posted
Did anyone else reading this book feel like they had missed something? I kept going back and checking to make sure I had read all the previous books because it seemed like there was another book in between this one and Heartfire. BTW I love these books, not trying to be negative. I was just a little confused.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I felt a little disoriented at the beginning of CC as well. Apparently there were short stories posted at hatrack, but I must have missed them.
Posts: 866 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Thank you, I went back and read those old threads and it answered all my questions. Sorry for posting a topic that has already been discussed. Obviously, I'm a little behind the game.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hey, no problem, happens all the time. Glad you were able to find the information you were looking for.
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
Just chiming in with another "me too" on this issue of plot gaps between Heartfire and Crystal City. I recently decided to read Crystal City since I had enjoyed this series a lot. I was totally lost. I assumed I'd missed a novel, went to a bookstore and looked over Heartfire, and realized I had read it. But I figured I must just not be remembering it, since it had been a few years. So then I went to my storage unit and dug out my box of "worth keeping" sci-fi novels, found my old copy of Heartfire, and re-read it. At the end I realized it did nothing to fill in the gaps. Kept checking the front of the Crystal City where it lists the Maker novels to see if I really had missed one.
Finally shrugged it off and just read Crystal City. I enjoyed it, but it was still very weird to have all these events happen between Heartfire and Crystal City only slightly alluded to. I'd have to say it did detract from the experience.
The idea of having a continuing series of novels and then inserting major plot points between novels 5 and 6 into short stories that some one would have to go buy one or more anthologies to have read...well, I have to say I think that it has proven to be a flawed approach. Perhaps this could not be known in advance, but it appears that many people had similar confusion to me and that is too bad.
In a way, a novel series is sort of like an implied contract. When I read sci-fi novels more often, I would look forward to the next novel in the series, eager to pick up where the prior novel had left off and see the continuing adventures of characters I had come to enjoy. It seems like there is a trust, then, that the next novel will take up from where the previous one left off rather than starting from the end of some short stories that you would have to know to look elsewhere to find.
I mean, it might have been one thing if these had been minor side stories. Anne McCafferey had a short story set in her Dragonriders of Pern series that was set in the same world, but in no way touched on any plot issues going on in the main novels. Yet in Crystal City we find many major plot points have happened after Heartfire and before the Crystal City; Alvin being unable to save his firstborn, and Peggy getting pregnant with a secondborn; Steven Austin and Jim Bowie meeting Alvin and trying to recruit him for a trip to Mexico; Alvin setting free some blacks from a riverboat who later are helpful to him; Alvin having some kind of experience with Abe Lincoln that endears them to each other.
The bottom line is, as much as I enjoy OSC's writing style and books -- even these I'm refering too -- that does not mean we all have to think OSC is perfect and that there was no flaw in the decision to include these plot pots in short stories that would confuse and elude loyal readers of this series.
I would also note that, at the very least, it seems a terrible oversight not to clarify the intervening short stories at the beginning of the Crystal City, either by referring to the intervening stories in a foreward or providing some summary of those stories as a prologue. I mean, how hard is it to mention somewhere before page 1 of the Crystal City that to be up to speed on the events taking place, you should go find these particular short stories to read that take place after Heartfire and before the Crystal City? That takes, what, a paragraph added to the acknowledgements if nothing else?
None of which means that OSC is not an extraordinary writer, perhaps the best SF writer out there; or that any of this was intentional or arose from bad intent. But I think that it is obviously a mistake the way this was handled and can we at least learn from it?
I've never heard of an author taking an ongoing series of novels and then separate out such intrinsic plot points to be in some short stories between two novels and with no reference to that fact in the beginning of the novel that picks up from where the last short story leaves off. So perhaps there was no way to know how it would work out and OSC could only learn from experience. I just hope the lesson has been learned.
I read Crystal City recently. Loved it! But I also felt I must have missed a bunch of stuff. Now you refer to several short stories OSC published that are back story to Crystal City.
I feel cheated! I'll get over it, but.... does someone (anyone) have the sources of these stories? I mean, I'd love to find out what I'm missing.
Truth is, I'm not much of a short story reader--I like a fuller bodied experience. It never occurred to me that there were really actuall pieces that I had missed; I just assumed I had a faulty memory.
Posts: 13 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
So, asdie from the two novellas in the two Legends anthologies, were there other stories beyween Heartfire and Crystal City?
I've read the two Legends stories - and did so before reading Crystal City - but I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything else here.
Posts: 8 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I read the stories in order, so my empathy might be faulty, but I thought that they kind of *were* minor episodes. I didn't think that missing them would have prevented me from enjoying the last book.
I realize it's not the same, but did not knowing how Jane came to exist prevent you from enjoying Speaker for the Dead? Her existence was explained in a short story set between the two.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Nah. I love Jane when I read Speaker. I didn't have to know everything about her. But since there was new stuff to read about this amazing and dynamic character, I was really, really happy to read it.
When I read Crystal City, the first time an incident that seemed important was referred to (I think it was the baby that died) I looked and looked for it in Heartfire and finally just gave up. Now I know it wasn't there, but that it is SOMEWHERE.
Call it FANatacism. I just like to know what OSC has to tell about the characters that I really love. After all, isn't that the biggest reason any of us are here???
There is a library of short stories on this site?? I'll go searching.
Posts: 13 | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
