While reading Molly Templeton’s recent essay, Is Series Fatigue Real?, I noted an interesting phrase: “the loose series where the books are standalones but they also fit together.” I realized that I tend to divide series fiction into two sets:
A) series in which the books are clearly linked by setting and characters but which can provide readers with the complete plot experience in each volume;
B) series in which each volume is but a fragment of a greater whole.
I strongly prefer the first sort. When I fork over my seventy-five cents—ah, I am informed prices have increased somewhat, so amend that appropriately—I don’t object if the book in hand builds towards a grand series goal, but I do object if the novel lacks a functional, complete plot that doesn’t depend on my having read all the earlier books in the series and won’t be completed without future volumes that are as yet unwritten. Which may never be written.
It’s odd I cannot think of short, snappy terms to distinguish the two models. Do you have any ideas?
In my experience mystery series do a better job of writing Series A books than do science fiction and fantasy series. I’ve never read a mystery at the end of which the detective reveals that the murderer will be exposed in book two. Or possibly book eight, depending on sales. Or maybe never1, if other activities distract the author.
Perhaps it’s an accident of publishing history (the accident of history that saw Lord of the Rings published in three volumes) that the book fragment model caught on in speculative fiction and not mystery. Perhaps it is simply that mystery publishers do not care to test how people who invest an undue amount of time reading about violent murder would react to discovering they have only part of a mystery plot. Nevertheless, there are indeed speculative fiction series each of whose volumes can be read and enjoyed without having read all of the previous volumes. Here are five series of which I am very fond.
Melissa Scott’s Astreiant series—the first two of which, Point of Hopes (1995) and Point of Dreams (2001), were co-written with the late Lisa A. Barnett, and the latter three of which, Point of Knives (2012), Fairs’ Point (2014), and Point of Sighs (2018), were solo efforts—examines a secondary fantasy world fumbling its way towards functional modern social institutions, sometimes despite the best efforts of existing archaic institutions.
The specific institution that concerns Pointsman Rathe is law enforcement. In an ideal world, this would involve noticing untoward developments, uncovering the miscreants responsible, and punishing them appropriately. The great and powerful of the kingdom of Chenedolle in general and the city of Astreiant in particular prefer law enforcement that does not interfere overmuch in upper-class matters and which has the common sense not to attribute any crimes to the social elite. All very good in theory, but Astreiant’s malefactors include persons of all classes, and some of the plots have very dire implications for the city. Sometimes a copper (and his attractive boyfriend) have to pursue the guilty, regardless of social convention.
James Alan Gardner’s League of Peoples—Expendable (1997), Commitment Hour (1998), Vigilant (1999), Hunted (2000), Ascending (2001), Trapped (2002), Radiant (2004)—offers a shiny world of tomorrow…with a small flaw.
When aliens offered any human who asked a trip to pristine worlds with all the mod cons, humanity decamped en masse, leaving Earth to fend for itself (which it did…poorly). According to the League’s rules, no being that kills a sentient being (or allows a sentient being to die through inaction) is permitted to travel between star systems. Thus, centuries later, the fraction of humanity that can refrain from killing is an interstellar species, while the murderous fraction is either planet-bound or dead.
Theoretically, they should remain planet-bound because galactic civilization doesn’t want homicidal humans rampaging through their worlds. But homicidal humans keep looking for loopholes in the cordon sanitaire.
Rarely returning to the same viewpoint character twice, Gardner leads the viewer through a series of grand star-spanning adventures. The series is that rare thing in science fiction, the comedic SF novel (and that even rarer thing, comedic SF novels that I enjoy). Unfortunately, the series appears unlikely to continue on in further volumes.
Natsu Hyuuga’s Apothecary Diaries focuses on Maomao, kidnapped from her town’s red-light district and indentured to the Rear Palace (imperial harem) as a servant. This is a woeful waste of Maomao’s skills, trained as she was by her foster father in the apothecary sciences. Imperial politics being ruthless and brutal, the smart thing to do would be to serve out her (involuntary) contract and return to care for her aged foster father. However, a combination of keen observational skills and an inability to keep her mouth shut alerts senior eunuch Jinshi and other members of the Rear Palace that Maomao has unique and valuable skills. An entirely unwilling career of increasingly risky investigations ensues.
Volumes One through Four have been translated to English. Volume Five is imminent. I enjoy the puzzles, as well as the way in which Hyuuga excels in providing her characters—protagonists and antagonists alike—with motivations the reader may not see coming.
Originally conceived as a single standalone novel, the story of Emma Newman’s Planetfall series extended into four complete novels—Planetfall (2015), After Atlas (2016), Before Mars (2018), Atlas Alone (2019)—which can be read in any order.
Cults claiming communication with aliens are nothing new. Pathfinder Lee Suh-Mi’s cult was different in that the Pathfinder’s aliens were real. Certainly the starship Atlas found something alien and enigmatic when it reached the world to which the Pathfinder led them. Success has had consequences, which are played out over several volumes. Powerful, amoral people resolve to appropriate alien riches (if there are alien riches) for themselves. Even more important, they make sure nobody else is able to duplicate the Pathfinder’s journey.
I enjoyed the merciless way in which Newman drags her unfortunate characters towards the logical conclusion of ruthless profit-seeking unencumbered by morals or ethics. It’s not a happy series—for billions of people it is as unhappy as it can be—but it is enthralling.
Some fantasy authors focus on high-level aristocrats and their cut-throat political squabbles. Nahoko Uehashi’s Moribito series—Guardian of the Spirit (1996), Guardian of the Darkness (1999), Guardian of Dreams (2000), Traveler of the Void (2001), Guardian of the God: The Book of Coming (2003), Guardian of the God: The Book of Returning (2003), Traveler of the Indigo-Blue Road (2005), Guardian of Heaven and Earth: The Kingdom of Lota (2006), Guardian of Heaven and Earth: The Kingdom of Kanbal (2007), Guardian of Heaven and Earth: The New Yogo Empire (2007)—has as its protagonist a skilled bodyguard of no social status whatsoever. Itinerant bodyguard Balsa shuns entanglement with royal affairs on the reasonable grounds that she would be unlikely to survive. Unfortunately for her, a moment of selfless heroism drags her first into court politics—bad!—and then into divine affairs…which is worse.
This series does present one major complication, from the perspective of an Anglophone: only the first two volumes have been translated into English. Otherwise, this is a nice example of a series on the border between fantasy and mystery: survival often forces Balsa to uncover and confront things her social superiors have gone to some trouble to conceal.
***
No doubt you have your own favourites. I can think of a couple of dozen examples I didn’t mention because I assume you know about them2 or which I have not reread recently enough to be sure reality lives up to my fond memories.3 Feel free to offer your candidates in the comments below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a four-time finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, and is surprisingly flammable.
[1]With the exception of “The Murder of Edwin Drood,” whose creator suffered Author Existence Failure before he finished his book.
[2]Bujold’s Vorkosigan books.
[3]A. Bertram Chandler’s Grimes novels.
I love James Alan Gardner’s League of Peoples! It’s nice to know there are other folks out there who also appreciate it.
A) is a series
B) is a serial
Footnote one, “With the exception of “The Murder of Edwin Drood,” whose creator suffered Author Existence Failure before he finished his book.”
Dan Simmons’s marvelous Drood fixed that for us, however. Great book.
Ah, I was going to mention the Vorkosigan books until I noticed the second footnote!
Other series that come to my mind are the Redwall series by Brain Jacques, which—other than the occasional direct sequel—are all standalone adventures that can be read in any order. Another is the books in C.J. Cherryh’s Alliance-Union universe, which are similarly standalone but can be put together as a whole to reveal a larger history.
The common universe model was common when I was reading science fiction. Larry Niven’s Known Space novels and stories generally didn’t require you to have read the other books in the series. (Well, at least until he started producing Ringworld novels.) Poul Anderson’s Technic History novels were all standalone books but also read as a story of the decline and fall of humanity.
Alan Dean Foster’s “The Damned” trilogy is better when read in order but each book skips generations and stands alone quite nicely. After you read the initial trilogy of Foster’s Pip & Flinx series, the rest of the books seem to be independent of each other, so that one sorta crossed your categories.
As for Chandler’s Grimes novels, I read only one of them, only to find out it followed directly on the heels of another book and I was missing a lot of information that the reader was expected to have, so I don’t think they’re as loosely connected as you remember.
@@.-@: Redwall came to my mind, too. And Xanth, although there’s a lot of character overlap between books. And the awesometastic Tales of Pell trilogy by Delilah S. Dawson and Kevin Hearne; I read it in order and the plots of the second and third books are influenced by previously-portrayed events, but I think each book could be a standalone.
“Fork over seventy-five cents.”
That takes me back.
Someone has already mentioned the Redwall novels. Those were terrific. Each novel was self-contained, but you would notice that the protagonist in one novel was the grandfather/son of a character in another novel, or a snake tossed into a well in one book would have grown to be a huge monster in another book.
I am also put in mind of Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold, The Heroes, and Red Country.
These are my favorite sets/serials/series, of books.
I think one reason one sees the continuous arc more in speculative fiction than other genres is that SFF needs world building. And it can be tedious as both a reader and writer to go through that work anew every book.
Here are my favorites:
Majipoor Stories by Silverberg
Narnia of course.
Culture series by Bainks
Gentlemen Bastards by Lynch
Pern series by McCaffrey
For my part, the Drenai series by David Gemmel is the best example if this concept done right. Everything occurs in the same kingdom; the books just might be separated by a couple hundred years. True, there were a few duologies, but I think that only added to the world.
I would divide things further.
A) A series with such a tightly connected setting / plot. Readers of single books likely won’t get a satisfactory story. Lord of the Rings.
B) A series with an overarching setting / plot but with individual books containing stand alone stories. Readers of single books can tell they are missing background but get a clear story. Fantasy mystery series often do this. Rivers of London or Vlad Taltos for examples.
C) A series with either a sense of progression or a bigger picture that is not apparent from individual books. Readers of single books usually can’t tell there is a bigger picture, but reading multiple books gives the reader more than just the sum of the parts. I was thinking of how Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins books have progression where the detective ages and the city of Los Angeles changes over time. I believe Cherryh’s Alliance-Union books have a bigger picture of what forces / politics drive the history. Maybe David Mitchell’s oeuvre with it’s somewhat subtle interconnections.
D) Series that might as well be stand alone books. Reading multiple books gives readers exactly the sum of the parts. Something like Laumer’s Retief or, heck, the Nancy Drew / Hardy Boys. Hmm, can I think of something that isn’t so light weight? How about Hammer’s Slammers – there may be common themes and rare common characters but there isn’t any specific progression or bigger picture. Though you can argue that exploring a common theme with new characters and settings can deepen the overall experience.
Although they’re called the “Neuromancer trilogy”, William Gibson’s first books mostly only share a setting. The Bridge trilogy have a very slight connecting plot but are mostly standalone. It was only when he reached the Blue Ant trilogy that he actually used the same protagonist more than once, and all three share the same antagonist (Sort of, iIs Bigend an antagonist? Discuss).
His last two books, and the one currently in production, seem to be his first actual ‘trilogy’, although I’m not expecting a ‘series ending climax’ in Jackpot.
Terry Prachett’s Discworld books are definitely in the “Series A” category, you can read them in almost any order, but there is some connections between all of them.
Oh yeah, and Ken MacLeod’s Fall Revolution series mostly share a setting (and iirc two of the books disagree somewhat with each other)
Steven Brust’s Vlad books are clearly an ongoing story, but each one is written in a different way, and some in a quite different style, so despite featuring the same character, and telling a somewhat chronological story, each one is different from it’s shelfmates.
I like Jo Walton’s taxonomy of series: https://www.tor.com/2009/04/06/so-what-sort-of-series-do-you-like/
As a reader these days I mostly go for her Style Two, where you have some volume closure but need to read the books in order, though that’s mostly a personal quirk in that I like to read things in order. Style One, a single story divided by extra pieces of cardboard, has gotten less appealing to me the more cardboard pieces they add; if I get to the end of volume three or four and it’s not the end of the story or even a story, I’m out.
If a first book of a series is incomplete, and the promotion or back cover copy doesn’t mention it, I am not a happy reader, and I almost never read the second book because I feel that I am being lied to. Many of them also smack of a writer with plot diarrhea who can’t figure out how to write a complete plot within an ongoing series arc. They hit their word limit and just stop.
Back in the days of Usenet, I learned the term “in media res” when describing a book (Elizabeth Moon, IIRC) that I thought had very cleverly just dropped the reader into the middle of the action, but turned out to be part of a very tightly connected series despite there being no mention of that anywhere on the cover. This only became apparent when the book stopped without actually reaching an ending.
Re: “Fork over seventy-five cents”. Yeah, right after you spent twelve cents on the latest Fantastic Four comic. I remember that.
Anyhow, what came to my mind were China Mieville’s Bas Lag books: Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and The Iron Council. All in the same world (we’re in the city of New Crobuzon in the first, on the way to New Crobuzon in the last), but can be read perfectly well as stand-alones: Independent plots, different characters and all.
I’m fond of Patricia C. Wrede’s “Lyra” series, which have a semi-common setting, but are (mostly) fairly widely spaced in time and geography. For example, a race of people who are well known in one book may be semi-mythcal in another. Though there are links among the novels, they stand alone.
Has anyone done a series where geological time passes between books?
@13: MacLeod lampshades the divergence: two of the books hinge on a decision made in a third book, and when we see the character make it they briefly imagine an all-the-myriad-ways type splitting of worlds.
@19: Vernor Vinge, for values of series sufficiently close to 2.
I just got done reading the Elemental Blessings series (by Sharon Shinn) which does somewhat fall into the first category – I think technically you could read any of the books as a standalone (although they do clearly build on each other). They’re all from the POV of a different character, and they do typically at least somewhat summarize things.
Of course one of the problems is that by the end I’m so invested in that character I hate moving on, and I was truly sad when I finished the series. (It also really bothers me that there are only 4 books in the series when, for thematic reasons, there really should be 5…where’s my wood/bone themed book??)
@19: Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee Sequence (made up of novels and stories) literally spans billions of years.
@19: I can think of several single books where geological time passes somewhere between the start of chapter one and “The End”, but you didn’t ask for that. I suppose that Michael Moorcock’s book multiverse leads up to “Dancers at the End of Time” (and Elric of Melniboné turns up there), but that setting has Earth scientific devices sucking energy out of the rest of the universe to maintain the planet’s activities, and I don’t recall how long that took them.
Larry Niven’s “One Face” is set in the far future, but I think officially it isn’t the far future of Known Space although some common planet names are used e.g. Fintlewoodlewix :-)
Due to inconsistency between religious record and geological science, I think some people wondered whether between the Book of Genesis verse 1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, and verse 2, a lot of things happened that we weren’t told about, i.e. dinosaurs. In which case, that’s clearly been done. While others believed that geological time passed very quickly in chapter 7 (Noah’s ark) with lots of geological layers deposited very suddenly.
Doctor Who stories – adapted as books – such as “City of Death” (which turns out to be Paris) and “Hand of Fear” have deep time starts. An alien criminal is shot into space in “Hand” and their rock-fossilised hand is dug up on Earth and causes trouble, and in “City”, and in another Douglas Adams novel, an alien spaceship blows up on Earth and creates the beginning of evolution from the radiation and possibly bits of the crew.
Becky Chambers’ “Wayfarers” series has minimal connections between the books, some of them are of the kind “blink and you’ll miss it”.
As far as I can remember would also add the “Wayward Children” series by Seanan McGuire to the list.
I was going to mention “Rivers of London” (and I have certainly gotten series fatigue at this point – I’ve decided I enjoyed enough of that setting and characters after the 7th or 8th book I think?)
The Bas Lag books are a good one though. God what good books. (OK the third one wore me out a bit but the first two…)
Brandon Sanderson’s “Cosmere” falls into both categories at once, consisting of loosely connected stories told through standalone novels, tightly connected trilogies, loosely connected trilogies of trilogies, and a shelf-breaker of an epic series.
Oh, and Neal Stephenson likes to play with type A, too. See Cryptonomicon/The Baroque Cycle, or Snow Crash/Diamond Age. Or possibly all four together, though that’s always seemed more nebulous to me.
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones would make a good example– I think only the last book really needs others to be read before it.
How about Varley’s Eight Worlds? Common setting, no through line.
Oh and Linda Nagata’s Nanotech Succession. Some of the later books are sequential (Deception Well, Vast and the recent Inverted Frontier books) but mostly they’re independent.
Glad to see Banks’ Culture and Cherryh’s Merchant/Alliance mentioned.
And from an earlier era, the novels of Trollope in the Barsetshire/Palliser world (England but with a county called Barsetshire). Not fantasy/SF.
I think H Beam Piper’s books fit here; they’re mostly all in the same universe/world, but not ever sequels to each other. He had two main ‘groups’: The Terro-Human Future History, and the Paratime series.
Also, there’s the style of ‘series’ that’s all set in one place, but not necessarily about the same characters. There was one set on a huge medical space station (I can’t remember the titles, or I’d be looking for them in second-hand book stores).
And Anne McCaffery had books set in shared settings but which weren’t directly related to each other.
Ellen Kushner’s Riverside books, Swordspoint, The Fall of the Kings, and The Privilege of the Sword, are very satisfactory standalone, and can be read (and re-read) in any order.
In Diana Wynne Jones’s Dalemark sequence, geological time seems to elapse between The Spellcoats and the chronologically later episodes — but here geology gets divine assistance.
Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. 30 or 40 books total and the larger series can be broken down into smaller series i.e. “here are the books about DEATH, here are the books about the wizard Rincewind, here are the books about the Night Watch” etc. Whichever way you read it as uou go you will certainly get logocal character progression and a fuller view of the world but each and every one is a perfect stand alone and you can pick up literally any one of them and be fine.
Also L.E. Modesitt’s Saga of Recluce is a long series of stand alone novels (there are a couple of books that are direct sequels to previous volumes but 1) this only happens a few times and 2) even those still satnd alone pretty well). Each novel not only tells it’s own story jumps backward in time until about mid series you reach the origin of this world and the series moves forward again (and then sometimes back a bit). Characters wjo are mentioned in passing as historical figures or people of legend will eventually get to show up and tell their stories. You can pretty much pick any of them up from any point and be fine but reading them all eventually paints a full picture of this world’s history and evolution as a society.
Serial vs Episode. Same as TV. Geez! Sometimes people can’t see the forest for the trees.
The problem is that so many writers learned the wrong lesson from Lord of the Rings, and decided that if JRRT could break one story up into 3 volumes, so could they.
Or if 3 isn’t enough (even at modern doorstopper length) they could do it in 5. Or 12. Or longer (looks askance at the Wheel of Time series).
Surely, the issue is the readers who reward this behaviour?
Tamora Pierce does this with a few of her series: the Circle of magic books (both quartets), and the Bekah Cooper books are the first that come to mind. I think the Immortals quartet fits this category too. The Alanna and Kel series less so, though each book in both those quarters has a satisfying ending.
The Lady Astronaut books by Mary Robinette Kowal are another example.
Maybe the term “connected books” for type A and series for type B to distinguish between them?
@30: Surely you’re not referring to James White’s “Sector General” series, which did mostly follow Dr Peter Conway at first, but always had alien characters and latterly, alien viewpoint characters. Even females. Sorry, “and even females.” ;-)
I love the separate but vaguely connected stories within a world type of series – like the Becky Chambers Wayfarers, the Anne McCaffrey Brain ship books, and the Dragonriders of Pern although they did fit together in the end.
@38
great, now I have to reread the Sector General series!,
Interplanetary Relations Bureau Series,
lloyd biggles jr, great loosely collected stories about the problems with imposing a political/moral system from the outside. Clearly, no one learns from history.
@13: The Sprawl Trilogy is more tightly bound than that, but it’s a bit oblique; apart from reappearing characters (Molly; Bobby and Angie in the latter two) Count Zero‘s plot is reacting to what happened just after the end of Neuromancer, and Mona Lisa Overdrive‘s is reacting to why what happened happened.
Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive could both be (overly loosely) described as “Molly Millions + associates in a heist to get a specific person in a room with a Maguffin.”
The Bridge Trilogy does share viewpoint characters: Berry and Chevette in Virtual Light and All Tomorrow’s Parties, Colin Laney for Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties, but each book has its own plot as such.
If one was of a perverse turn of brain one could argue Bigend is the *protagonist* of the Blue Ant trilogy, observed through the eyes of the viewpoint characters as they intersect with his machinations.
@13: Ken MacLeod’s Fall Revolution books were published in a different order in the US than the UK. They are kaleidoscopic. There is a common setting and overall theme, but each book has different viewpoint characters, and the viewpoints are radically different. Read one book and you may think you know who the good guys are. In the next book they are dangerously misguided and must be stopped. MacLeod is so good at creating complex political conflicts with realistic and sympathetic characters. Amazing this was his first published series.
@35 Sometimes it was the publisher that made the choice to do multiple books not by the author’s choice. Lester Del Rey was one example for a few authors during the 80’s.
OMGosh, @38, YES, exactly. Thank you for that title and author. I’m heading off to look them up and see how many I can find to re-read.
Love the Culture.
The first example of a type B series that came to my mind was Herbert’s “Dune” saga. It is difficult to imagine reading any of the sequels without the backstories provided by the predecessors. Then, of course, there is Heinlein who in my opinion pulls the ultimate tie-in of all characters presented in his novels by having a time-bending multiverse spanning party hosted by the counsel of Ouroboros. Using the theory of “History as Myth” he is able to have Valentine Michael Smith meet Lazarus Long and a cast of many characters for no other purpose than to be able to do it. Brilliant? Or just cheap tricks to reel in the audience? Who knows? Who cares, if it works as it most certainly did for me. This brings me to “The Expanse” and “The Long Earth” series which I can’t imagine beginning anywhere but at the beginning.
Bujold’s 5 God series mostly are independent stories. Her more recent Petric stories are episodic, but the earlier books are not.
Burroughs’ Barsoom books mostly count — there’s an initial fairly tightly-linked trilogy (Princess, Gods, Warlord of Mars), but everything after that is just a standalone adventure that takes place on Barsoom and might or might not involve some characters or locations featured in the previous books.
Most of the Tarzan series (everything from about Jewels of Opar on, with the possible exception of Jungle Tales) is just “Tarzan has an adventure,” without any kind of overarching plot or even necessarily a lot of continuity.
Actually, most of Robert E. Howard’s most famous characters (Conan, Solomon Kane, Kull, Bran Mak Morn, etc.) also fit the same mold, if you stick to only the Howard-penned fiction, not the accretions added over the years by divers hands.
@48
That’s because Howard didn’t write for book publication. He wrote for the pulp magazine market, where quantity had a quality of its own. Most of his Conan stories, with one exception, took place over 1-3 issues of Weird Tales magazine. And that exception was originally written as a standalone work for a British publisher, and an expansion of an earlier story.
Guy Gavriel Kay’s books, with the exception of The Fionavar Tapestry and Isobel, would fall into the first category.
I only read them once each, decades ago, but I think Brian Aldiss’ Helliconia books could be read in any order, as each one has different characters and different concerns and they’re set decades apart from each other.
Expendable was one of the first “adult” scifi books that I ever read, but I had completely forgotten its title, and I had no idea that there were more. Thank you!
I don’t recall any series where geological amounts of time have passed between books, but I have read several where the characters of the first book (or first series) are barely remembered as mythological beings in the second.The two Mistborn series come to mind as an example.Jane Yolen’s Books of Great Alta series repeat this, except all the layers of time are contained in each book.
Peter Clines’s Threshold series is loosely connected and could essentially be read in any order. There are characters that pop up from other books, but I think he does a good job making any of them accessible for new readers.
I would have include C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series in addition to Alloance-Union. Almost every book is standalone, and she has multiple story arcs that she evolves over the 20( books in the series. One.of my favorites.
Oh, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia series has instances of visitors from Earth in one book coming again and finding that they’re ancient history or at least that a generation or two has passed, because clocks in Narnia run faster.
If it counts, I think “Prince Caspian” has the Earth children arrive on an island which they previously knew as a peninsula, which is geographical time if not geological.
Stephen Donaldson’s “Thomas Covenant” novels have a similar time difference, and very significant climate change in The Land.
And someone mentioned “Dune”.
Holy smokes, I’m 72 years old and, the two best examples of Type A that I can think of are Asimov’s (original) Foundation Trilogy and what came to be known as Heinlein’s “Future History” series, even though the idea of it being a “history” was an after the fact conception. I really think the author underestimates the influence of the “Lord of The Rings” trilogy, on the Type B approach, both from a conceptual and a marketing perspective. If one trilogy sells well, let’s have more trilogies. If trilogies sell well, then won’t a quadrology do better? And how about a tetralogy? Wait, wait–how about a series that goes on forever? These days I won’t even start a Type B series because I don’t care to make the commitment. Mysteries and thrillers can be parts of series without stretching things out the way that many SF and Fantasy authors do, cause no mystery/thriller fan would stand for it. In general, I would rather read a self-contained novel any day.
Someone mentioned the “Brainship series”
I want to add the ” Bolos” series as standalones
The Astreiant series is a terrific crossover — fantasy police procedurals. Oh, and set in a matriarchy. The books certainly can be read as standalones, but a reader will get more out of the character- and worldbuilding by reading them in order.
Mercedes Lackey’s Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms is a type A series, as is the Elemental Masters (though that one has a few books that lean toward type B).
The Valdemar series is kind of a bunch of type B serieses within a type A series. Like you can read the Gryphon trilogy without having read the Arrows trilogy, but I wouldn’t recommend reading White Gryphon without having read Black Gryphon.
I cannot begin to express my grief that Moribito has never been translated. I used to write yearly letters to the author and publisher asking for book 3, but I fell off sometime around when my child was born. Maybe Tor could help amend that? It is one of the best series that I have ever read, but because there was an Anime adaptation back in the day, it was incorrectly shelved in the “manga” section of bookstores, and everyone overlooked it.
Just jumping in to say how much I LOVE the Planetfall “series” and appreciate it getting some attention!
Cordwainer Smith’s novels and short stories set in and around the Instrumentality are I suggest a relevant example and are also still a terrific read.
I second the mention of Tamora Pierce’s works — particularly those in her Tortall series — they read more “adult cozy” than YA, and are so welcome in this age of world-wide covid PTSD, as they are low angst and the very rare intimacy occurs off screen. I’d recommend jumping in at the mature end of the series, with Trickster’s Choice and Trickster’s Queen … each completely stand alone, but definitely a mini-series, chock full of gods, goddesses, tricks and tricksters, and a very admirable female main character. Also, with a similar name, but penned by Rob Thurman, the two-volume, but each stand-alone, contemporary urban series Trick of the Light and Grimrose Path. This set is way more kick@ss and filled with bad angels, good angels, former angels, (all bad) demons (no surprise there), “sleeper” demons, “sleeper” angels, unaware humans, and a revenge plot lifetimes long, all set in a tavern in Las Vegas. We need more books set in taverns!!! And, if you’re up for some light romantic SF/Fantasy, I’m really enjoying two of Ilona Andrews series – Innkeeper and Hidden Legacy. No cliffhangers anywhere in any of these books I’ve mentioned; each is a stand alone.
@30 H. Piper Beame’s works are on Project Gutenberg.
Also The Lord of The Rings was divided by the publisher into three books.
Thanks to everyone else for different series/authors to look for.
A number of Neil Stephenson’s books take place in the same reality but are mostly unrelated. They share common characters, family lineages, historic background, etc. They all have the mysterious Enoch Root/Enoch the Red. You could pick up any one of these novels and read it without touching any of the others. On the list are: Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle, Reamde and Fall; or, Dodge in Hell.
Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files: a continuing long-term story, shorter arcs across a few books, and each book has its own individual adventure.
Would Panshin’s all too short three-book Anthony Villiers series count? They are marvelous, and, iirc, perfectly readable as standalones.
*goes off to mourn the lack of a fourth Villiers novel*
Has anyone mentioned Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s interminable Count St-Germain series? With the possible exception of the first book (Hotel Transylvania), they’re almost completely independent.
Max Gladstone’s Craft books come to mind; ISTR that (like the early Bujold books) the publication order is not the chronological order, but they all happen within a generation or so of each other and in the same general location.
Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya stories cover at least as much space as the Vorkosigan books — and probably more time (although ISTM we’re never sure where individual stories stand chronologically).
wrt @55: Cherryh’s Alliance-Union is a great example; sometimes there are sequels or small sets, but many are independent stories (see, e.g., Merchanter’s Luck, Tripoint, Rimrunner, et al? all in the period shortly after Downbelow Station). The Chanur books (same universe, different direction from Earth, says Cherryh) half-qualify, as they’re a single, then a trilogy, then a single some years later; the Fortress books (fantasy, not connected to any other books) have the same division. However, none of the Foreigner books stand alone; #’s 2-3 are on the heels of #1, and most of the later books are tomes broken into 2-3 published books.
@35 (extending @43): I’ve been told by an editor that Jordan planned only a few books but was urged to stretch them after the first did well. IIUC some publishers are much more likely to read a book proposal if it involves several pieces.
As another who remembers the 75-cent paperback and the 15-cent comic, my impression is that trilogies and series which require you to read every book to understand the story go back at least to the ’50s (Lord of the Rings), but only started becoming a regular feature of SFF in the 1980s-1990s.
So probably almost any series predating the 1980s can be safely mentioned here as consisting mostly or entirely of stand-alone or stand-alone-friendly reads….
The example I’m (re)reading currently is the 1970s’ Frostflower and Thorn fantasy series by Phyllis Ann Karr (if you allow for a two-novel series). (CN: Rape, attempted abortion, violence.)
Edgar Rice Burroughs tends to buck the trend, though: He wrote lots of standalones, but I don’t think he wrote one series in which the first novel/novella/novelette is complete in itself (although Beyond the Farthest Star never got its sequel).
I’m not really interested in the commitment required for 15-book trilogies, especially when they’re unfinished.
Does Freddy the Pig count as fantasy? There’s an element of SF when Uncle Ben invents space flight and the Martians appear. The stories are all independent. I read them in the order I found them at the library without any concern to publication date.
The Thraxas series is separate adventures with most of the same characters. My favorite swords and sorcery.
David Brin’s Uplift War is type a
Series B books are technically serials. I much prefer series A books. I can intersperse books from different series into my reading and always have a complete story!
A few very good series which fit this model are:
The Oswald de Lacy Medieval Murders by S.D. Sykes
The Time Shifters Chronicles by Shanna Lauffey
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Goblin Trilogy by Jaq D. Hawkins
The Holiday Tales series by Austin Crawley
Ursula Le Guin’sHainish cycle seems to have been missed unless I didn’t read all the comments above properly : >)
I had forgotten that Moribito came from a novel, and had no idea that it had sequels nor that any of them had been translated into English. IMHO, the anime version is a very worthy watch. Also has a really excellent OP. I shall have to see if I can get my hands on the ones that have been translated, Balsa is a fascinating and complex character.
From Youtube: Seirei no Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit Opening
I utterly, utterly loathed Planetfall, and won’t be reading the author ever again. That’s as much a personal issue with/sensitivity to how the (very poor) mental health of the viewpoint character is handled. (Unnoticed/ignored by their entire community until the ‘climax’ and then treated in the very worst way possible.) Without that, I suspect it would have merely been a book that never engaged me with a central ‘mystery’ that was pretty obvious from early on. Certainly from at least the middle of the novel. I know several other folks that really enjoyed it, but it is very much Not To My Tastes And Foibles.
I’ll eagerly recommend James White’s Sector General books, which have aged a lot (some parts more than others), but are still an excellent and enthralling collection of SF medical mystery ideas, if a bit short by modern standards. Even with the main problem for modern sensibilities, the very dated gender politics, visibly improve over the course of the series. By the time it came to an end, I was deeply sad to know that there would never be more (mis)adventures of it’s highly memorable and complex cast. Even now, it’s not hugely to find pacifist SF, let alone pacifist space opera,
@71: Hmm… “Tarzan of the Apes” and “A Princess of Mars” do sort-of finish, though not exactly on happy endings. Whether that is to leave room for a sequel, or only to leave points unresolved as may happen in a true story, I don’t know.