Fiction Friction: The Fake Trilogy

[Gary Oswald]

Discuss this new article by @Thande here

 

[Thande]

I've wanted to write this article pretty much since we started writing articles on here, but never found a good theme heading for it - so I've invented "Fiction Friction", which is literally "anything I want to write about".

 

[Ncw8]

Of course Douglas Adams mocked the marketing strategy of trilogies with his “Fourth book of the Hitchhikers Trilogy.” That was a case where the first two books were reasonably linked together - based on the radio series which itself was a successful production followed by a sequel. The third book of the “trilogy” was a noticeably different story based on a Doctor Who script, and the fourth and fifth were different again.

About the same time as the Lord of the Rings was published, there was also another famous SF trilogy - the Foundation Trilogy. This was also not originally conceived as a trilogy, consisting as it did of a series of short stories. In some ways it might have made a better duology - the two stories in Foundation and Empire have stronger links to the previous/next stories in the series than they do to each other - and yet it does also follow the 1 + 2 pattern. The first volume is reasonably complete in itself, ending on an optimistic note. The second volume ends with the Foundation conquered under the control of the Mule, who is defeated and everything brought to a happy conclusion in the third volume (obviously I’m ignoring the later sequels here).

And then there’s Discworld. For a short period of time, it was marketed as a trilogy, even though Equal Rites featured a different set of characters to the other two volumes. And then Pratchett wrote Mort, and continued the series. But the marketing strength of trilogies was not to be denied, so you can find the Witches Trilogy, the Death Trilogy, the City Watch Trilogy, and many more - even though the stories were again not conceived as trilogies. I wouldn’t have been surprised if a Discworld novel featured the Librarian fighting off an infestation of trilogies in the UU Library.

 

[Thande]

But the marketing strength of trilogies was not to be denied, so you can find the Witches Trilogy, the Death Trilogy, the City Watch Trilogy, and many more

I remember those. The best part was that they also came up with this bizarrely-conceived one, which consisted of three pretty much completely unconnected stories and included one of the Death books they'd decided not to include in the Death Trilogy. I pity the poor soul who bought this but not that one, and wondered who on earth Susan was and what HEX was and why it's written as though we already know.

 

[Space Oddity]

Pyramids and Small Gods do have some connections, both thematic and otherwise, and Hogfather does tie into Small Gods exploration of belief, but yes, that's a stretch.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Thank god that stopped. "The Truth, Monstrous Regiment, and Going Postal form the.... News Trilogy, yeah."

 

[Geordie]

Thank god that stopped. "The Truth, Monstrous Regiment, and Going Postal form the.... News Trilogy, yeah."

Could have had Going Postal, Making Money and Raising Steam. The Moist trilogy.

 

[Talwar]

Mildly related, I guess - Mrs. T was on me to self-publish my first novel-sized project but then asked if I wanted to finish the entire trilogy first.

I was like, "Trilogy?"

"You said you're writing book two. Do you want to finish book three before you publish them all?"

So I had to explain that it was "book two" in the sense that I was writing my second book but that it was utterly unrelated to my first book in any way. But that assumption was there in her head by default that I was aiming for a trilogy.

 

[Thande]

Mildly related, I guess - Mrs. T was on me to self-publish my first novel-sized project but then asked if I wanted to finish the entire trilogy first.

I was like, "Trilogy?"

"You said you're writing book two. Do you want to finish book three before you publish them all?"

So I had to explain that it was "book two" in the sense that I was writing my second book but that it was utterly unrelated to my first book in any way. But that assumption was there in her head by default that I was aiming for a trilogy.

That's pretty much what I meant, yeah. When did that start to become the assumption I wonder?

 

[Talwar]

That's pretty much what I meant, yeah. When did that start to become the assumption I wonder?

In her case, I was going to blame the YA genre, since she hoovers that stuff up.

But I gather the grandmothers of that genre (Twilight and The Hunger Games) are also accidental -ologies. The authors flogged stand-alone products and were offered multi-book deals on the strength of those products.

So maybe it comes back to LOTR and the Matrix, just less directly.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Star Wars and LOTR combined. We still talk about "Trilogies" with Star Wars when there's been eleven of the buggers, not counting the Ewoks and the Clone Wars cartoon one, because a once arbitrary "there's three" is now demanded for each 'cycle'.

 

[Ncw8]

LOTR and Foundation certainly inspired SF and Fantasy writers to create trilogies, but neither were planned trilogies, nor were they successful novels that were expanded to be trilogies.

The Seventies / early Eighties seem to be the time when planned SF trilogies hit their stride. There’s the Illuminatus Trilogy, the Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy, and the Helliconia Trilogy. It’s probably not surprising that Star Wars became caught up in the idea of becoming a trilogy since it was the in thing for written SF.

 

[Alex Richards]

I do think the post-Harry Potter era has definitely seen a shift away from trilogies as the default assumption mind.

Though at least that brief period where everything became 'we're splitting the last film into two' has finished.