The Pride of Chanur

"Cherryh is one of my formative writers, someone who was a huge influence on me when I was starting to read deeply into science fiction and fantasy, and taking my first stabs at writing. The Pride of Chanur and its sequels were not the first Cherryh I read; I could have chosen many of her books, or her entire Alliance-Union universe. I highlight the Chanur books because their complex setting, exciting plot, and wonderful characters capture many of the things I love most about what space opera can accomplish in the right hands. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter The books are set in a region of space where humans are not known, and where alien spacefaring species struggle with their own political upheavals while juggling inter-species diplomacy, trading, and interaction. The sheer inventiveness Cherryh displays with her aliens is fabulous. They are our frame of reference, which means they are not alien to the story or to themselves but only to us. The politics are labyrinthine and the action is exciting, and then she adds to the mix the arrival of a single, lone human—a species no one in the setting has ever seen before. From the point of view of the other characters, he is the alien. We as readers see him both as an alien and as one of us. Great stuff. A big, well-constructed universe will offer a multitude of story openings just as our own Earth’s history is a foundation for so many different tales. A universe, ‘a narrative world,’ is also a form of creation, and many writers want to explore beyond the confines of a single story. I think it’s natural for writers who love world-building to want to expand their worlds through different characters, different plots, and different time frames. If there wasn’t room for a person or landscape in book one, then maybe they can enter the story in book two or three. Or an event or person dealt with in an early book may suggest repercussions to be written about in a later book. Some stories simply take multiple volumes to tell. Cherryh’s Downbelow Station is a standalone novel in her Alliance-Union universe that has a beginning and a resolution all in one; you could read it and never read another novel by her, although I wouldn’t recommend that. Meanwhile, Tad Williams’ Otherland is a single story told in four volumes. To get the full story and a resolution the reader has to read all four—and you should! I love that series. My own series don’t all interlink. Most are separate ‘worlds’ except in as much as they are written by me, with my sensibility. When I do write a series over multiple books I have a large plot frame in mind that needs multiple volumes to unfold. I also just genuinely enjoy world-building and am always happy to explore as much of the landscape as is reasonable within the story."