If you can think of an example that is purely stand-alone novels, whether written by the same author or different ones, let me know.
Le Guin's Hainish Cycle is as near as dammit. Planets and cultures recur, but individual characters do not except in the short stories "The Shobies' Story" (1990) and "Dancing to Ganam" (1993), which is the only instance I can recall across more than thirty years. If that disqualifies it, fair enough. None of the novels are so linked.
this has a core cast and a new plot with each installment, but there's no reset button. As a result, change and growth do happen over time.
A narrative model I really enjoy when done well and really resent when it gets short-circuited.
Here there can be many arcs going at once, such that while an individual plot may end, the series as a whole doesn't (until it gets canceled).
I haven't read them for myself, but C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series has always sounded like this model, in that I believe it consists of interlinked trilogies across which larger movements of plot and people's ongoing lives take place; all loose ends are not tied up at the conclusion of each three-book arc. Anyone who actually reads the books should feel free to correct me.
From the start, you know you're getting a long-term story, and unlike that trilogy approach I described above, the first volume doesn't feel like it could stand on its own.
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yati
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Date: 2021-03-12 01:53 am (UTC)Le Guin's Hainish Cycle is as near as dammit. Planets and cultures recur, but individual characters do not except in the short stories "The Shobies' Story" (1990) and "Dancing to Ganam" (1993), which is the only instance I can recall across more than thirty years. If that disqualifies it, fair enough. None of the novels are so linked.
this has a core cast and a new plot with each installment, but there's no reset button. As a result, change and growth do happen over time.
A narrative model I really enjoy when done well and really resent when it gets short-circuited.
Here there can be many arcs going at once, such that while an individual plot may end, the series as a whole doesn't (until it gets canceled).
I haven't read them for myself, but C.J. Cherryh's Foreigner series has always sounded like this model, in that I believe it consists of interlinked trilogies across which larger movements of plot and people's ongoing lives take place; all loose ends are not tied up at the conclusion of each three-book arc. Anyone who actually reads the books should feel free to correct me.
From the start, you know you're getting a long-term story, and unlike that trilogy approach I described above, the first volume doesn't feel like it could stand on its own.
A narrative model I just resent.