Life is not always neat and orderly, but fiction should be. I don't tolerate chaos when I read fiction. The Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs is neat and orderly. There are eleven books, each follows after the other, in chronological order. There's no debate.
What's not neat and orderly is Poul Anderson's Polesotechnic series. There are seven or eight books, but they aren't in any straightforward order. They're all mixed up. If you read the books in order of publication, the internal chronology is all shot to hell. And you can't read them in order of internal chronology, because the chronology is so confusing it's impossible to figure out. To make matters worse, some of the books are collections of short stories--and the stories span all sorts of different time frames. It's enough to make a serious fan crazy.
Another example of a series gone wrong is The Chronicles of Narnia. It started out fine, with seven books by C.S. Lewis, numbered in order of publication. But some blockhead decided that just wouldn't do. "Readers are too stupid to comprehend anything that isn't in chrono-linear. We must renumbers the books in order of internal chronology." Never mind that you won't appreciate The Magician's Nephew until you've finished The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Silver Chair. Now you can't buy a set that's numbered correctly.
In summary, today's commandment is: The only correct way to read a series is in order of original publication. Anything else is a sin.
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2 comments:
You mention two of my favorite series in this "rant": Barsoom and the Polesotechnic League. On the latter, it took me about 30 years to put together all the books and figure out the chronology, but I finally did it and read the whole thing in order last year. I think it was worth it.
Thanks for the comment, Scott. Barsoom and the Polesotechnic League are among my favorite series too. I still haven't read all the Polesotechnic League books, but eventually I'll get around to it.
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