FICTION SERIES I HAVE KNOWN AND LOVED

I write short (for the most part) but I read long. This has been true all my reading life, especially for fiction series.

Completed Fiction Series

As a pre-teen I devoured the Cherry Ames nurse books by Helen Wells, following her career from student nurse onwards. Ditto the Ruth Fielding books, set in the 1920s and written by a group of people collectively using the pseudonym of Alice B. Emerson. Both involved adventure, sometimes mysteries, and young women who stepped outsides society’s rules and boundaries.

As an adult, my first fiction series addiction was The Poldark Saga by Winston Graham.  In this instance, I was so taken with the story line as depicted on PBS Masterpiece Theatre that I read all eleven books, and liked the books even better. I’ve read the Poldark family saga more than once. That’s the way it is with a good read. Early on, I was so taken with the character of Demelza Poldark that for a time port wine was my alcohol of choice.

Once upon a time, my escapist reading was the Nero Wolfe mysteries (Rex Stout), but that’s a whole different kettle of fish. The same detective, the same sidekick, and the same chef, but really nothing to link the books together. Each puzzle is different and, once solved, presents no temptation to reread. 

Sherlock Holmes is much the same. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle crafted beautifully written stories, but the point is “who done it.” That being said, I did love the modern BBC adaptation “Sherlock.”

Sherlock Holmes appears on screen frequently.

I put the Lord Peter Wimsey fiction series somewhere in between. Dorothy L. Sayers has more of a through-line, and characters other than Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey DSO are more prominent. He solves mysteries for pleasure and is a perfect example of the British gentleman detective. I have actually reread her series because her writing is excellent, offering more than just the solution to the crime.

  • I watched the BBC/PBS adaptations.  In my opinion, neither Ian Carmichael nor Edward Petherbridge was the right choice for Lord Peter, though many fans hold very strong views favoring one or the other. It should have been Fred Astaire!
Dame Agatha Christie

Unlike many, I was never taken with Dame Agatha Christie Although her detectives are appealingly quirky, the solutions to the crimes (in my opinion) too often involve “alligator over the transom” elements. I.e., they depend too much on sudden, serendipitous revelations, or information known only to the detective, such that the reader couldn’t possibly have figured it out.

Jean M Auel

I greatly enjoyed the first two books in Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series. Fiction series set in prehistoric times was quite novel to me, and she seemed well grounded in actual anthropology and biology. But after Clan of the Cave Bear and Valley of Horses, it went downhill for me. After that, the books weren’t as novel and they needed a good editor. It’s a 6-book series I never finished.

Ongoing Fiction Series

By the time I read Outlander, the first several books in the series were already in print. Action/adventure, romance, time-travel, and a touch of the supernatural… I’d never read anything like it. 

Diana Gabaldon

I’ve read the first eight books twice, and marvel at Diana Gabaldon’s skill:

  1. Tracking a cast of thousands (dozens, anyway)
  2. Keeping characters and “facts” consistent
  3. Weaving details from earlier books into major elements in later ones

And let’s not forget the gripping storyline, spanning wars, continents, and generations.

I’ve read the spin-off Lord John books and collections of short stories. What I have not done is watch the TV series. I would grump about all that’s been left out! 

I preordered book nine, Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone, and it’s been on my shelf and on my kindle since November. At some level I am resisting reading it, for I don’t want the series to end. According to Gabaldon, the series is expected to be ten volumes.

Fiona Quinn

Fiona Quinn has written several interconnected fiction series in The World of Iniquus. They feature separate but related action/adventure/romance plots and characters. She has created strong, knowledgeable, capable women, and I always learn things. 

Mary Burton

Another local writer I enjoy is Mary Burton. She, too, has written several fiction series, some interconnected and some stand-alone.

I’ve read a lot of L. T. Ryan, though his books tend to be more brutal than my usual fare.

I. T. Lucas

Last but not least, I’ll mention Children of the Gods by I. T. Lucas. Per the Amazon blurb, “Twilight meets Ancient Aliens with the sizzle of Fifty Shades.” The writing isn’t on a par with Gabaldon, but it’s generally good and the series currently includes 62 books!

Miscellany

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of the first of the Harry Potter books. I have the complete set, but I haven’t yet read the books or watched the movies.

Please note: these writers are not to be confused with the following

Bottom line: All other things being equal, longer is better when I choose a fiction series. A 900 page book makes a great first impression here!

Science Fiction or Fantasy?

I read in an interview with Ursula K. Le Guin that science fiction has both feet planted solidly in the science of today, that the fictional parts are pushing beyond those roots in a way that is both logical and plausible.  

So when I read a blurb for CREATION: How Science is Reinventing Life Itself by Adam Rutherford, I immediately thought science fiction. According to Rutherford, we are radically exceeding the boundaries of evolution and engineering entirely novel creatures—from goats that produce spider silk in their milk to bacteria that excrete diesel to genetic circuits that identify and destroy cancer cells. Imagine what stories might be told in a world where such creatures are commonplace, where such engineering is taken for granted. Imagine the products, and the governmental involvement.

Fantasy, on the other hand, is making it up out of whole cloth. Even so, it could draw on science for an idea.

For example, another book I came across recently has such possibilities: TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENT SEX DETERMINATION IN VERTEBRATES edited by N. Valenzueta & B. Lance. It contains articles by leading scholars in the field and reveals how the sex of reptiles and many fish is determined not by the chromosomes they inherit but by the temperature at which incubation takes place.

Fantasy could be a story in which human sex is determined by ambient temperature. And perhaps it can vary as the temperature varies. And so forth.

As the planet warms, everything will be overrun by mermaids.
Mermaid by John Waterhouse

Now, if you wrote a story about a world over-run by snakes and fish because of global warming, you would be back to science fiction. Ditto for a world in which the biological engineering described in CREATION results in changing many species to be temperature-reactive and put that in the context of global warming.

Bottom Line: Check out the latest in science and then let your imagination run wild!

Writer Wonder Woman Ursula K. Le Guin

ursula k le guin
Ursula K. Le Guin reading from Lavinia at Rakestraw Books, Danville, California, on June 23, 2008 [Source]
 
On several dimensions important to me—and to most writers—Ursula Le Guin has excelled almost beyond comprehension. One thing I admire, which doesn’t fit into any particular category, is that Le Guin’s writing is a spiral rather than a line, i.e., she didn’t write one way and then move on to another, never looking back. When you examine the list of her publications at the end of this blog, you’ll see that in any given year, she was writing in several directions, and in later years she circled back to earlier series.
 

Wonder Woman for Breadth

 
Although best known for science fiction and fantasy, over a writing career that spanned more than half a century, she wrote all sorts of things for all sorts of readers, across genres and formats. Her first publication was a poem, “Folksong from the Montayna Province,” in 1959. She continued to write poetry over the decades, but she would never have labeled herself a poet. The New York Times (2016) called her “America’s greatest living science fiction writer,” but she preferred to be known as a novelist.

 

Ursula K. LeGuin
Ursula K. LeGuin in 1973 [Source: New York Public Library]
Besides poetry, science fiction, and fantasy, she wrote children’s books, short stories, literary fiction, non-fiction, literary criticism, and blogs. Among her non-fiction writings are books of advice for writers, which grew out of her work as an editor and teacher (at Tulane, Bennington, and Stanford, among others), the best known of which is Steering the Craft. BTW, within the last nine months, this guide has been recommended to me by two separate and independent writing teachers.

 

Wonder Woman for Social Justice

 
Writing during years when what was socially accepted was evolving, her fiction often depicted alternatives seldom spoken of regarding gender options and alternatives, religion, race, sexuality, politics, the natural environment, and culture. Perhaps this was the legacy of having an anthropologist father and a mother trained in psychology who later turned to writing. According to Wikipedia, her writing contains many recurring themes and ideas: the archetypal journey, cultural contact, communication, the search for identity, and reconciling opposing forces. This is as I remembered her fiction from years ago. I think it’s about time to revisit Le Guin!

 

Her novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) has been called her first contribution to feminism. Le Guin created, for example, a planet where humans have no fixed sex. Her work brings to the foreground on an ongoing basis equality, coming-of-age, and death.
What I call her “sociological/cultural” approach is what appealed to me, as opposed to sci-fi/fantasy that depends on technology, genetic modification, mind control, robots, and similar machines of domination.

 

Wonder Woman for Achievement

Overall Achievement
Le Guin graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe and was awarded three Fulbrights. In 2002 the U.S. Library of Congress made Le Guin a Living Legend in the “Writers and Artists” category.

 

  • A PEN/Malamud Award
  • American Library Association honors for young adult literature and for children’s literature
  • Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Lifetime Achievement Award
  • The Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers from the Washington Center for the Book
  • The Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation
  • National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (a lifetime Achievement award)
  • Gandalf Award Grand Master of Fantasy
  • Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association
  • Induction into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
  • Grand Master of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
  • North American Society for Utopian Studies Lyman Tower Sargent Distinguished Scholar Award
Awards for Specific Works
  • 5 Locus
  • 4 Nebula
  • 2 Hugo
  • 1 World Fantasy Award.
  • 4 awards in short fiction
  • 19 Locus awards voted by magazine subscribers
  • National Book Award for Young People’s Literature
  • Finalist for 10 Mythopoeic Awards
  • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
  • Hugo Award for Best Related Work
  • PLUS: other annual “Year’s Best” awards
ursula k le guin
[Source: New York Times]

Wonder Woman for Productivity 

See for yourself below. And this is only an approximation!  I’ve marked award winners by *. For more than one award, multiple asterisks. Disclaimer: I’ve done my best but I’m sure I’ve missed both publications (particularly short stories and novellas, which often don’t make lists) and awards. Still, it’s pretty impressive!
 
Hainish science fiction series 
left hand darkness le guin
[Source: Amazon]
Rocannon’s World, 1966
Planet of Exile, 1966
City of Illusions, 1967
The Left Hand of Darkness, 1969**
The Dispossessed, 1974***
The Word for World is Forest, 1976*
Four Ways to Forgiveness, 1995
The Telling, 2000**

 

Earthsea fantasy series
tehanu le guin
[Source: Goodreads]
A Wizaard of Earthsea, 1968*
The Tombs of Atuan, 1971*
The Farthest Shore, 1972*
Tenah: The Last Book of Earthsea, 1990**
Tales from Earthsea, 2001 (short stories)
The Other Wind, 2001*
Earthsea Revisioned, 1993 (an Earthsea non-fiction book)

 

Adventures in Kroy books
adventures kroy le guin
[Source: Goodreads]
The Adventures of Cobbler’s Rue (1982)
Solomon Leviathan’s Nine-Hundred and Thirty-First Trip Around the World, 1982

 

Catwing book series
catwings le guin
[Source: Amazon]
Catwings, 1988
Catwings Return, 1989
Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, 1994
Jane On Her Own, 1992
Cat Dreams, 2009

 

Chronicles Of The Western Shore books
gifts ursula le guin
[Source: Amazon]
Gifts, 2004
Voices, 2006
Powers, 2007*

 

Standalone Novels
lathe heaven ursula le guin
[Source: Amazon]
The Lathe of Heaven, 1971*
Very Far Away from Anywhere Else, 1976
The Eye of the Heron, 1978
Malafrena, 1979
The Beginning Place, 1980
Always Coming Home, 1985
Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand, 1991
Changing Planes, 2002*
Lavinia, 2008*

 

Short Stories and Novellas
The Day Before the Revolutios, 1974*
The Water is Wide, 1976
Leese Webster, 1979
Gwillan’s Harp, 1981
The Visionary: The Life Story of Flicker the Serpentine of Telina-Na, 1984
The Shobies’ Story, 1990
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, 1991*
Nine Lives, 1992
Buffalo Gals: Won’t You Come Out Tonight, 1994**
Solitude, 1995*
Coming of Age in Karhide, 1995
Old Music and the Slave Women, 1999
The Wild Girls, 2011

 

Short Story and Poetry Collections
writer wonder woman ursula k le guin
[Source: Goodreads]
Wild Agels, 1974
Orsinian Tales, 1975
The Winds’s Twelve Quarters, 1975
Walking in Cornwall, 1976
Nebula Award Stories 11, 1976
Hard Words and Other Poems, 1981
The Compass Rose, 1982
In the Red Zone, 1983
Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, 1987
The Visionary, Wonders Hidden, 1988
Blue Moon Over Thurman Street, 1993
Going Out with Peacocks and Other Poems, 1994
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, 1994
Unlocking the Air and Other Stories, 1996
Sixty Odd: New Poems, 1999
The Birthday of the World and Other Stories, 2002
Incredible Good Fortune: New Poems, 2006
Dragon Lords and Warrior Women, 2010
Finding My Elegy, 2012
Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014

 

Picture Books
A Visit from Dr. Katz, 1988
Fire and Stone, 1989
Fish Soup, 1992
A Ride on the Red Mare’s Back, 1992
Tom Mouse, 2001

 

Non-Fiction Books
Surviving Technology Dependence
From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, 1973
Dreams Must Explain Themselves, 1975
The Language of the Night, 1979
Steering the Craft, 1984
Dancing at the Edge of the World, 1989
The Way of the Water’s Going, 1989
The Wave in the Mind, 2004
Cheek by Jowl, 2009
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, 2009
The World Split Open, 2014
Steering the Craft: A Twenty-First Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story, 2015
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, 2017**

 

ursula k le guin no time spare
[Source: Amazon]
This book is a collection of the best of Le Guin’s blogs—the newest frontier of writing. If she had not died January 22, 2018, who knows where she might have gone next?

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

science fiction vs. fantasy
I read somewhere—perhaps in an interview with Ursula K. Le Guin—that science fiction has both feet planted solidly in the science of today, that the fictional parts are pushing beyond those roots in a way that is both logical and plausible.

 

So when I read a blurb for CREATION: How Science is Reinventing Life Itself by Adam Rutherford, I immediately thought science fiction. According to Rutherford, we are radically exceeding the boundaries of evolution and engineering entirely novel creatures—from goats that produce spider silk in their milk to bacteria that excrete diesel to genetic circuits that identify and destroy cancer cells. Imagine what stories might be told in a world where such creatures are commonplace, where such engineering is taken for granted. Imagine the products, and the governmental involvement.

Creation by Adam Rutherford
Creation by Adam Rutherford

Fantasy, on the other hand, is making it up out of whole cloth. Even so, it could draw on science for an idea. For example, another book I came across recently has such possibilities: TEMPERATURE-DEPENDENT SEX DETERMINATION IN VERTEBRATES edited by N. Valenzueta & B. Lance. It contains articles by leading scholars in the field and reveals how the sex of reptiles and many fish is determined not by the chromosomes they inherit but by the temperature at which incubation takes place. Fantasy would be a story in which human sex is determined by ambient temperature. And perhaps it can vary as the temperature varies. And so forth.

science fiction vs. fantasy, fish in water

 

Now, if you wrote a story about a world over-run by snakes and fish because of global warming, you would be back to science fiction. Ditto for a world in which the biological engineering described in CREATION results in changing many species to be temperature-reactive and put that in the context of global warming.

 

TAKEAWAY FOR WRITERS

Check out the latest in science and then let your imagination run wild!