PV (pv+usenet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
) writes:
> neverland@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Pete) writes:
>>Put it this way. After (unfortunately) looking forward to, and buying
>>the hardcover of, Benford's "sequel", I resolved never again even to
>>open anything by him. Been stuffed into a box, awaiting a trip to
>>Half-Price Books, for years. Judging by the apparently unanimous
>>opinion, though, maybe even they won't want it!
>
> I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but Benford seems completely
unable
> to sustain a series, and if he ends up in the far future, you quickly
enter
> wanting to pluck out your eyes with a fondue fork instead of reading it
> territory. *
But that's the decay of science fiction, in some ways driven by its
success.
Asimov and Heinlein and Clarke (and others) all had really great books
decades back, at a time when book publishing of science fiction wsa
pretty limited (and indeed, most of them had those books published in
magazines originally, though sometimes in short story form).
Now for whatever reasons, they need the money or they want to do something
with old characters or even readers want to keep seeing the same old
characters and stories, they decide in their twilight years to do
"sequels".
So Asimov extends his Foundation stories, and then corrupt them with the
robot stories.
Heinlein does kitchen sink books that have just about everyone in them.
Clarke revisits some of his old stories, and they aren't nearly as
interesting as the original books.
In some cases, they've gotten so old that they are unable to actually
write the stories, so they bring in one of the younger generation. So
not only are they trying to stretch the original books, but they make
things worse when they can't even write them themselves.
I can remember how wonderful it was to have the Foundation Trilogy and
the Dune Trilogy, and read the collection of Heinlein's short stories in
"The Past Through Tomorrow" and have stories or worlds that extend beyond
one book. Those stood out because they were an exception.
Now, it seems like every single sf book being published is a series. I'm
not
interested when the automatic assumption is that I'll buy all the series.
I dont' want to be committed to reading them all to get the whole story,
not when every new book seems to be a series. I can remember even
starting
to read one book in a series, and by the time I was finished the others
in the series were hard to get. Better to publish quality and keep it
in print.
I suspect the Golden Age authors, who are no pretty much gone now, jumped
on that bandwagon. But, they are writing the sequels decades after
the originals, and they aren't starting with some plan of writing a
series,
they are tacking on to an existing book from decades back.
I can't believe robots were part of the Foundation Trilogy, and were
merely missing because Asimov couldn't get the stories published. He
just decided to tack them onto the Foundation stories, and in effect
ruin the earlier stories by saying "that's not real, now here's the real
story".
Micahel
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