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The fantasy writer Jennifer Roberson has published five books of what will eventually become a seven book series. So far each book has been thicker than the one before. At the current rate of progress, book number seven will be about two feet wide, contain five million pages and will require the purchaser to take a Charles Atlas muscle building course before reading it.
I have not read the books, and I do not intend to, largely because of Michael Moorcock. In 1973 he published the second volume of the Count Brass trilogy (which itself carried on directly from the four books of the Runestaff series—a seven book series is not new, Ms Roberson). I quite enjoyed the Runestaff/Count Brass books (except that I will never forgive Moorcock for killing off the Warrior in Jet and Gold); and I reached the end of the book panting with impatience to find out what happened next. I had to wait two years. The final book in the series was not published until 1975. I never really recovered from the nervous tension induced by that wait and I have cordially disliked multivolume novels and never ending series ever since.
But it wasn’t really Moorcock’s fault, I suppose. Personally, I blame Jane Austen.
The novel as a literary medium really came into its own in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Reading was a very popular way of passing the time (I can only assume that the TV programmes were even more boring than they are now) and because people demanded a “good read” novels tended to be very long and were published in multiple volumes. The so-called three-decker dates from this era, and it is one reason why all those old writers that you studied in school seemed to be so long winded. I recently saw an early edition of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones in a local antiquarian bookshop. It was in three very substantial books.
Interestingly, the decline in popularity of these multivolume novels exactly parallels the growth of the rail networks and the consequent increase in travel. For the first time the affluent middle classes (who actually bought most of the books) had a relatively cheap and comfortable method of travelling between the major centres both for business and for pleasure. Not unnaturally, they required some means of amusing themselves between stations. A book was a natural choice, but who wanted to risk a double hernia by lugging a three-decker novel about? The luggage was heavy enough without that. By the end of the nineteenth century the multivolume novel was dead. A whole network of railway bookstores catered to the traveller, selling cheap one-volume editions. The reading habits of a nation changed. The books got shorter.
At the same time, there was a huge growth in literacy. Compulsory education in the three Rs meant that even the “lower classes” were now demanding things to read (even if it was only the sports pages) and the publishing industry was not slow to tap this new market. The so called “dime novel” or “penny dreadful” dates from this era and it was aimed directly at this less sophisticated market. To begin with the books were mostly westerns: Edward L. Wheeler wrote Deadwood Dick on Deck or Calamity Jane, The Heroine of Whoop Up in 1884. Ned Buntline (whose real name was Edward Zane Carroll) wrote Magdalena, the Beautiful Mexican Maid (1847), The Black Avenger (1847), Stella Delorne or The Commanche’s Dream (1860) and more than 400 more. He was frighteningly prolific. He claimed once to have written a 600 page novel in 62 hours, and the only word processor that he had was a pen! All you technophiles take note. He founded one of the first pulp magazines (Ned Buntline’s Own) to publish his huge output. The trend continued unchecked into the twentieth century and the genres proliferated. We got detective series (Nick Carter and Sexton Blake); science fiction/fantasy series (Doc Savage, The Shadow, Tarzan); super criminals (Fu Manchu, Sumeru, The Saint)—the list is endless, and the one thing these series all had in common was that they never ended. At least not until the author died (and sometimes not even then—there were more Bulldog Drummond stories published after Sapper died than he ever published himself), or the books became unpopular and stopped selling.
I think it is important here that we distinguish clearly between the series and the multivolume novel. The superficial shelf-browser (and sometimes the publisher) does not always recognise the difference. But it does exist.
The multivolume novel is a continuous narrative which is so large that it has to be published as several books (the first American hardback of Shogun by James Clavell was published in two volumes). The series is a collection of novels each complete in itself (more or less) but linked together by virtue of having characters and/or locales in common. The dividing line is often blurred, but by and large it is possible to distinguish between the two types. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is a typical case. Despite the fact that it is almost invariably published in three volumes each of which has its own well known title, it is not a series of books. It is a continuous narrative which, for reasons of size, is usually published as three separate volumes. There is no natural break point at the end of the first two books; they simply stop. Furthermore the stopping places have been artfully chosen to maximise the reader’s frustration levels. Anyone who can read their way to the cliffhanger at the end of The Two Towers and then not read The Return of the King is simply not human. In complete contrast, something like Thieves' World or Heroes in Hell is just an ongoing series. You can stop (or start) reading anywhere.
Lord of the Rings is a direct literary descendant of the nineteenth century three-decker (though containing more wordage than some). Thieves' World and similar series are descended straight from the dime novels.
The series has never died. From its inception in the dime novels of the nineteenth century it has always been popular, and it remains so today. Apart from occasional sports such as Lord of the Rings, the multivolume novel seemed to die with the three-decker.
Even reading itself became less popular with the rise of other entertainment media. Radio, the movies and lately television have all made inroads on the habit. Fewer people read for pleasure now and, if reports are to be believed, fewer people are even able to read. Consider, for example, what you see every day on the haunted fish tank in the corner of the room.
Once it was a cinematic and televisual cliche to show the passing of time by zooming in on newspaper headlines. When a ransom note or a love letter was received the recipient held it in full view of the camera so we could all read it together.
It still happens—though nowadays the words are more likely to appear on a computer screen or similar high-tech trendy device. But a new thing has been added. Nowadays the characters invariably read the words out loud (either that or a voice-over reads them to us) so that all the illiterates in the audience won’t feel left out.
I always find these scenes disturbing—partly because I am irritated at having something read to me when I can read it perfectly well myself; but mostly because the fact that it happens at all is another finger pointing at the ever increasing trend towards functional illiteracy in modern society. A few years ago everyone watching a film or TV program was perfectly happy to read whatever clues appeared on the screen. Nowadays the director cannot afford to make that assumption if he wants to keep his audience.
Furthermore, what about the credits at the end of the show? They flash past so quickly (particularly on American programmes) that you often don’t have time to read them. Contracts require that the credits have to be there—but since a large part of the audience can’t read them anyway, why bother slowing them down to normal reading speed? Get them out of the way fast.
And yet, paradoxically, the bookshops are stuffed with more fat books than ever before. The last two decades or so have seen a partial return to the fashions of the last century. The multivolume novel has become very popular again. Virtually everybody seems to be writing trilogies or greater, and they are often continuous narratives rather than simple series. Those few of us who do read are, if anything, over supplied with material. Why? What is happening; and why is it happening now?
(At this point I am tempted to stop and tell you to wait for the next issue of Phlogiston to find the answer. After all—I would only be following the fashion!)
Let’s start by talking about television again.
Television is a huge absorber of material. It used to be that a musichall artist could travel the length and breadth of the country for fifty years playing in local theatres and never once changing his material. It was always new to the audience even if it was old to the performer. That is no longer true. Play it once on the box, and it’s over for ever. Everyone has seen it. Next time you must do something fresh.
Also, by its very nature, not only does television require new material all the time, it requires lots of it, in a tearing hurry. After all, there are some places in the world where many TV channels broadcast 24 hours a day. There are striking parallels here with the operation of a pulp magazine. It has to be produced regularly, to a deadline, and it has to have its quota of material ready by that deadline. Hack writers love television and it is no surprise that many television programmes are the visual equivalent of the pulp magazine and the dime novel—cheap, quick and nasty. The soap opera, the horse opera, the cop opera—all the genres that we know from the pulps are there and so it is no real surprise to see the series as well. Coronation Street is as open ended as E. C. Tubb’s Dumarest series and for very similar reasons. In one sense, they are both exactly the same phenomenon.
Week after week on our screens we see the same characters going through the motions of their lives. There are few if any plot resolutions in any one episode of any one soap. There is an illusion of leisure, of the passing of time, much as in real life. If an engagement is announced, we will not see the wedding until many weeks have passed, both in screen time and in real time. We are psychologically conditioned into accepting such ongoing dramas for our entertainment and we easily carry long story lines and complex plot threads in our minds. We accept that the story does not necessarily stop when the credits roll. If Derek turns up to pester Mavis again, we remember what happened six months ago and we just pray that she has more sense than to get involved again. (Yes, I watch Coronation Street. I’m not ashamed.)
In an extreme case like Coronation Street, the program has been going on for longer than some of you have been alive. If art does hold up a mirror to life as is popularly supposed, then the sheer timescale of a never ending soap opera, and its relatively lifelike dynamics suggest that it at least holds up a pair of mirrored sunglasses. You see the reflection clearly until you get quite close. And then you see right through it of course.
Notice the big difference between an episode of a typical soap opera and an episode of something like The Avengers which is a complete story in itself, even though the series goes on (and on, and on…).
The mini-series is a compromise between these two extremes of form. It is not complete in an hour, it is complete in three. Events are compressed (you don’t wait physical weeks for the wedding) but the story line is nonetheless leisurely (it goes on a long time). The psychological conditioning I spoke of earlier allows us to accept such longer and longer narratives. The single-episode-complete-in-itself grows into the mini-series. Again, art imitating life if you like. Stories really are long—mine started thirty-eight years ago and it is still going on.
The fashion for such growth and the way of thinking about the stories that it implies reflects back into all the other media as well. In the cinema we have seen longer and longer films. There was a time when you went to the pictures and you saw the second feature (the ‘B’ movie), had a break and then saw the main feature. Now the main feature is often the only feature, but you still spend as long in the cinema. The ‘B’ movie is dead and the main feature is twice as long.
In literary terms, we have seen the revival of the long novel of the nineteenth century. The three-decker has returned as a trilogy. The publishers are only following the trend that television started. (It isn’t just an SF phenomenon—all the literary genres are going the same way.) The mini-series and the three-decker are exact equivalents.
Whither now?
There is a danger, of course, that as the stories grow longer, they simply grow flabbier. Look at Stephen Donaldson. A trilogy (or whatever) should not be used simply as an excuse for over writing. Big stories are not simply small stories with more words. The freedom of the form means that now you can tell the really big stories. Unfortunately very few writers have the skill for it.
There is a fashion for three-deckers again. I for one am growing very tired of it. I have neither the time nor the patience to wade through so many of them. The Jennifer Roberson books that I mentioned at the start of this article may be very good—I will never know. They are simply too big for me to want to find out.
Fashions change and die. At the moment everybody is writing big books. Because everybody is doing it, I suspect that before long nobody will be doing it. The market is saturated and the rot will set in. I will be sorry to see it die completely—I enjoy some of the big books—but I will be very glad to see it slim down a bit.
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