From: ca572@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark L. Stackpole)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Trilogies and Consistancy
Date: 4 Sep 92 20:21:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: usenet.188gfsINNk8m
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


	Has anyone out there noticed this with some trilogies: a
huge change in theme & tone between the second and the third
volumes.
	For instance: _Titan_ and _Wizard_ by John Varley were
consistent adventure novels of humankind encountering and
dealing with a brand new world and its resident population.
But _Demon_ went way over the deep end. By the time Varley got
around to the last book, I believe that he was tired of the 
series & said to himself "to Hell with it". So he blew up the 
Earth, imported into Gaea every representative of organized
religion he could think of and laid bare his frustration of a
couple of years as an unproduced script writer in Hollywood. A
50 foot tall Marylin Monroe is not a plot development one would
expect from reading the first two books.
	Or: Dean Ing's _Systemic Shock_ and _Single Combat_ had
to do with the recovery of America after a limited nuclear
exchange, concentrating on the politics and the nifty
technologies cascading from this event. However Ing abandoned
these themes in _Wild Country_. As a result the third book
consists of a few weeks in the life of Ted Quantril, West Texas
outposter. The narrowing of focus is so extreme that the major
villain of the first two books, who was tucked away in an
Israeli space station at the end of _SC_, is rather casually
killed off upon his return to Earth in _Wild County_.
Sic Semper loose plot threads.
	Or: _Emprise_ and _Enigma_ (Michael P. Kube-McDowell)
dealt with nothing less than the rebirth of civilization, travel
to the stars & encounters with some strange mysteries out there.
The march of time no less; centuries whizzed by in these books.
But when we reach _Empery_, time stands still and in place of
what one would expect (I don't know, a Clarkian transcendence
maybe), we are treated to a 300 page debate on whether or not
we should go to battle against those pesky Von Neumann machines.
[***SPOILER*** no we shouldn't]
	Other examples include Haldeman's _Worlds_ (discussed
earlier on this sig), Longyear's _Circus World_ & _Manifest
Destiny_ (_Elephant Song_ and _The Tomorrow Testament_ go off
on some =strange= tangents), and Asimov's _Foundation_
8-)  8-)  8-)
	Don't misunderstand me. I'm not trashing these writers
for changing their minds. In all of these cases I think what
was going through each writer's mind when they sat down to
type out the last book was something like "I gotta get this out
of the way so I can get to something new!" The heavy thumb of
contractual obligation. Or what interested them back at vol. 1
has been substituted by new interests.
	They're human beings, they grow and change, and what
seemed a good idea or story several years ago now looks a little
lame. Not to mention all the neat stories cooked up in the 
meantime which are put on hold because this one ain't finished.
	It's a _good_ thing that these writers are evolving
and not repeating their act over and over. Especially in
comparison with the authors who do maintain a consistent tone
in their series: Piers Anthony, Stephen Donaldson, David
Eddings...   (*choke*)

Mark L Stackpole   	pacnet@rocky.claremont.edu