Please!! Not Another One!

I’ve read a good bit of Science Fiction and Fantasy over the years. And while I’ve never gotten insomnia waiting for the next installment of a trilogy, I have grown expectant of how things will resolve. But recently I’ve noticed that after a really engaging short series, the words seem to roll endlessly. What was initially engaging and drew you in descended into a sort of logorrhea. All those words! If the publisher is paying by the word, and sales keep up, the author is going to make a cool million by the fifteenth book. All I can say is ” Please, not another one!”

Not being timid about it, I’ll have to say that I just won’t spend my money on book-length extrapolations of chapter-length sub-sub plots. Jackie, a very minor character in the Earth-Shaking trilogy Moon Shoot, goes to the hospital, finds a transdimensional gate, and has four hundred pages of boring adventure. By the end of it, I’m terminally bored. and have no desire for the following ten volumes in the series.

I realize that some authors have compelling visions that they desire to express, but Tolkien’s, Steinbeck’s, and Heinlein’s they aren’t. One of the smarter approaches I’ve seen is when, after a year or two, you spin an interesting character off into its own book or trilogy. Connected, but not part of the original body of work. Of course, publishers are not in the business of publishing just to fulfill an author’s urge to fully realize a universe in twenty volumes. If they publish it, there must be an audience for it.

I’m looking for the next great single, duology, or trilogy. I’ll pass on the twenty-volume extravaganza!