OK, is the word for a series of two novels called a duology? That sounds weird to me but I can’t think of an alternative.
Duology?
Opinions, art, debate
Opinions, art, debate
OK, is the word for a series of two novels called a duology? That sounds weird to me but I can’t think of an alternative.
Clarissa's Blog 
This question has come up before.
http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/210177/a-series-of-three-is-trilogy-a-series-of-two-is
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It’s good to know that I’m not the only person to be confused by this.
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I think you should use “legendarium.” :p
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It also sounds impressive to say “two volume novel.”
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The ones I’m working with are two different novels. But they are definitely linked spatially and thematically. Of course, I could just say that but I’m trying to avoid wordiness. Plus, I’ve only been allowed 18-20 pages, bibliography included for the entire article.
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“Duology” might be best for that, then. It’s a really weird word, but it describes the pair as being connected in some way without having to actively describe the fact that the pair of books is connected.
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If you want a short, catchy word that rhymes with “”trilogy,” why not use the neologism “dilogy”? (It’s certainly as valid as “duology.”)
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I love dilogy. Thank you, it does sound better than duology. I should have come up with dilogy but I just blanked for some reason.
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It is curiously common in sf and fantasy for a series intended to be a trilogy to have more than three volumes in it. I have a bit of a theory that authors’ minds contain longer stories than they imagine before they write them.
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I’ve always thought of it as a hat-tip to Douglas Adams, with his famous “trilogy in five parts.” But that makes a bit more sense. There’s always more to explore.
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“Trilogy in five parts” only makes sense if Adams actually wrote three distinct stories, but then, for whatever reason (publication schedule? serial chapters in a magazine?), chose to divide his three tales into smaller segments. Was that the case?
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No, it was a joke by Adams.
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There’s a practical limit to how large the binding can be for a novel …
Once you’ve exceeded that limit, production costs increase to the point that it would be better for all involved, especially the author, to bring the size back down below the point of production no-return.
Essentially, the novel will become more expensive to produce, meaning that the price has to go up, which tends to go against Generally Accepted Practices Employed When Pricing Novels. This may result in charge-offs against the author’s profits, depending on how the contracts were written.
One amusing thing to observe the next time you’re in a bookshop is how the format and size change when an author’s work shifts out of hardcover. If the work was already pushing the binding limits in hardcover, this will generally be observable in the paperback copy in terms of the page size and thickness of the paperback.
There are exceptions — I’m reminded of James Clavell’s portable doorstop paperbacks that broke nearly all of the rules, but I suspect that the publishers only went along with the idea because they could command a higher price point, which is not always a valid assumption.
It’s not that the authors have stories that are too large in their minds — they’re simply too large for the constraints imposed by the publishers …
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