I have been writing a few short stories to help me come up with some history, and I have found a few ideas that could be made in to novels or full length books. What I am looking for are novels that cover multiple generations worth of characters. In my story arc, I would have multiple generations, maybe five or six, working towards a goal that only the last generation will see fulfilled. They would each have their own stories, but they would be vignettes and short stories that all fit together, each one building on the last. Can anyone recommend books of a similar style that I could read?
The Keepers of the House. It's just one book, but it covers several generations. It gets quite boring in parts, but it should give you a good idea of what you're looking for. I think.
The Hours, Michael Cunningham Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf The Time Traveler's Wife, (?? forgot!) But maybe you'll want to develop your own way of doing this. You could follow a strict timeline - or more like an organized timeline, have characters tell or read the history. Who will be your main character, will they be discovering the actions of the past generations or do they already know them?.. you could play around with it - is it fiction?
Les Miserables Victor Hugo Woman of Substance series - Barbara Taylor Bradford not in all in one book but multi generational stories. I think it is something done more in Catherine Cookson, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Kate Morton etc more than Sci Fi.
Interesting inputs so far, it looks like many of these suggestions either span multiple books, or, as with the Positronic Man, have one character that is central to the story. In mine, I guess the ship would be the central characters, can a story be told from the perspective of an object? Keep the ideas coming, I will hit library with whatever you can find.
Neither is science fiction, but they do cover multiple generations. Middle Sex by Jefferey Eugenides One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
This is a very interesting theme. In one sense this sort of thing - getting together to achieve something that will not be accomplished while you are about - is alien to the modern mind. Less so perhaps to ancient folk who sometimes built things over many generations. There are surely books about dealing with the/this ancient mindset - nonfiction - that might prove helpful. (In another sense, money and wages cloud the issue. Lots of people in factories or offices nowadays who in a certain sense spend thirty years accomplishing nothing (while, of course, feeding their children and putting a roof over their heads).
As a development, I now have a character that (potentially) could be around for the entire time, but I don't know if I will use her. Seems almost a waste of a concept if a central character does see things from beginning to end.
