Leave some mystery…
In my many mystery, thriller, and sci-fi novels, I often leave some questions unanswered. Critics might say that I’m just setting the stage for a sequel. Fortunately, I don’t have many critics or readers in general, so I could just ignore any complaints they might have; but even in the middle of what will become a series, I’m never sure there will be a sequel!
For example, by the end of No Amber Waves of Grain, I’d decided to end the “Clones and Mutants” trilogy. So far, the mysterious pregnancy of one of the main characters, one of the clones, still remains a mystery. Is the villain of the tale the father? He appears in the bridge book Soldiers of God, but the clones aren’t even mentioned there!
In Son of Thunder, the second novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, Scotland Yard Inspector Esther and her paramour, Interpol Agent Bastiann van Coevorden, find the tomb of St. John the Divine. She tries to inform the Vatican museum of their find, but that bureaucracy is still dragging its heels after that series ends after seven more novels. In another novel, Gaia and the Goliaths, the last in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco” series, Bastiann hesitates to take a shot at a fleeing villain, but someone else does it for him. There are some clues about who that shooter is in later novels, but Bastiann will always be wondering, as will some readers, I expect. Another unresolved issue occurs at the end of Fear the Asian Evil (third novel in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy), where a Chinese agent places a bomb in Duke Freddie March’s plane. Because that novel ends the trilogy, readers might be upset.
Sometimes these unresolved issues are disparagingly called “cliffhangers,” a term more germane for describing soap opera episodes. I suppose that depends on how egregious the unresolved issue is. On the other hand, a lot of unresolved issues occur in real life, don’t they? (Will we ever know the true story about those who benefitted from Epstein’s sex trafficking?) As Tom Clancy once said, genre fiction has to seem real. (That’s true for science fiction and even fantasy, where the futuristic or fantastic setting has to be consistent and logical within the story’s universe. Both Star Wars and the Harry Potter stories fail at that.)
A prime example of an unresolved issue that’s present in one novel but later resolved in a second one is when Jenny Wong disappears in Survivors of the Chaos to reappear in Sing a Zamba Galactica to be reunited with an old love. (Both novels are followed by a third and found in The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection.) I was giving a bit of a nod to “Sleeping Beauty” there, but those two novels have a lot more to them than that old fairy tale!
Of course, these unresolved issues can be resolved in another novel anywhere in a series…but they don’t have to be. A bit of unresolved mystery isn’t a bad thing, either in real life or in fiction!
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The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy Collection. While I’ve always been an avid Isaac Asimov fan, the future universe I created in this trilogy, unlike Isaac’s, has ETs (both good and bad) as well as robots. (AI receives more emphasis than robotics…sorry, Isaac.) The three novels in the collection cover a long span of future history, from the dystopian world during the future Chaos to the insane villain who wants to control all of near-Earth space (my bow to Isaac’s Mule). For the scientific-minded, there are also some interesting extrapolations of current science as well as conjectures about humanity’s progress in the future despite the existence of fascist mentalities who have no interests beyond satisfying their greed and thirst for power.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
