bought a proper book, this is your opportunity to do so. Get out there and find a copy of your favorite text, or even pass one on to another friend. Then, when you’ve hit all the used book stores and perused the shelves of the nearest book stores, it’s time to come on home and look over your collection. Paperback Book Day recalls all those rainy quiet days spent reading a book while the drips ran down the windowpane.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
- July 30, 1971 — Apollo 15 landed on the Moon.
- July 30, 1986 — Walt Disney’s Flight of the Navigator premiered on this day.
- July 30, 1999 — The Blair Witch Project, is released in U.S. theaters.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY TERMINATOR
- Born July 30, 1947 — Arnold Schwarzenegger
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY LURCH
- Born July 30, 1948 – Actor Carel Struycken is born in The Hague, Netherlands. He is best known for playing the Giant in Twin Peaks, Mr. Homn in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Lurch in three Addams Family films.
(11) WELLS AUTOGRAPHED. You can get a mighty good price on a beat-up old book…if H. G. Wells drew an original sketch in it — “First edition of HG Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ doubles estimate at £11,000”.
A first bookform edition sold for £11,000 at Cheffins of Cambridge earlier this month was slightly foxed and stained, but on the front free endpaper Wells had signed and inscribed the book for Edmond Joseph Sullivan and added a tiny drawing of a moustachioed angel.
(12) ON THE ROCKS. The Guardian’s feature on shipwrecks ends with a Dracula reference — “Walking the Yorkshire coast: the shipwrecks and sea caves of Flamborough and beyond”.
The last stop in any shipwreck walk ought to be the evocative St Mary’s church in Whitby, where there is a memorial to the lifeboat tragedy of 1861… After visiting the church, head down the steps – known by all as the Dracula Steps – across the swing bridge and over to the pier itself, a fabulous piece of marine engineering.
From there, continue up the hill towards East Terrace. On a grassy bank you will find a park bench dedicated to Bram Stoker, who sat here and used a real shipwreck – that of a Russian vessel on the shore opposite – to create an imaginary one, that of the Demeter, and, of course, the most memorable shipwreck survivor of all time: Count Dracula himself.
(13) I STREAM, YOU STREAM. Another splintering of the dying network monolith… all 28 seasons of The Simpsons are now available on Vudu.
(14) NOVELLA TO TV. From Tor.com we learn: “Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom in Development at AMC”.
AMC announced that Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom is in development for television as part of their “scripts-to-series development model that puts the emphasis on the most important part of our strategy – outstanding writing, a commitment to worlds you’ve never seen on TV before, and rich character development.”
(15) NOBODY LIVES FOREVER. While conducting an interview for The Guardian, Alison Flood learned from “Robin Hobb: ‘Fantasy has become something you don’t have to be embarrassed about’”.
Good fantasy, Hobb believes, is about “lowering the threshold of disbelief so the reader can step right into the book and not feel blocked out by something that’s impossible or at first glance silly. And I think silly is more dangerous than impossible.”
It is also, as Martin knows so well, about not being afraid to draw the final curtain for your characters when the time comes. “Nobody gets to go on for ever. If you put a little magical umbrella over your characters and say ‘yes, we’re going to scare you a little bit but ultimately you know that at the end of the book everything is going to be much the same way it was when we started the story’, well then, why write the story, what’s the point?”
(16) ALIEN ADVENTURE. The Recall official trailer.
[Thanks to Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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Night Watch by Terry Pratchett ought to be on any list of that nature.
Ancillary Mercy was what what tipped me over from “I like it” to “socks: blown” for Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series.
… and, of couse, Paladin of Souls is a great second novel.
Standback on July 31, 2017 at 10:05 am said:
Game on.
City of Miracles I’d argue was a better book than the other two, but required the other two to get there.
The first couple Discworld books were good but later ones are phenomenal
Memory, Sorrow and Thorne has a better second book than the first, which I enjoyed but the first 100 pages or so are are a bit tedious.
Temeraire book 2 also gets to not have all of those parts of the book where Temraire is an egg.
Two Towers and Return of the King
Sanderson’s Wheel of Time ending, The Autumn Republic and The Alchemy Wars all stick their landings really well.
I’m still trying to sort out the dynamics of focusing on a series in my own writing career (with the understanding that the dynamics for a small press are different from the big presses, plus an unknown confounding factor of writing in a genre that my publisher doesn’t specialize in).
When I wrote Daughter of Mystery, it wasn’t planned as the start of a series. But by the time it came out, I had an extended overall story arc in mind, which meant that every book after that would be building structures that would be left hanging if the series weren’t completed, no matter how much I try to make each book stand on its own.
My fuzzy perception is that almost nobody begins reading my series anywhere other than the first book, and that people who have become hooked on the series are likely to follow it faithfully, but begin taking its existence for granted. Reviews and “buzz” have declined drastically with each book, moreso than sales in the equivalent period from release.
So for my particular wading pool of the SFF ocean, I don’t see a series — even one that people like — as being a more certain bet than stand-alones. In fact, I strongly suspect that the only way the Alpennia series will survive to see the whole thing published is if I can get some other, unrelated books out in the market that have a chance of bringing in new eyeballs.
I think the terms I’ve usually used are “loosely bound series” for the shared-setting-but-not-much-else type things, and “sequential series” for the strict please-read-in-order ones. And, of course, the whole spectrum in between (which is a spectrum–these are not cleanly-separated categories) I just call “series”. 🙂
Then, of course, there’s sub-series. Which is most commonly (but not exclusively) found within a loosely bound series. An extreme example would be the Chanur trilogy which is a sequential series (originally planned as one book) within the Chanur series (best read in order, but, aside from the trilogy, not strictly required) which in turn is part of the Alliance/Union loosely bound series.
As for forming a series from works which were previously considered unrelated, TV Tropes came up with a rather clever name for that: Canon Welding. 🙂
FWIW, book two of Jim Butcher’s Cinder Spires series is supposed to drop in 2018.
(5) Also, FWIW, I share the perception that the genre has more series than standalone novels. I suffer from series fatigue from time to time and would prefer to read more standalone novels.
Doesn’t seem to slow down my enjoyment of the work of several authors. The irony, it is thick.
I do think the HABC’s point about systemic biases….with the caveat of there being no ill intent…is spot on.
Regards,
Dann
5) Caveat: I’m sure they’re counting A Closed and Common Orbit as a sequel, but it’s much more of a standalone novel happening in the same universe; there’s only a loose connection to the first book. Given that I’ve heard some of the same people who complain about “too many series novels in the Hugos” also complaining about ACaCO not being “a true sequel”… you don’t get to have it both ways.
That being said, I can understand why so many authors write series. You’ve done all this worldbuilding in the first book, and writing a series allows you to reuse it. (Unless you’re MZB, who openly said that internal series continuity was not something she bothered with.) And frankly, I’ve run into a lot of standalone novels in which the worldbuilding was so fabulous that I wish the author had written more stories in that universe, whether they featured the same characters or not. (*cough* Hellspark *cough)
7) Dear sir or madam, I’ve seen your book,
But right now all I can do is look.
So many great things come out every year,
But I don’t have money, so I’ve got to be a paperback buyer –
Paperback buyer!
@OGH: because I thought you were talking about a series , not just a pair of books with ~1 character in common. (If they’re really a series, Paladin isn’t even the last; The Wild Hunt came shortly after.)
@Matt Y: I’m not sure why the first 2 Discworld books were weak as Pratchett was already an experienced writer by that point (I still like Strata), but the series definitely got better in book 3 — and continued getting better for some time.
About the genesis of series, and because it’s on my mind as a result of a recent review: If I recall her comments correctly, Nancy Kress’s Beggars trilogy developed as she realized that there was more to say about the issues raised by the initial novella, and then more again. On the other hand, her current trilogy-in-progress, which also started with a novella (Yesterday’s Kin), was conceived from the start as a triple-decker, and that novella is Part I of Book 1. The Beggars books can be seen as a multigeneration family saga with a long, complex, and thematically-coherent story arc. Not sure how the Kin books will work out, but there is the clear possibility of a repeat of that structure.
This kind of reconsideration or development of thematic possibilities seems more common in SF than in, say, central-character mystery series, which tend toward the template model–though over the long haul, a writer with a novelistic bent will allow time and circumstance to work on the characters (e.g., Reginald Hill’s Dalziel & Pascoe series*). But I fear that M.C. Beaton’s Hamish Macbeth is never going to settle down with any of his various true-loves, let alone leave Lochdubh for some gritty city, any more than Jessie and Nessie Currie are going to stop echoing each other. Hamish lives in a template world, however appealing.
* Hill also changed up by starting to play parodic/stylistic/referential games with the individual books, notably Pictures of Perfection (Christie-ish village cozy), Arms and the Women (Homer and Virgil), and The Price of Butcher’s Meat (Jane Austen).
@Heather: That’s really interesting, and makes a lot of sense.
You’re saying that after a few books, series are assumed to be “more of the same,” and so they’re limited to whatever audience hooks on the first few books. Hmmm.
The first two Discworld books were weak because Pratchett wasn’t yet that good of a writer. They were funny, but sadly lacking in character development and nuance–both of which became big parts of his later books.
My mom completely bounced off the series until I was able to lure her in with Men at Arms–in my opinion, the first one with anything resembling three-dimensional characters. (And it worked–she was hooked from then on.)
—
Second-book-is-better: this may be controversial, but I’d say that Cherryh’s Merchanter’s Luck counts. Downbelow Station may have won awards, and was definitely the more-ambitious work, but Merchanter’s Luck is the one that hooked me and dragged me into the series.
Sock-knocking: Mirror Dance from the Vorkosigan Saga. I’d enjoyed the series up till that point, but this one simply stunned me. Not the only sock-knocker in the series, but the first (at least for me).
Apart from Pratchett as others have already mentioned – for me Guards Guards/Men at Arms are the apex, but I suspect mileages will vary – I’d say that Cyteen is the highlight of M/A and comes several books in. I think it’s easier with loose universes than tighter series though.
Pratchett definitely stands out as being continuously innovative in the context of a series. I’d always warn people not to start from the first book…
It’s hard to pick a favorite, but books 11-20 outshine books 1-10 to an astonishing, marvelous degree — while still working almost completely as near-standalones.
@Meredith, if I can I ask: what is it you love about Night Watch, specifically?
Asimov’s Foundation stories — the originals, not the later sequels or prequels — are a series I’d categorize as getting better as they continued.
I never particularly wanted to revisit the Encyclopedists, but I’d go back to the Mule and the Second Foundation again and again.
Ingvar:
It is our pride and glory. I think I have shopped there for over 30 years now. No visit to Stockholm is complete without having been there.
@Standback
Yes, but I can’t give you a very good answer today. 🙂 Not enough brain.
Strictly speaking, I think I’d claim a different Pratchett as a “favourite” (if held at gunpoint, because picking favourites is awful), but Night Watch is the best, most Pratchettiest Pratchett, in my opinion. Distilled and perfected Pratchett.
Xtifr:
The first two Discworld books were weak because Pratchett wasn’t yet that good of a writer.
His writing got much better, but he also raised his ambition. The first two discworld books were fluffy sword’n’sorcery parodies played for laughs(I don’t think they were meant to be much more than that) . It wasn’t till later the series developed depth and he grew as a writer.
(In other news, I’m currently stuck in hospital awaiting surgery. My first broken bone, a busted patella.)
(3) I cannot BELIEVE I’m the first to warn fans NOT TO LOOK AT THE SKY! Has John Wyndham lived in vain?
Orson Scott Card – Speaker for the Dead
Susan Cooper – Greenwitch
Sergei Lukyanenko – Twilight Watch
Ursula K. LeGun – The Tombs of Atuan
Tom Lloyd – The Ragged Man
Lloyd Alexander – The High King
Chris Wooding – Ace of Skulls
Chip Hitchcock: The first two Chalion books have a broad overlap in backstory and a bevy of characters in common, even if the POV character changes.
Frankly, I was surprised to hear about the third Chalion book. Amazon uncharacteristically failed to try and sell it to me when I bought the other two last year. Looking at the description, it doesn’t sound like it has any characters in common with the first two (besides the gods). Have you read it, and does it?
@ Standback
To supplement my (highly subjective) perception with something other than my own possibly anomalous experience…
When I was pulling together a list for my (completely and unashamedly self-serving) “November book release re-boot” blog series, which involved combing through all sorts of release lists for genre books that came out the same month as Mother of Souls, I was somewhat startled at the number of “Book # in the XYZ series” items where I’d never heard of the series in question, and yet it had clearly been chugging along for quite a while with next to no hype or buzz.
Part of this, of course, is that the number of books that get hype and buzz are a small subset of books released. And I suppose the fact that those non-hyped series books are still chugging along from major publishers suggests that the “death of the mid-list” may have been prematurely announced. It makes me itch to do some comparison stats on Goodreads, just because almost any spark of curiosity makes me itch to throw numbers at a question.
But given that the “it’s all series now” observation is looking specifically at the hyped releases, it makes me wonder about a comparison between “books that everyone in the genre has at least heard of even if they haven’t read them” and “books that only the followers of a series will have heard of.” Are series books even more dominant among lesser-known titles? Or less dominant? If you aren’t getting general buzz for your work, is it more important to have the predictable following of a series? Or are you in even greater need of regular infusions of new readers in that situation?
In thinking about series that also work as stand alone books, Joe Abercrombie’s “First Law” series is pretty credible. Book 1 is a small party adventure story.
Book 2 follows characters along a much larger campaign in areas that are largely untouched in book 1.
Book 3 involves a fair amount of court intrigue.
They work together well as a series but are pretty good independently as well.
Regards,
Dann
@ Soon Lee
(In other news, I’m currently stuck in hospital awaiting surgery. My first broken bone, a busted patella.)
Sorry to hear it–hope you recover quickly.
IT’S A BIRD!
IT’S A PLANE!
IT’S…
Frankly, I was surprised to hear about the third Chalion book. Amazon uncharacteristically failed to try and sell it to me when I bought the other two last year. Looking at the description, it doesn’t sound like it has any characters in common with the first two (besides the gods). Have you read it, and does it?
No, it’s set some centuries earlier, and in a different country. It’s quite different some ways, but interesting in itself. (I’ve seen the series called “Five Gods” – that’s more inclusive, and a better description, as the third book is about the Son and the older beliefs of the Weald.)
Diana Wynne Jones’ various series are all largely made up of books that stand on their own and are easy to drop in and out of. I certainly read most of them completely out of either publication or chronological order. She was extremely consistent in quality so I’m not sure I could confidently claim that any of the later ones are significantly more menacing to socks than the early ones. They’re all good.
(Brian Jacques’ Redwall series is almost all standalones with only a couple of true sequels, but doesn’t often do much of anything new or exciting in the later ones, much though I hold them in affectionate nostalgia.)
@Soon Lee
Ouch. Hope it heals well and quickly.
@Mike Re: The Hallowed Hunt
The connection to the first two novels is near nil save for being in the same world.
Coming out next week, a fantastic second book in a series: Blackthorne by Stina Leicht.
@dann I think The Heroes stands pretty well on its own too.
Thanks Rob. I am extremely grateful to live in a country with socialised healthcare. Haven’t had to pay anything.
Through another sense, I already have, as part of our collective taxes.
@Heather: These are really interesting observations. I love getting a sense of how these industry niches work and intereact with each other… as you say, it makes you itch to find out more and understand it better!
@Hampus: Ooh, nice list. (Some I know, some I don’t…)
Speaker For The Dead is a great example of a follow-up book that does something entirely different. And, of course, you can see why that’s a really hard trick to pull off…
@Meredith: LOL! Well, that’s an elucidation I shall look forward to, whenever you feel like getting around to it 😀
@James Moar
There are a few early Niven stories which contain what became Known Space concepts, but don’t fit in with the series.
Yeah, that’s true too – “One Face” has mention of the colony of Wunderland, and “Bordered in Black” has the “Blind Spot,” but neither story fits into the rest of Known Space.
@NickPheas
I find that thrillers also have a problem with sequels – because a default assumption is that a thriller starts in something very much like our world. Thus you get glitches in Clancy’s universe, as when Debt of Honor/Executive Orders happen only a few years after a nuclear terror plot kills thousands (“Sum of All Fears”) but there’s no mention of that event at all in the later books.
Night Watch for sure. While it’s not really as defined a series, the Hainish “cycle” doesn’t get phenomenal until Left Hand of Darkness (at least in novels, I’d need someone with more historical knowledge to place the shorter works) and for me Earthsea didn’t get there until Tehanu, though that’s a big YMMV. And Toby Daye went from Just OK to me reading the last 6 books in 2 weeks, though I’d be hard pressed to pick a single outstanding volume – maybe because I read 6 in 2 weeks and they are blurring together.
In terms of second books being better/ breaking more ground than the first, Heir of Sea and Fire springs immediately to mind, as does Europe at Midnight – though I haven’t read Europe in Winter yet so it might be too soon for me to throw that one in the ring.
Edit: oh h*ck, I’m in 1655, and the Cromwells are just up the road…
My example of an exemplary second book is Robert Holdstock’s Lavondyss. Unlike the first book, which cruised on the strength of its bewitching concepts (Mythago Wood), Lavondyss takes hold of all the strangeness from the previous novel and confidently dives straight for the heart of the wyrd.
I’m voting for Lord’s and Ladies as my favorite Pratchett. I like Night watch, but L&L where we get to see Granny as a human being, just rocks.
Speaking of Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising is an excellent second novel in a series.
If I may step away from F/SF, someone mentioned Trollope’s Barchester series. I will make two comments, both IMO: the best of the sixth books was the last, The Last Chronicle of Barset, and the second-best was the second, Barchester Towers. So that one hits both challenges.
Meredith:
It is so good that they turned it into part one in Sweden.
@Hampus
My mother gave it to me first, too, on the basis that she thought it was a better introduction than Over Sea, Under Stone, so I’m not surprised that they might have been published out of order abroad once the Sequence took off. There’s nearly a decade between them, I think, and the world-building is quite a bit more developed.
Startide Rising (which won all the awards) was the second book in its series, even if most people forget about Sundiver.
Opinions are sharply divided on whether the first or second of Vinge’s Zones of Thought series was the best. I lean a bit towards the second, Deepness in the Sky, just because I thought it was a more cohesive and well-organized story. But A Fire Upon the Deep probably had more mind-bogglingness, which is a pretty good thing too, IMO.
Just to toss some numbers at the “are series taking over” question, I did a quick tally of today’s tor.com catalog of “all the new fantasy in August” (note: does not include several more specialized subsets that get their own roundup post). I counted 48 books listed, of which 26 either have a position-in-series number listed (including at least one #1) or are personally known to me to be part of a (unnumbered) series. So a smidge more than 50%, which matches my more impressionistic recollection from when I skimmed those listings for my blog series.
Yep, I preferred Deepness in the Sky too.
@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan, I have a simple-yet-effective plan.
Part 1: Wear an eye-patch over one eye.
Part 2: Lay in a stock of industrial-strength weedkiller.
@Heather Rose Jones: Just to toss some numbers at the “are series taking over” question
Ahem.
@Xtifr: Pratchett was already a better writer than the first two Discworld books showed (cf Strata); possibly he was still trying for cheap gags (and parodies) instead of looking aslant at serious situations. Merchanter’s Luck is the Cherryh I recommend to people who are worried by what they’ve heard about her compressed narrative style but are willing to give it try; it’s also a personal favorite for semi-personal reasons, and has a penultimate scene that should have movie directors slavering to make it. But I think Downbelow Station is a better book, particularly in terms of handling large scale and personal events with equal force. (cf the issue commonly cited with Pacific Overtures.)
@OGH: (adding to @P J Evans): Bujold said she intended a set of 5 (one for each god) with no additional overlaps. I don’t know whether that was early enough that PoS could have been perceived as the end of a short, blunt series.
@C.A.Collins: I also love L&L (and wonder whether Magrat could have grown into a dual position), although I note we saw the human side of Weatherwax earlier — in Witches Abroad we hear her rage at the sister who ran away, meaning that Esme had to be the good one. The thought of Darth Weatherwax is chilling….
@ambyr: about 20 miles away? Even if Helsinki has gotten far more into lights that only shine downward than any US city, I’d be surprised if the splash off pavement, windows, etc. didn’t make it hard to see what meteors will actually happen. (I’m annoyed the initial notice turned out to be hype; I was too tangled to get up for the Leonid storm 16 years ago, and am hoping there will be a similar event sometime while I’m still around to see it.)
I bet Locus has some stats about genre books published, which might be useful, if anyone felt like digging around in search of possibly-representative samples from various different eras.
@ PhilRM
Sorry! I’d skimmed over your post before my second cup of coffee. I had no intention of erasing your contribution to the conversation. Again, my apologies.
@Heather Rose Jones: No worries!
Our two quick datasets both point to the same conclusion, namely, that the fraction of novels that are published as part of series is 50% or more, which strikes me as a large number.
Agreed on The Dark is Rising (and it’s the first in that series I read, as well – I picked it up for the title and the scary-looking cover. I doubt I would have continued on to book two if I’d started with Over Sea, Under Stone).
Also agreed on Ancillary Mercy. I loved Justice, found Sword’s pacing too slow for my taste, and then Mercy showed that Leckie knew exactly what she was doing.
Robin Hobb’s Ship of Destiny. The first book set up the story nicely, but the first half of Mad Ship was a downward spiral, mood-wise (well done, though, but it bummed me out to the point that I found it difficult to get through). It picked up around the second half, and the final book in that trilogy was strong.
What about series that are great the entire way through? Riddle-Master of Hed is that for me.
@GiantPanda: That’s because the authors of “The Expanse” have said it takes place in the same universe as the other thing, where the other thing was reality.
Again, I can’t explain that here in 645 where all what used to be Britannia is in civil war.
(2): Amatka is a strange and amazing novel, often surreal, but unquestionably SF.
Dann on July 31, 2017 at 12:36 pm said:
His Half the World series also sticks the landing really well though I thought the second was the weakest.