Continuing Characters And Series

 

A fictional series usually has a continuing character or characters, indeed usually is about such characters. How else would it be a series? The first such series was the Sherlock Holmes short stories. Edgar Allan Poe's detective, Dupin, had appeared in three stories and therefore is definitely a precursor but his stories were not published periodically as a "series." It was Conan Doyle who invented the idea of a new kind of serial in which each episode would be a complete story so that continuity was to be provided by familiar characters and their background but not by plot. The advantages for occasional readers of a periodical are obvious. 

A future history that is not a single novel but a number of stories is a series because readers are able to discern that its instalments are set in successive periods of a single fictitious timeline whether or not there are any continuing characters. Such characters are almost entirely absent from Robert Heinlein's Future History and also from Poul Anderson's derivative Psychotechnic History and take a long time to emerge in Anderson's organically grown Technic History. 

In the first six instalments of the Technic History:

"The Saturn Game" introduces the Jerusalem Catholic Church, important later;

"Wings of Victory" introduces the planet Ythri and its intelligent, winged inhabitants and also mentions Woden, Cynthia and Hermes;

"The Problem of Pain" introduces the planet Avalon, not yet named, and the two Ythrian religions and also mentions the University of Nova Roma on Aeneas;

"Margin of Profit" introduces Nicholas van Rijn and the Polesotechnic League;

"How To Be Ethnic In One Easy Lesson" introduces the Wodenite, Adzel, and mentions Cynthia, Gorzun, Ythri and Alfzar;

"The Three-Cornered Wheel" introduces the Hermetian David Falkayn and the planet Ivanhoe.

Not a single character has recurred as yet although one species, the Ythrians, has appeared twice and a few planetary names have been mentioned more than once.

In the seventh instalment, "A Sun Invisible," David Falkayn now works for van Rijn's company but has not yet met Old Nick. Very gradually, characters commence convergence.