Consider:
Poul Anderson's Young Flandry Trilogy as against one of his short stories like "How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" or "Lodestar";
CS Lewis' Ransom Trilogy as against his short story, "The Shoddy Lands" (the author appears as a character in the Trilogy and in the short story);
the concluding trilogy of Ian Fleming's James Bond series - On Her Majesty's Secret Service, You Only Live Twice and The Man With The Golden Gun - as against Fleming's excellent James Bond short story, "The Living Daylights";
PC Wren's Beau Trilogy as against his two or three short stories featuring the same characters.
In each of these four cases, we appreciate length, then brevity, and also the fact that we can read about familiar characters at either length.
3 comments:
I'm not a natural short-story writer. I once compared writing a really good short story as equivalent to stuffing a cat into a soda-can without hurting it.
And Stieg Larsson wrote a trilogy of three long novels but no short stories.
Harlan Ellison focused on short stories and I did not much like the ones I read.
I think a writer should try to perfect both forms - but it's up to them what they do!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You did try your hand at writing shorter stories--and I mostly liked them.
Ad astra! Sean
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