As pointed out on rasfw

[james_davis_nicoll]

The perils and pleasures of long-running fantasy series

Also as pointed out on rasfw: Poor Gerrold; his grand unfinished series has pretty fallen off people's radar.

Comments

[lilfluff]

Ah yes, I do here rumors that Gerrold will have a new Chtorr book out... sometime. Maybe.

The scary thing is I can picture the book being finished, maybe even finishing off the series, and the publisher saying, "Mmmm. No. It's been how long since the previous book? Sorry, there won't be enough audience left."

But, Gerrold is no more our B**** than Martin. And as a reader I'd rather picture what could be than see something that seriously sub-par pushed out the door simply to shut up nagging 'fans' (for certain stalkerish definitions of the word fan).

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Some gems in the comments:

Once upon a time, when I was but a wee Princess--settle in, this is a long 'un--I kept hearing Piers Anthony praised to the skies among my nerdier friends, particularly online--they called it some of the funniest fantasy stuff they'd ever read. Daunted by the sheer number of books he'd written, I held off on indulging my curiosity...until I spent a quarter on a well-used library copy of a Xanth novel called "The Color of her Panties".

Well-used. I hope she used rubber gloves.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

What a looooong screed of fannish entitlement. "The longer a series runs, the more stacked the expectations and pressures become, and the more intimate it feels, a sort of long-distance love affair of avowed commitment and mutual assumption." Assumption would be the word that comes most to mind, yes. "Mutual"? "Commitment"?

"The only solution for readers is to appreciate what we get when we get it, but that’s just as impossible as Martin somehow satisfying all his fans without writing a book specifically tailored to each one of them. "

Huh. I seem to manage it. The entire epic saga essay never manages to acknowledge that writers are people, that people's lives are never as they plan them, and that, frankly, shit happens. Instead, it's all about HOW UNFAIR IT ALL IS TO THE READER.

If I think about the series that I follow avidly, Bujold's Barrayar stuff and tagmeth's Godstalk, the writers took breaks -- Bujold to write other books, Hodgell to pursue a successful academic career. (Obvs. Bujold isn't the committed WORLD-SPANNING EPIC, and you can't argue that the books are incomplete as they stand.) Although I want to find out what happens next, very badly, I don't think that I have a solemn compact with either writer. I just caught on to Martin, but if the next book doesn't come out for 13 years, he won't have broken a promise; he will just be another human being whose work didn't turn out quite as he expected it.

Neil said it best.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

...But Chtorr is SF.

I probably had more to say, but I figure I'll just sit around quibbling, instead.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

Huh, the first page of comments there are almost entirely about the new comment system. Has anyone read all the comments to see if there's any mention of Steven Erikson? Or Hugh Cook? Surely someone has mentioned Rothfuss, right?

[tanac.livejournal.com]

Pfft. I'm still mad about the Gerrold series failing to continue. I waited patiently for *years*, not knowing he'd gone and adopted a problem child and turned his life upside down and stopped writing it. :/

[badger.livejournal.com]

If another Chtorr novel ever comes out I'll probably buy it. I'm not looking for it but I figure if it ever happens I'll see the news somewhere. In the meantime (as in probably the rest of our lifespan overlap) I have plenty of things to do.

[murasaki-1966.livejournal.com]

I'm still waiting for Scott Lynch to bring out the next book in the Gentleman Bastard series. Given the shit he's had to deal with health-wise, I am content to wait.

[asyouknow-bob.livejournal.com]

As Seth Ellis said upstream: I've gotten to the point that even standalone novels over 400 pages mostly irritate me.

Chtorr pretty much broke me of EVER reading ANY series, certainly not before it's finished.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

As long as Martin doesn't pull an Architect of Sleep, I'm fine with waiting.

I followed Katharine Kerr's Deverry series from 1986 to 2010, and ASOIAF is projected to be quite a bit shorter.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

This is why Bernard Cornwell is a genius; the thing is to write the beginning and the end and then fill in bits in the middle as they occur to you.