From A Conversation with Robert J. Sawyer — Part 1, here is Robert J. Sawyer on trilogies:
“I still think trilogies are usually bad artistically for SF — although not as bad as never-ending series. […] I’ve seen far too many great authors be trapped into writing series. I’d much rather see what else Lois McMaster Bujold has up her sleeve besides Miles, or that Anne McCaffrey has besides Pern, or Orson Scott Card is thinking about other than Ender, but the economics of the industry are that publishers will offer authors more — at least double, and sometimes much more than that — for a new book in a successful series rather than a stand-alone, even if that stand-alone would be artistically and intellectually more satisfying.”
Okay, why do publishers pay more for a book in a successful series? Because they know that people are more likely to buy a book in a series. Why are people more likely to buy a new book in a series? Because they love their favourite characters, and enjoy reading about them.
Series characters are like old friends. Reading the latest Vorkosigan novel is like going down to the pub for a drink with your pal from University who is just back from an exotic holiday. A stand-alone novel is more like going out clubbing on a Friday night, and hoping to score with that cutie in the purple hot pants. You can have great fun doing both. (And in both cases there is the possibility that you’ll end up in an alley behind the pub or club chundering in the gutter. But maybe that’s taking the metaphor too far. Maybe.)
I disagree with Sawyer’s assertion that series are “artistically” bad for SF. In fact, I think that SF needs more ongoing series. Series give an author the opportunity to develop characters over multiple books. Provided that each story stands on its own (for the casual reader), someone who has been following the series will take away more from the book, precisely because they can make connections between events and peripheral figures in the characters’ pasts (and futures).
If you look at the crime genre, series novels dominate the bookshelves. In fact, I doubt if a crime publisher will give you a second glance unless you convince them that you have the next novel already half written.
One of my favourite series characters is Elvis Cole, hero of most of Robert Crais’ books. In the last Elvis Cole novel, LA Requiem, Cole and his partner Joe Pike come under repeated personal physical and emotional assault, from almost every possible angle. I cried at the end of that book. Twice. On a bus. In the Edinburgh rush hour. The story was one of the most painful and moving I have read recently. But would it have been quite so powerful if I hadn’t built up the love for those characters over the space of six or seven prior books? I don’t think that it would.
Yet, on the other hand, if you have a series, you can be 99% sure that the hero is going to survive. They may come away with a few more scars, but you don’t kill off a character. Not only will your publisher demand your head on a plate for killing the golden-egged goose, but you’ll also probably have to cope with homicidal fans who want to break your legs and keep you locked in a little room until you write the character back to life. (Or was that a Stephen King book?)
So in a series, Death may be on the line, but you can be fairly sure He’s wielding a toy plastic scythe.
It’s a balancing act. On the one hand, a series gives an author the freedom to explore a character in much greater depth than in a single book. But not all authors take that opportunity, and it can be too easily abused by the certainty of survival. On the other hand, the stand-alone book gives you the excitement of really not knowing how it’s going to end. But then, how often–really–do things turn out horribly nasty for the hero?
It’s like the old school mate and the Friday night hottie. Some days you want the friend, some days the frisson. On balance, though, I think I prefer my friends from the series. Which is why I want more of them.
Or maybe I’m just getting too old for hot pants.