Science Fiction & Fantasy Series,
Sequels, and Related Items
discussed at Troynovant;
listed by Author

 
The economics of science fiction publishing, for authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs even before the earliest true science fiction magazine began in 1926, led many writers to episodic development across the months and years of magazine issues. Fortunately they had a clear precedent in the Sherlock Holmes stories. The perceived value of the series approach — for authors, editors, publishers, and readers — carried easily into books when book publication became common for science fiction and fantasy (labeled as such) beginning in the late 1940s.

Some of these sequences are covered as a whole at Troynovant, others piecemeal as we get to them; a key component may receive a separate review, or feature in the history of science fiction. Some series integrate smoothly, essentially as multi-part stories that really should be read in order even when not written in order; while others are more episodic or independent. Many groups or sequences are small-stuff albeit extended, poor and uncreative, and plenty of others are fun but minor; but the best of them are colossal syntheses of imagination, arguably the king-works of science fiction.
  

[Milan.]

Silvia:

Perchance you think too much of so much pains?

Valentine:

No, madam; so it stead you, I will write —
Please you command — a thousand times as much.
And yet ...

Silvia:

A pretty period. Well, I guess the sequel.
And yet I will not name it. And yet I care not.
And yet take this again.
          [She offers him the letter]
                                           And yet I thank you,
Meaning henceforth to trouble you no more.

Speed (aside):

And yet you will; and yet another yet.

William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 2.1.99-107