Way back in the 1990s, I started reading a book series by Harry Turtledove called Worldwar. I wasn’t yet conditioned to expect everything to be a trilogy, so when I got to the end of the first book, In the Balance, I was shocked that there was no real ending. It was only a few months later that I found out there were more books in the series.

Then I was used to trilogies, so when the third book ended (but didn’t really end), I had a “what the hell?” moment, only to discover that there was a fourth book forthcoming. (No pun intended.)

Worldwar is a great historical sci-fi series, but as a teenage reader of sci-fi in the 1990s (and early 2000s) I didn’t yet know that Harry Turtledove was considered “the master of alternate history”. I did read The Guns of the South, a novel where someone gives the South (during the Confederacy) an AK-47 and it changes the entire path of the Civil War, but I haven’t read most of his other works, including the “Southern Victory” series which (AFAIK) was really more of an alternate history than a sci-fi series.

As an author, I’ve never written a true trilogy. I’m thinking mostly about the fantasy novel I started rewriting a few years ago — the way I wrote it, there really isn’t much of a sequel hook. But then, I could always focus on different characters in the same world. And, honestly, it might very well be the same world that Lessons and Other Options share. (I’m sure I’ve posted in the past about how I think they occur on the same planet, albeit in very different locations. Maybe that’s only in my head; I don’t know. But I like the idea.) Planets are big places.

Maybe someday I’ll write a trilogy. Maybe. But in the meantime I’ll just go on reading them.