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In genre fiction, almost every linked sequence of books is called a "series," whether the label fits or not. We can define a series as a set of books, each a self-contained narrative episode, that focus on the same central character(s), such as we most often see in mystery series featuring a certain detective, or Lois McMasters Bujold's "Miles" series. Although there may some overarching "frame tale" in a series, normally this on-going story is firmly subordinated to the events of each episode. The television show Star Trek: Voyager is a good example of the episodes within an over-plot.
Not all multi-volume works fit this mold, however, especially the type of novel that critics call the roman fleuve, a "watershed novel" or a "river basin" novel.
Like a major river, these long novels receive many tributaries of plot and run in many channels. Generally speaking, a roman fleuve covers several generations and several interrelated story lines; alternately, it may be a number of books set in the same mileu and featuring interrelated characters. The term was coined for Balzac's "Comedie Humaine", and Galsworthy's Forsythe Saga, Proust's Recherche, and Faulkner's Compson family novels provide other literary examples.
Especially since the term "series books" has acquired a sneer these days, there is surely room for recognition for this other form of connected novels, in which the entire sequence of books, once completed, will have a shape that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
And where did this sneer come from, anyway? Why are "series books", whether or not they're truly a series, looked down upon in SF and Fantasy circles? There's a related prejudice in evidence in the field, too, against long books on general principles. I hear critics and readers both griping about "filler" and "fluff," story elements that are supposedly polluting the pure waters of science fiction. When one pins the complainers down, though, it usually turns out that "filler and fluff" means "information that I personally find boring." Yet they will still maintain that somehow or other, good books are those which stick to some ambiguously defined "real story."
I suspect that the literary movement known as Modernism has something to do with this.
I don't give a damn about Modernism. What's your point?
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Copyright © 1996-2005 Katharine Kerr. All rights reserved. No portion of this site may be copied, in whole or in part, without permission of Katharine Kerr.