Quick fantasy / SF question

[ffutures]

I'm looking for examples of books where a work or a series, which was apparently complete, is followed up by more works after some time.

What I don't want is sequels by other hands, share cropping, "based on an idea by," continuing series, etc.

Examples I have so far are the later Earthsea books and Hal Clement's "Needle" and "Through the Eye of a Needle"

Can anyone suggest more examples?

Comments

[timill]

Foundation?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's definitely another example, also the last Robots book.

Three guesses whet the them of the next Thing I host is going to be....

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

The Pern novels maybe?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I suppose that's true, though it's less obvious a gap than the Earthsea books.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Moorcocks Stormbringer books. Those ended years ago, then he started doing some new ones again semi recently?

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Mary Stewart's Arthurian trilogy, followed quite a time later by "The Wicked Day".

Particularly interesting because (in the copy I had) Stewart talked about how she was constrained by the choices she'd made earlier, even though she had a different take on the legends and would have done things differently were she starting again.


Clarke's Rama books always seemed that way to me. "Rendezvous with Rama" stood nicely on its own, ending enigmatically and inviting the reader to use their imagination. The sequels seemed a bit like Harry Turtledove's endless series' — variations of the same idea, over and over. 2001 as well — the sequels weren't obvious from the first novel, which seemed complete.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'd count the Rama books as sharecropping - The later books were basically Gentry Lee with a little input from Clarke.

I'm not familiar with the Arthurian trilogy, but I'll add it to the list of possibilities.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Quoting from Wikipedia here:

Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy refers to the first three of Mary Stewart's quintet of Arthurian novels. It consists of:

The Crystal Cave (1970)
The Hollow Hills (1973)
The Last Enchantment (1979)

They were published under this title in an omnibus volume in 1980 by William Morrow and Company.

The other two novels in the quintet are:
The Wicked Day (1983)
The Prince and the Pilgrim (1995)

The Crystal Cave is a re-telling from Merlin's point of view of his childhood and youth up to the time of Arthur's conception. The Hollow Hills is Merlin's recounting of Arthur's birth and boyhood until he is made king. The Last Enchantment is the story of Arthur's kingship as told by Merlin. The Wicked Day is a re-telling of the story from Mordred's point of view.

In my copy of The Wicked Day (now gone to a nephew) Stewart wrote in the afterword that the original stories don't necessarily make Mordred the villian. In the last battle, for example, they don't say he was fighting against Arthur. She was stuck with her original research into having Mordred fight Arthur, but she did what she could to make him a sympathetic character, and the final conflict an accident rather than evil plot.

I haven't read the last one, because I just learned about it today. Not certain if I should, or if I'd find it disappointing.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

I count the Merlin Trilogy as being right up there with LotR in quality and have read it many times. Highly recommended. However, I've never been even remotely tempted to re-read The Wicked Day; it just doesn't fit with the rest and would IMHO have been better never written.

[vincentursus.livejournal.com]

Haldeman's Forever War series.
The General Series by Drake and Stirling.
I think L. E. Modesitt did it a couple of times, with the Corean Chronicles and Saga of Recluse.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The Forever War definitely. I'll have to check on the others.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Asimov's Foundation series, and its merger with the Baley/Olivaw novels.

Heinlein's Future History.

The Anthony Villiers/Torve the Trog books (no, just wishful thinking!).

The Vorkosigan novels.

Going way, way back, wasn't there a long hiatus after Dr. Doolittle in the Moon?

It also occurs to me that Chelsea Quinn Yarbro wrote something like half a dozen St.-Germain novels—Hotel Transylvania, The Palace, Blood Games, Path of the Eclipse, Tempting Fate, and the short story collection The Saint-Germain Chronicles—and came back, after some years, to write many, many more.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Definitely Asimov. Heinlein isn't so clear-cut, in my opinion, though a possibility. For the others it feels like there is less of a "this story / series is finished" vibe between the early and late books.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

I had the impression, perhaps erroneously, that Heinlein never intended them to tie together to the degree they did. ie that he noticed (possible) links long after the fact and began to write novels that tied into this.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Which Heinlein books are we talking about?

Most of the stories in The Man Who Sold the Moon and The Green Hills of Earth (excluding Solution Unsatisfactory in the first, and We Also Walk Dogs— and possibly The Long Watch in the second), all of Revolt in 2100, Methuselah's Children, and the two pieces that eventually became Orphans of the Sky were written with a common background, which Heinlein eventually systematized into a big chart. When he showed it to Campbell, Campbell asked for permission to publish it, and it became one of the prototypes for "future history." That was the original series.

Then decades later Heinlein published Time Enough for Love and several other novels revolving around Lazarus Long, which to my mind are not Heinlein's best work—not even his best post-Stranger work. But they're clearly sequels to the Future History, though written in a far less optimistic mood: No more about "The first human society."

[coth.livejournal.com]

Didn't Pohl take a break in the Heechee sequence? And would you count Cyteen/Regenesis?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I'd need to look into the timing on both of these, thanks for the suggestions.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

The Sherlock Holmes stories.

Arguably The Hobbit / Lord of the Rings qualifies.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, yes, both are possibilities. With Holmes there's the big disconnect of his "death", of course.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

Yes, that was what I was thinking of. I understand that Conan Doyle was tired of the character, and thought that killing him off would put an end to him, but then was forced to bow to reader pressure and bring him back.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Both L. Frank Baum and Hugh Lofting tried to do the same thing: Lofting by sending Dr. Doolittle to the moon in Dr. Doolittle in the Moon, and Baum by having Oz magically made invisible to the outside world after a failed invasion in The Emerald City of Oz. It didn't work either time. In fact Baum didn't even get out of writing more Oz books by dying!

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

Amber?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Good one.

[draconin.livejournal.com]

I think a definite contender would be Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. The original was written in 1959/60 but it was only after it won awards and acclaim that the sequels were published, the first over a decade later, in 1973. I doubt that she had those in mind when she began writing as the first book reads to me as completely self contained.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's another good one - thanks.

[jeymien.livejournal.com]

Stephen R. Donaldson's Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. It seemed done after the second trilogy in 1983, then he released a new quartet in 2004.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Thanks!