Ian Fleming, thinking after only the fourth James Bond novel that he had nothing further to write at least about this character, planned to kill Bond at the end of the fifth novel. He was persuaded not only to continue but also to try to make something more of the character but then settled into writing formulaically for the remainder of the series.
Anderson did not write formulaically about his Bond equivalent. Dominic Flandry graduated from a pulp defender of a stock Terran Empire into a well-informed commentator on imperial decline and then was superseded by speculative fiction not about interstellar empires but about artificial intelligences.
Readers appreciate Bond and Flandry and also Anderson's wider perspective.
3 comments:
A lot depends on whether you're writing full-time. Also whether you enjoy the actual process -- George Martin said to me once when we were discussing it that he enjoyed 'having written', not writing. I enjoy the actual process very much.
I write non-fiction so the process is different. I enjoy doing it or I wouldn't do it. The object is to get something written in order to find out what wants to be written next. Writing is like sculpting: cutting away unnecessary words so that only what is needed remains. It is like discovering (un-covering), not like creating.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: And Dominic Flandry might have been a writer himself! Here I'm recalling the ease and facility with which he spun tales in THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS in order to gain the attention of Sumu the Fat, a gang boss in Swamptown. Flandry was pretending to have recently arrived from another continent of Unan Besar.
And while I agree with what you said about PA's late phase works, such as the HARVEST OF STARS books and GENESIS, Anderson was careful to show that AI, in the true sense, is not necessarily going to be without its drawbacks, dangers, costs. Assuming such a thing is even possible at all.
In a small way I've done some non-fictional writing here, thanks to you. Once I finally knuckled down to it, I did enjoy writing my guest essays or articles.
Mr. Stirling: I can believe what you said! In some of the amusing notes with which you prefaced some of your books you thanked the owners of certain restaurants for putting up with the "weird" guy in the corner cackling as he typed away on his laptop. So, it's plain you were having fun writing!
Sean
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